Black Friday bad news? Or Economy good news?

Since last Friday, "Black Friday", the gloom and doom experts in the MSM have warned that even though more shoppers showed up Friday and spent more money over all than last year, things are bad in the economy. They point out that individual shoppers spent 3.5% less than last year! Horrors, the sky is falling!

But retailers won't start popping the champagne yet, as a closer look at early spending patterns reveals a nervous side to all those pre-dawn shopping excursions. Shoppers spent an average of $347.44, down 3.5% from last year, a sign that the economic uncertainty from higher gas prices and the housing slump has dampened their spirits (BusinessWeek.com, 11/14/07).

But wait, they mentioned high gas prices - what if some shoppers did weigh the cost of gas to go shopping against the low cost of shopping on-line?

Over the holiday weekend, sales had grown 45 per cent on last year, although the seasonal pick-up in demand had come later than last year.

So, shoppers in bricks and mortar stores (BMS) subtracted about $10 from their in store spending (maybe that is the difference in the cost of gas to get to the mall?) and some that might have gone to BMS instead stayed home and bought on-line - 45% increase vs 3.5% decrease?
The MSM have an agenda item to portray the coming year as the "worst economy ever" in order to destroy the GOP. The theory is that the party of the sitting president suffers if the economy is bad. The problem is that they are struggling to find "news" that they can report that makes things look bad.
Even the reports of "dismal" results on Black Friday have to admit that more people went shopping and more money was spent. And look at the "subprime mortgage" problem stories, they talk about how bad it is for the very small number of people who are actually in trouble with being over extended, but the fact that housing prices are falling - which makes homes more affordable for more people - is the news that affects more people and that is a positive for anyone trying to afford a home. Sure it might be harder to qualify for a loan to buy the new house - but the people who are in trouble with existing mortgages were not really qualified for the loans they got. But more people being able to afford a home is a good thing, more affordable housing prices - a good thing, more shoppers in the stores - good thing, more on-line shoppers spending more - good thing.

Crossposted at RobBoyce

Wounded Warriors should not have to repay bonuses

From aWILLtoWIN at blogspot

Fayetteville, NC – When a soldier voluntarily re-enlists in the military
and receives a bonus for doing so, the government demands it be repaid if that
warrior is wounded in battle and unable to remain in the service. This is the
current policy and not everyone agrees it is the right policy.

Fox News is reporting that Jordan Fox – a soldier injured and partially blinded by a
road side bomb in Iraq. Not only is he disabled and not able to pursue his
intended career as a police officer when he finished his enlistment, but because
he was injured and left the service three months short of his commitment, the
government wants him to repay three thousand dollars of his signing
bonus.

Congressional Candidate, Army Reserve Major and Iraq Veteran
Will Breazeale joins NC Rep. Walter Jones and others in calling for an end to
the practice. That policy, which also calls for repayment of such bonuses if the
service member leaves the service for other reasons prior to the fulfillment of
the enlistment term, has no exemption for members unable to continue due to
injuries in the line of duty.

"This should change." Breazeale said
“Say a young soldier re-enlisted, got married and used the bonus to qualify to
buy a home for their future family. Then he deploys, is seriously wounded and
discharged. Is it then fair for the government to say they are taking back the
bonus? I don't think so! These warriors have fulfilled their
commitment!”

Breazeale is running for the NC 7th district which
extends from the Amy's Fort Bragg to the Marine Corps Camp LeJeune in
southeastern North Carolina. Rep. Jones, whose district includes LeJeune to
USMC's Cherry Point, is co-sponsoring HR 3793, also called the Veterans
Guaranteed Bonus Act, to make this change.

iPod me Bro!

Fox News just reported on a survey of students in a NYC college that found 1 in 5 would give up their voting rights for an iPod Touch.

Cross posted at RobBoyce

Does Lowes hate Christmas?

Today I got the first round of XXXXX big company hates Christmas e-mails. This one I remember seeing last year - that Lowes refuses to call their "Holiday trees" "Christmas trees".

A quick search of their products on-line finds some trees labeled as "Christmas trees" and others not. Same is true for other decorations. They carry a line called "Holiday Living" decorations and some of these have secular descriptions and some are Christmas oriented, specifically nativity scenes.


It seems that if there is an anti Christmas bias it might be with the suppliers who provide the actual descriptions used by Loews. I seriously doubt that the descriptions are created by Lowes and that most are simply what ever the supplier provided.

I also remember last year driving over to the local Lowes and seeing first hand that the display of fresh cut real trees were indeed accompanied by a sign saying "Christmas trees", not Holiday trees.

Crossposted at RobBoyce

Bloggers on strike with writers?

Seventeen entertainment blogs—among them Televisionary, Give Me My Remote and The TVAddict—will go dark Tuesday, replacing their sites with WGA solidarity statements.

Will I have to adjust my viewing habits? Will I miss my favorite shows?

I doubt it - I rarely watch anything that would be affected by the strike. News, old movies, Magum re-runs? Gee, don't think they are gonna be swept off the air by the strike but if they are - there are always older movies, the history channel and Rockford Files!

Crossposted at RobBoyce

Who should be in Veterans Day parades?

The Nutroots are all upset. Seems some people holding Veterans Day parades didn't want Veterans for Peace and similar groups in their parades. In a parade to honor Veterans tell me which of the groups above represent honor and respect for people who have honorably served our country. I did have to search through a lot of the VFP pictures to find ones that did not have obscene language.

Then They ask:

If you’d like to ask the Long Beach Veterans Day Committee why they ban certain groups of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from participating in their Veterans Day parade, while at the same time allowing groups that accuse the Democratic Senate Majority Leader of wanting to "surrender to the enemy," by all means

Let's see, Reid says the war is lost and wants to bring the troops home - sounds like surrender to me!

Crossposted at RobBoyce

Thank you Veterans

Then NRSC has a special thank you video for the Veterans in honor of Veterans day. There is also a link to America Supports You where you can send a message of thanks to those who are serving.

from the re-elect President Hillary campaign

Some guy is sending the following to NH legislators:

New Hampshire Legislator "you've got the WHOLE world in your hands...."

$3 gas $4 milk Civilians & Soldiers being Killed

Its NO time to be training new acts

Elect Strong, Proven and Seasoned

Elect Hillary President

But he should say "re-elect Hillary President" 'cause in her mind she already was for 8 years!

Cross posted at RobBoyce.com

Taxpayers win some lose some!

Tax payers got some good news yesterday. In Oregon, the voters said no to a plan to increase cigarette taxes in order to expand the state childrens’ health insurance plan (SCHIP) to non-children. This is the same program and the same issue that the Democrat controlled US House of Representatives has now passed twice – the first being vetoed by President Bush and he has vowed to veto the second.

In North Carolina the unincorporated town of Hampstead turned down a plan to add another level of government – they rejected an incorporation referendum that would have guaranteed more taxes and more government.

Also in NC voters in 16 counties had the opportunity to vote for a new tax on the sale of real-estate. The answer – a resounding NO!

Nationally they were not so well off when the US House voted to over ride another veto on a water resources bill. Called “the worst pork-barrel water projects bill ever.” By Taxpayer for Common Sense. No doubt some members of Congress thought all the recent talk about the drought in the southeastern US meant they had to appear to be doing “something” about water. Often times for Congress doing nothing would be the better choice. The water difficulties faced by Atlanta can be traced straight back to Congress but since those votes were years ago and passed by many now former Members, the current occupants feel no guilt or if they do think that throwing more money at the problem will make it go away.

All that pork barrel spending in the Water Resources bill will do nothing to refill the waters of Lake Lanier nor will they slow the federally mandated withdrawals that put Atlanta in peril.
The taxpayers should take a long close look at what their current members of Congress are doing in the Taxpayers’ name with the Taxpayers’ money. In one short year every member of the House and one third of the Senators face election. Those that are not mindful of the Taxpayers’ interests should be sent home to become taxpayers again not taxspenders.

Cross posted at RobBoyce

Sign Sen Demint's petition against earmarks!

Go to Sen Demint's web site and sign the petition against earmarks.



H/T RobBoyce.com

Bush vows another Veto

I have to wonder what the results one year ago might have been if President Bush had started acting tough and vetoing bloated spending bills in early 2005 - shortly after his re-election. Would the Republican base have been so disenchanted and stayed away from the polls last November if he had been beating up on the big spenders in Congress. Admittedly at that time it was the GOP in the majority but there were tax and spend Republicans voting with the Democrats to pass the bloated spending bills.

Today he has vowed to veto the Farm Bill passed by the Senate. Recently he has vowed to veto several other bloated spending bills.

The voters were disgusted with the pork barrel earmarks - the same as they are now. They were upset with their Congress spending without control and they were upset with Bush for letting them do it.

Bush should have been doing what he is doing right now long ago, starting in January 01 for that matter. Yes, when we went to war with the terrorists after 9/11, more had to be spent on defense - but there should have been, if not a decrease, a level funding of the non-defense portions of the Government. There should not have been the expansion of non defense government spending we have seen and 9/11 was no valid excuse.

Expanding subsidized health care to middle class families, expanding subsidies to corporate farmers, allowing unchecked earmarks all are fair game and Cheers to the President for taking this action - albeit years late.

Crossposted at RobBoyce

Dems lie that people die

The NH Democrat party sent out a mailer in the non-partisan (Yuk Yuk) Manchester mayoral race. The flier claims that murders in Manchester are up 33%. They are not. No more people have died this year than last year or the year before. Further - half of the murders this year were the murder half of murder suicides. How is a mayor supposed to know when someone will snap and murder their spouse (or domestic partner)?

This could be written off as figures never lie but liars always figure if it were assumed they were comparing the first 9 months of 2007 against 3/4 of the previous years, but that is not a valid comparison when the total number of murders per year is so low to begin with. There is no valid reason for the Democrats to assume there will be 1.3 more murders this year. (BTW - is that a pregnant woman in the first trimester?)

It is no surprise that the Democrats want to pretend there is some crisis in Manchester - they don't know what to do without a crisis - real or a lie!

The next question to ask did any of Hillary's dirty money pay for the distribution of these lies? Was this Hsu money? Or did it come from an illegal immigrant busboy?

H/T to Drew Cline

Crossposted at RobBoyce

McIntyre skips SCHIP vote!

Rep. Mike McIntyre not only changed his position on the SCHIP bill by first voting against the gross expansion of the program to middle income families and illegal aliens and then voting for it by voting to override the Presidential veto. Now he has voted for virtually the same bill. (RC 1009)

Beyond all that he further cow-towed to the Liberal wing of his Party by “taking a walk” and not even voting on the GOP compromise bill just 9 minutes before he voted on the Democrat’s version (RC 1008). His conscience may have been bothering him because he knew that people in the 7th NC District he represents do not want this program expanded, funded by all taxpayers to become a boon for middle income families and especially for illegal aliens. The GOP version included extra funds to keep the program available for families who earn too much for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance.

It is also possible that he has been reading the liberal blogs calling for him to face an opponent in the primary next spring – that there are some who feel he is not the best Liberal Democrat out there and they want a change.

It does seem that the winds of change are blowing in the 7th District and right now they are blowing Mike McIntyre around in circles.

Crossposted at RobBoyce

Hillary practices salute

Hillary is preparing to meet with Ahmadinejad and Chavez. She has the salute about right.

One by one

The GOP is often accused of hurting itself by in fighting, of having some members beating up on others over some issue, jumping on 80% friends because they are not 100%.

Well that seems to be exactly what is happening with the Dems right now.

This just showed up on BlueHampshire:

The straws that broke the back of this camel were the shameless Senators Schumer and Feinstein - members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who declared today that they will vote for Michael Mukasey as Attorney General. Schumer is in charge of the DSCC - recruiting and raising funds for future Democratic Senate candidates....But I'll be listening to the Greens, and the Libertarians, and the little voices that say "It's too cold to vote today."

I've been a Democrat for 35 years.

Today the Party spit me out.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Cross posted at RobBoyce

The NH primary slate is set

The slate of candidates for the NH primary is set - well almost!

It seems at least one of the Democrats who signed up has a deficiency in Civics education.

Sal Muhamed signed up and paid the $1000 fee but is ineligible to hold the office. He proudly points out on his web site that he was born in Egypt and is a naturalized citizen. Surely the citizenship process still includes lessons in civics to at least the 8th grade level. I know by then I was aware that only natural born citizens can become President.

Another interesting candidate is the only Republican to sign up to run for Vice President, NH Sen. John "Jack" Barnes. I saw Jack at the State House for VP and that in 2004 on Monday and we were talking about the fact hardly anyone ever signs up for VP. I almost signed up in 2004 and sure enough - he signed up and will be the only name on the ballot for VP.

It is interesting that Hillary could not be bothered to come sign up in person - she had a stand in and that was on the final day!

What has McIntyre spinning - not the hurricane

Rep. Mike McIntyre NC-7 has been spinning around like a wind vane in the hurricane lately but the source of the wind must be the Liberal side of his Democrat party that has him spinning. A supposedly conservative “Blue Dog” he originally voted against the over reaching expansion of the SCHIP program. That program, originally a GOP plan, has been selected by the Socialized Medicine arm of the Democrat Party as one prong of their attack on free market health care in the US.

This program is intended to help insure children in families too well off to qualify for taxpayer paid Medicaid but not well enough off to afford private insurance. Some states had used the federal funds of SCHIP to create a sliding scale of subsidization that helped families above the poverty level but certainly below “middle class”. Other states had been including adults and were attempting to extend it well into middle class income ranges. The Democrat controlled Congress drafted a change that adds tens of billions more in tax payer money than is required to keep the program operating for the intended purpose. They also sought to tie it to an increase in cigarette taxes.

McIntyre citing the increased tax on tobacco voted against the bill. However when President Bush vetoed the bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was using all the pressure she could generate to change votes of the Democrats and Republicans who opposed it and over ride the veto.

Buckling to this pressure McIntyre publicly changed his position and then voted to over ride the bill. But the story does not end there. The supposedly conservative McIntyre not only voted for the same Democrat bill last week but he avoided voting at all on the Republican alternative.

The question is, does Mike fear Pelosi, the radical Liberal Left or the voters? His original vote against the bill could make it seem it was the voters in the district who earn their living from tobacco that he feared. But when he flipped and voted to over ride the veto, it certainly seemed he was afraid of Pelosi. However voting for the resurrected bill but not voting at all on the Republican alternative seems to be a fear of the far Left Liberals who have been calling him a “Bush Dog” and even calling for a primary opponent to oppose him.

Bush vows to veto pork bill!

Yesterday in a speech to the Heritage Foundation among the many good points about his efforts to fight the War on Terror with Democrats in Congress acting like there is no war and no need to fight it and his need to have an Attorney General he made the following statement that had me standing and cheering - happily I was not driving at the time I heard it:

Congress also needs to pass the Department of Defense spending bill, as well as the funding bill for our nation's veterans. There are reports that congressional leaders may be considering combining the funding bills for our military and our veterans together with a bloated labor, health and education spending bill. It's hard to imagine a more cynical ploy than holding funding for our troops and our wounded warriors hostage in order to extract $11 billion in wasteful Washington spending. If the reports of this strategy are true, I will veto such a three-bill pileup

When Democrat big spenders in Congress pulled this same stunt with Reagan, Reagan blinked - he went on national TV and said "never again!" just before he went ahead and signed the bill, pork and all. I was extremely disappointed but my TV did survive the night.

President Bush has updated the strategy and has made a preemptive strike. I am not surprised that the MSM has not picked up on this veto threat - they seem to have a fixation on the SCHIP veto and the sequel. This veto being promised holds much more of the taxpayers’ money. The stakes are much higher.

But don't hold your breath waiting for CNN to tell you before the veto happens. Then when it does, they will blame Bush for cutting funds for Veterans and Defense as well as all the HHS and education funds. They will probably even portray many of the pork barrel ear marks as vital, necessary spending.

The problem is of course these ear marks do not get full and open debate, they never have to stand on their own merits. There is never a committee that invites people for and against them to give their views. Unless a pork fighting member moves on the floor to remove one or more of them there is never a recorded vote on them and worst of all they are lumped into huge piles of foul smelling unaccountable spending attached to bills that must be passed to keep the federal government operating.

Democrats in Congress play chicken, the MSM is on their side and the Presidents of the past have let them win or in the case of Democrat Presidents have colluded with them. And yes there are GOP members in Congress who are addicted to the pork as well, but the worst are the Democrats - using the taxpayers money to buy votes and attention (and often times campaign donations) with these earmarks.

Thank you Mr. Bush for taking a stand (which you should have taken in January 2001). The taxpayers thank you!

I do want to apologize to the Pork Producers, I didn't come up with the idea of calling it "pork" and my Great Grandfather was an Iowa hog farmer.

Olbermanagong reveals Osama's new hiding place

Obviously it took some radical nip and tuck but we now know that Osama bin Laden has been hiding in the open by assuming the identity of Syria's head of state. We would never have known if the bin Laden co-conspirator Keith Olbermanagong had not slipped up.

He and his version of Mata Hari, Huffington, both let slip this massive identity switch in this clip:



If Rudy had never mentioned Hillary and Obama planning to invite Assad to the White House if they get elected we would never have known that they would really have been hosting the supposed cave man bin Laden. Watch as Rudy says Assad - but they knowingly substitute his true identity bi Laden

H/T Hot Air and Riehl World