I am an inveterate optimist. We live in interesting times. The headline story on the front page of
The Wall Street Journal, the front page of
The New York Times, and a headline story in
Yahoo!News suggests things are starting to pile up for the administration.
It's hard to believe, but the dithering on the Keystone probably portrays the administration as well as anything. Even
The Washington Post editorial staff said the President's dithering was embarrassing.
The Post went so far as to tell the president to approve the Keystone and do something "meaningful" regarding climate change. When
The Washington Post turns on the president, well, it gets one to thinking.
The headline story in
The New York Times today: President Obama suffers setbacks in Japan and the Mideast. The opening paragraph: "President Obama encountered setbacks to two of his most cherished foreign-policy project on Thursday, as he failed to achieve a trade deal that undergirds his strategic pivot to Asia and the Middle East peace process suffered a potentially irreparable breakdown."
Irreparable as in, well ... irreparable.
Then, almost a mocking headline in
Yahoo!News: John Kerry issues a
final warning to Russia. I believe after that final warming, President Putin went golfing. Or maybe that was President Obama. No longer matters. John Kerry has given Russian a
final warning and that should probably bring the Ukraine back to where it was pre-Olympics. 1939. [Later, 8:54 p.m. central time: the headlines suggest the Ukrainians expect an imminent attack by the Russians. If indeed the Russians do "invade the Ukraine" this will go down as one of the worst diplomatic bungles in modern history. There will be lots of soul-searching, lots of Monday-morning quarterbacking. It will make the Benghazi tragedy look like a Sunday school picnic. Folks need to remember two things: a) the Ukraine has been part of Russia since the late 1700's; and, b) the Russians were originally only interested in the Crimean, which was essentially the Gitmo Bay, which we still hold on Cuba. But Mr Putin called Kerry/Obama sabre-rattling bluffing, only to lead where we are now. I'm in the minority on this but I never thought the US had a dog in this fight to begin with. Maybe Europe did (but I'm not convinced), but certainly the US did not. Kerry should have demanded an environmental impact study before pushing the Russians to war.]
But the story that got me started this morning was the headline, top story on the front page of today's
The Wall Street Journal:
demand for home loans plunges. It wasn't the data so much that hit a nerve, it was the verb in the headline:
plunges. I don't often see that verb used in the conservative
WSJ when "declines" would have done just as well. Earlier this week it was reported that new home sales declined almost 15%, the worst since July, 2012, and now we get this story: "
Mortage lending declined to the lowest level in 14 years in the first quarter as homeowners pulled back sharply from refinancing and house hunters showed little appetite for new loans, the latest sign of how rising interest rates have dented the housing recovery." It doesn't take much, does it? Fed Chairwoman wants a return to inflation to get the economy moving and I guess the shot across the bow was the increase in mortgage rates.
I make simple arithmetic errors but I think "
the lowest level in 14 years" pre-dates the stock market crash of 2008 and the resulting economic free-fall that almost destroyed the global economy.
I'm trying to think of some good news. We got some good news yesterday when
Reuters suggested the surge in first time unemployment claims -- 24,000 -- far surpassing anything analysts forecast -- was
nothing to worry about.
Maybe we will just end on this note. Tiger Woods, with his new gal-pal is now double-dating with his former wife, Elin Nordegren, who is now dating a man twice her age,
the coal-tycoon, billionaire boyfriend, who happens-to-live-next-door, Chris Cline. I would not have posted that but it had the word
coal in the story and that got me excited. Woods is 38. Elin's new boyfriend is not quite twice her age but close enough to write it that way. [A reader noted that this makes Tiger's ex a "coal-digger."]
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The change will help the company to avoid benefit costs that were
expected to increase at about 8% each year, UPS said. During a
conference call with analysts on Thursday, Chief Financial Officer
Kurt Kuehn
said that the company had already factored the costs—and the
charge—into its earnings forecast for the year.
On another ObamaCare note,
Oregon has ditched its state system -- could never get it to work -- cost $134 million -- Oracle couldn't get it to work. Makes one wonder. Going to the federal system will cost about $5 million. It begs the question: why didn't they do that in the first place?
CBS is reporting:
Oregon's exchange is seen as the worst in more than a dozen states
that developed their own online health insurance marketplaces. The
general public still can't use Cover Oregon's website to sign up for
coverage in one sitting.
Instead, Oregonians must use a
time-consuming hybrid paper-online process to sign up for insurance -
despite $134 million the state paid Oracle Corp. to build the online
exchange. Oregon received a month-long enrollment-deadline extension because of the technology problems.
Several
other states experienced major problems with their exchanges, but only
one has chosen to replace its site. Maryland recently decided to adopt
the technology used on Connecticut's successful exchange.
And you know the interesting thing: I will still have folks write to tell me it's all the GOP's fault.
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For newbies: when you see asterisks, you can assume more will be added later. Stay tuned. We haven't even gotten to
global warming climate change extreme weather global cooling or ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act.