Some useful data on Euro Zone Debt crisis

The data on ratings downgrades and bailout help is available at the WSJ here.

Gunwalker case hits the fan on Tuesday

The Obama people want to claim that they are no worse than the Bush administration. The “Wider Receiver” program gave direct notice to the Mexican authorities so that they could try to track the guns when they went to the Mexican side of the boarder. "Fast and Furious" made no such attempt to notify the Mexican authorities in anyway. "Fast and Furious" made no serious attempt to actually trace the guns and what is worse they knew that the guns weren't being traced. The Bush officials might have learned that Mexican police weren't up to tracing the guns, but at least they had a plan to try to have the guns followed. "Fast and Furious" gave out the guns, but agents and middle level people complained that the guns weren't being traced. From the WSJ:

Top Justice Department officials have settled on a strategy for explaining a botched gun-trafficking probe that includes blaming the now-ousted U.S. attorney in Phoenix.
The department has spent much of the year dealing with questions about federal agents' use of investigative tactics that resulted in the smuggling of firearms into Mexico. The issue is coming to a head Tuesday, when Attorney General Eric Holder is set to answer questions at a Senate hearing.
A hostile reception likely awaits from Republican lawmakers, who have pushed to make Mr. Holder accountable. More than 30 have called for him to resign.
At issue is a tactic that was employed by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to allow suspects to buy and transfer firearms in the hopes of landing big-time smugglers.
In the 2009-10 Operation Fast and Furious, suspects were allowed to buy about 2,000 firearms, hundreds of which remain unaccounted for.
An earlier operation called Wide Receiver, conducted in 2006-07 under the Bush administration, let suspects buy more than 400 firearms.
Mr. Holder and the Justice Department's criminal division chief, Lanny Breuer, have condemned the practice and said they wouldn't have permitted its use in the Fast and Furious operation. . . .

Consumer confidence and expectations remain near record lows

People's "present situation" has never really recovered at all. The graph was available here.

Almost 20 percent of men between 25 and 34 live with their parents?

This is an amazing and depressing statistic. From Bloomberg News:

The percentage of men 25 to 34 years old who live with their parents has increased by almost a third during the past five years, data from the U.S. Census Bureau show. The economic downturn has accelerated that trend for young men, while women continue to be less likely to bunk with their parents.

Since 2006, the year before the recession began, the percentage of young men living with their parents has grown to 18.6 percent this year from 14.3 percent. Just 9.7 percent of women in that age group now live with their parents, up from 8.8 percent in 2006. . . .

The WSJ has a discussion available here on how young men are having a particularly difficult time getting jobs.

Few groups were hit harder by the recession than young men, like Cody Preston and Justin Randol, 25-year-old high-school buddies who didn't go to college.

The unemployment rate for males between 25 and 34 years old with high-school diplomas is 14.4%—up from 6.1% before the downturn four years ago and far above today's 9% national rate. The picture is even more bleak for slightly younger men: 22.4% for high-school graduates 20 to 24 years old. That's up from 10.4% four years ago. . . .

Giuliani says "Obama owns Wall Street"

With violence breaking out at these "Occupy Wall Street" events, Giuliani makes Obama's responsibility clear. From Fox News:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani says responsibility for the Occupy Wall Street movement rests squarely on the shoulders of President Obama.

"This is a very dangerous movement, and it's ironic it's happening under a president who promised to unify us," Giuliani said. "Barack Obama owns the Occupy Wall Street movement, it would not have happened but for his class warfare."

The Occupy Wall Street protests broke out in cities all over the country shortly after president Obama called for tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans. Some of the protests have turned violent. In Oakland, California, more than 100 people were arrested and eight were seriously injured Thursday, with protesters leaving stores in flames, and streets littered with broken glass and debris. . . .

An event in NYC:

An "Occupy Wall Street" protester threw a violent fit in a McDonald’s after employees refused to give him free food.
Fisika Bezabeh, 27, ripped a credit-card reader from a counter and threw it at workers at about 2:30am local time Friday at the downtown Manhattan restaurant, which has become a bathroom spot for protesters.
No one was hurt by Bezabeh, who has been seen hanging out with protesters in the occupied park, police sources said.
He was charged with criminal mischief. . . .

John Boehner criticizes Obama for class warfare rhetoric. From The Hill newspaper:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Sunday that President Obama is inciting class warfare "every day" as he pushes Congress to pass his jobs package.

"We are not going to engage in class warfare," Boehner said on ABC'S "This Week with Christiane Amanpour." "[The] president's out there doing it every day. I, frankly, think it's unfortunate, because our job is to help all Americans, not to pit one set of Americans against another." . . .

Boehner pushed back against the notion that Republicans, by opposing the tax hikes, are merely protecting the rich.

"That's very unfair," Boehner said of that characterization. "The top 1 percent pay 38 percent of the income taxes in America. How much more do you want them to pay?"

The Speaker also rejected the idea that the cuts Republicans have endorsed this year in their efforts to reduce the deficit would harm poor Americans disproportionately.

"No one here in this Congress – Democrat or Republican – wants to do anything about putting holes in the safety net for Americans," Boehner said. "There are Americans who are poor. And I think it's the responsibility of the rest of us to ensure that they have food in their stomachs and they have a roof over their head." . . .

New piece by Maxim: "Wind Farms Disrupting Radar, Scientists Say"

Even the fix leaves a hole in the military defense radar. No fix is available for weather radar. His latest piece starts off this way:

This one's really off the radar.
Wind farms, along with solar power and other alternative energy sources, are supposed to produce the energy of tomorrow. Evidence indicates that their countless whirring fan blades produce something else: "blank spots" that distort radar readings.
Now government agencies that depend on radar -- such as the Department of Defense and the National Weather Service -- are spending millions in a scramble to preserve their detection capabilities. A four-star Air Force general recently spelled out the problem to Dave Beloite, the director of the Department of Defense’s Energy Siting Clearinghouse.
"Look there’s a radar here -- one of our network of Homeland surveillance radars -- and [if you build this wind farm] you essentially are going to put my eyes out in the Northwestern corner of the United States,” Beloite related during a web conference in April.
Spinning wind turbines make it hard to detect incoming planes. To avoid that problem, military officials have blocked wind farm construction near their radars -- and in some cases later allowed them after politicians protested.
Shepherd’s Flat, a wind farm under construction in Oregon, was initially held up by a government notice that the farm would “seriously impair the ability of the (DoD) to detect, monitor and safely conduct air operations." . . .
Beloite told FoxNews.com that the project was given the green light by the military only after scientists at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory assured the Department of Defense “that there were algorithms and processors they could design for not too much money that would mitigate the problem.”
Beloite said that the MIT technology has proven successful in the last few months.
"[The problem] has been addressed. And I have a letter from the deputy director of operations from U.S. NORAD that says 'step one of the two-step fix worked so well that we recommend we don't spend any more money on step two.'"
The fix the MIT scientists came up with tells the radar not to pay attention to signals in a very small area. . . .

Yet another problem with wind power

Since wind does blow at a continuous rate, one big problem has been that one has to build double the capacity. Not just the wind farm, but also some other alternative power supply to cover periods when the wind isn't blowing. Now there are some other costs. Apparently sometimes there is too much power, I guess when the wind blows unusually hard. In those cases, now the power companies are having to get consumers to increase use of electricity when they get these sudden surges of electricity. The NY Times views this as a big positive story. I think that it just points to yet another cost.

For decades, electric companies have swung into emergency mode when demand soars on blistering hot days, appealing to households to use less power. But with the rise of wind energy, utilities in the Pacific Northwest are sometimes dealing with the opposite: moments when there is too much electricity for the grid to soak up.

So in a novel pilot project, they have recruited consumers to draw in excess electricity when that happens, storing it in a basement water heater or a space heater outfitted by the utility. The effort is rooted in some brushes with danger.

In June 2010, for example, a violent storm in the Northwest caused a simultaneous surge in wind power and in traditional hydropower, creating an oversupply that threatened to overwhelm the grid and cause a blackout.

As a result, the Bonneville Power Administration, the wholesale supplier to a broad swath of the region, turned this year to a strategy common to regions with hot summers: adjusting volunteers’ home appliances by remote control to balance supply and demand.

When excess supply threatens Bonneville’s grid, an operator in a control room hundreds of miles away will now dial up a volunteer’s water heater, raising the thermostat by 60 more degrees. Ceramic bricks in a nearby electric space heater can be warmed to hundreds of degrees. . . .

Obama actually claims that the job numbers are "positive"?

So Obama thinks that 80,000 jobs in a month is "positive" news? Is this serious? This is half the growth in jobs that would be necessary just to KEEP EVEN with the growth in the population. From the Politico:

In economic news on Friday that President Barack Obama called “positive” but said shows the economy is still growing much too slowly, the unemployment rate ticked down to 9 percent in October, while the country added a less-than-expected 80,000 jobs last month.

The job growth was the most anemic its been in past four months and the U.S. created only about half of the number of jobs that were added in September. Private sector employment increased by 104,000 in October, while government jobs continued a downward trend, reporting a loss of 24,000 positions, according to the Labor Department.

Speaking from the G20 summit in Cannes, France, Obama said the October jobs numbers “were positive, but indicate once against that the economy’s growing way too slowly.” . . .

Economists had forecast that 100,000 to 125,000 jobs would be created last month and that the jobless rate would remain at 9.1 percent - where it had been stuck for the past three months. But the less-than expected addition of 80,000 still resulted in a dip in the unemployment rate as nonfarm payroll for August was revised upward from 57,000 additional jobs to 104,000, while jobs added for September was tweaked from 103,000 to 158,000. . . .

Virginia state Supreme Court rules that spit wads are "weapons" and using them is "criminal"

From WND:

The state Supreme Court in Virginia has let stand a ruling that spit wads are "weapons" and using them is "criminal."

But a public-interest law firm fighting the case says it has asked for a rehearing because of alleged violations of due process of law that occurred in the case.

The case has been argued by the Rutherford Institute, which said a tiny plastic pellet shot out of a plastic tube doesn't meet the definition of a "weapon" and a long-term suspension for a 14-year-old honor student is inappropriate.

The argument came in the case of Andrew Mikel II, who was a freshman last school year when he was kicked out of Spotsylvania High School for the remainder of the session under a claim by school officials that the "spit wad" was "violent criminal conduct."

Rita Dunaway, a staff attorney with the Rutherford Institute, argued before the state's high court that the penalty should be reversed and that the school determination that Mikel "possessed" a "weapon" reached too far. . . .

Student at Purdue pushes to end gun-free zone at his school

From the Purdue student paper:

A student government senator from Krannert will propose legislation for concealed carrying on campus at the student government meeting tonight.
Zach Briggs, senator and junior in the Krannert School of Management, wrote in an email that this piece of legislation could protect students and possibly, one day, his younger sister.
“The biggest reason (behind this legislation is) the safety of every individual on campus,” Briggs wrote. “Additionally, I think of my little sister and how someday she could be walking on this campus. If anyone ever tried to hurt her I would want her to at least have the option of defending herself.”
Briggs wrote in the email that although he expects some disagreement from the senate and the campus, he still has a lot of support on this issue. . . . .
“An Indiana resident with the proper licensing can carry on Purdue’s campus with no fear of repercussions since he or she could only be punished through University Regulations,” Briggs wrote, “which obviously don’t apply to him or her if this person is not a student, a member of faculty, or staff. This means IU students have the right to carry here without enforceable punitive actions being taken while Purdue students can’t.” . . .

Oakland developer protects his property with a shotgun

From the SF Chronicle.

Oakland developer Phil Tagami is used to working behind the scenes to broker some of the biggest deals in town. Late Wednesday, he was using different persuasive skills - holding a loaded shotgun to scare away rioters trying to get into a downtown building.

"We had people who attempted to break into our building," the landmark Rotunda Building on Frank Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall, Tagami said Thursday. He grabbed a shotgun that he usually keeps at home, went down to the ground floor and "discouraged them," he said.

"I was standing there and they saw me there, and I lifted it - I didn't point it - I just held it in my hands," Tagami said. "And I just racked it, and they ran."

Although they didn't get inside the building - Tagami, 46, oversaw its $50 million renovation and has an office there - vandals did scrawl graffiti on the outside walls during the post-midnight riot that broke out after Occupy Oakland's daylong general strike. . . .

Thanks to Dave O'Brien for the link.

Solyndra executives were rewarding themselves with bonuses before the company went bankrupt

This wouldn't be an issue to me if the government hadn't given Solyndra a half a billion dollars. From Fox News:

Solyndra executives were awarded quarterly bonuses worth up to $60,000 apiece earlier this year as the California solar-panel company headed for bankruptcy, court documents show.
Documents filed by the company in U.S. bankruptcy court in Delaware show the well-paid executives at the firm were given bonuses in April and in July, just months before the company filed for bankruptcy in September and laid off 1,100 workers.
The details add to the narrative of what was happening behind the scenes in the year leading up to the company's financial collapse, though congressional Republicans investigating the matter are looking for more details. After the Obama administration turned over 20,000 pages of documents earlier this week pertaining to Solyndra, House Republicans on Thursday night served the White House and vice president's office with a subpoena for more Solyndra documents. . . .

Democratic Representative accuses Republicans of not being patriotic

Dem Rep says GOP "not patriotic," "They Don't Love This Country"
The youtube video is available here.

Grad Students wrote the IPCC report

From Fox News:

A scathing new expose on the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change -- which sets the world's agenda when it comes to the current state of the climate -- claims that its reports have often been written by graduate students with little or no experience in their field of study and whose efforts normally might be barely enough to satisfy grad school requirements.
Grad students often co-author scientific papers to help with the laborious task of writing. Such papers are rarely the cornerstone for trillions of dollars worth of government climate funding, however -- nor do they win Nobel Peace prizes.
“We’ve been told for the past two decades that 'the Climate Bible' was written by the world’s foremost experts,” Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise told FoxNews.com. “But the fact is, you are just not qualified without a doctorate. In academia you aren't even on the radar at that point.”
The IPCC insists that the lead authors of individual sections of its climate report are indeed the pre-eminent experts in their field.
"These authors are nominated by governments and selected based on expertise,” a spokesman told FoxNews.com. “Author teams on IPCC chapters are a mix of individuals who have excelled in their fields of specialism." . . .

Senate moves to prevent the Obama administration from "putting any limits on serving potatoes or other vegetables in school lunches"

The Federal government is regulating the vegetables that local public schools can include in lunches? From the Deseret News:

Agriculture Department rules proposed earlier this year aimed to reduce the amount of french fries in schools, limiting lunchrooms to two servings a week of potatoes and other starchy vegetables. That angered the potato industry and members of Congress from potato-growing states, who say USDA should focus on the preparation instead and that potatoes can be a good source of fiber and potassium.

Following a bipartisan agreement on the issue, the Senate by voice vote accepted an amendment by Republican Sen. Susan Collins that would block USDA from putting any limits on serving potatoes or other vegetables in school lunches.

Collins, who is from Maine, a potato-growing state, says the vegetables are a cheaper and nutritious way to feed children when school budgets are strapped.

"This proposed rule would have imposed significant and needless costs on our nation's school districts at a time when they can least afford it," she said. . . . .

The Fed projections on the economy are getting worse

How will Obama explain having an unemployment higher than when he became president? From Reuters:

In fresh quarterly projections, the Fed lowered its forecasts for growth and raised its forecasts for unemployment for this year, 2012 and 2013. Policymakers did not see the jobless rate, now at 9.1 percent, falling to a level they consider consistent with full employment even at the outer edge of their forecasting horizon, the final quarter of 2014.

Officials now expect the world's largest economy to grow by a tepid 2.5 percent to 2.9 percent next year, down from the rosier 3.3 percent to 3.7 percent they were expecting in June.

They saw the unemployment rate going no lower than 8.5 percent to 8.7 percent by the end of 2012, up from the more sanguine 7.8 percent to 8.2 percent range envisioned in June.

Fed officials believe the economy will have reached full employment when the jobless rate drops to between 5.2 percent and 6 percent. In their forecast, the unemployment rate would still be at 6.8 percent to 7.7 percent at the end of 2014. . . .

Republican House is passing a lot of legislation, not the Democratically controlled Senate

From The Hill newspaper:

How are House deregulation bills piling up in the Senate? According to House Republicans, increasingly like cord wood.

"We've been doing a whole lot over the last 10 months," Rep. Tim Griffin (R-Ark.) said Tuesday night. "Passed a lot of legislation, I think we've had about 800 votes. Unfortunately, a lot of those good ideas are stacking up like cord wood over in the U.S. Senate."

For the last several weeks, the Republican message has been focused on the "forgotten 15" — the nickname for various House-approved bills that would ease federal regulations and are awaiting Senate action. Republicans seem to have developed the "cord wood" metaphor in September, but took it fully on board in October.

"Mr. President, jobs have been job number one for House Republicans since the beginning of this year," Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) said October 13 in response to President Obama's call for Republican jobs bills. "In fact, major portions of the House Republican Plan for America's Job Creators have been stacking up like cord wood on Senator Harry Reid's doorstep for months."

Obama's criticism that Republicans have done nothing to help the unemployment situation is the clear impetus for the oft-repeated phrase, and has prompted the GOP to point out that Senate Democrats have failed to even look at the forgotten 15. . . .

New National Review piece: Goolsbee’s Gaffes

My piece at National Review Online starts this way:

The Obama administration is having a difficult time explaining the unemployment rate, which has been above 9 percent for 27 consecutive months and is today 1.3 percentage points higher than it was when Obama took office. The October numbers, due to be released on Friday, are unlikely to look any better. So, his administration goes to great lengths to spin its own unique set of facts.

Just look at Austan Goolsbee’s Friday interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show. Despite having stepped down as Obama’s chief economic advisor in August, Goolsbee continues to do media shows supporting Obama’s economic policies. Goolsbee declared: “I deal only in facts, Sean.” Here is a simple fact check of Mr. Goolsbee’s claims.

Hannity: We heard that unemployment wasn’t going to go above 8 percent.

Goolsbee: When they made that 8 percent prediction, that was the same prediction being made by everyone. But you forget the other half of the thing, which is if you did nothing, the rate would go to 8.9 percent, and it was already above that before the first part of the stimulus even went out.

Mr. Goolsbee is just plain wrong. When the Obama administration got into office, they made optimistic promises about their stimulus program, claiming that during 2009, unemployment would stop rising and then fall. The unemployment rate in January was 7.8 percent. In late February, the administration claimed that it would average just 8.1 percent for the year if the Stimulus was enacted. . . .

Legislation to end Canada's long gun registration passes two crucial votes

From CBC:

The government fended off accusations from the opposition Tuesday that it is making it easier for criminals to access dangerous guns by abolishing the long-gun registry.

The Conservatives introduced legislation on Oct. 25 that would remove the requirement to register non-prohibited long guns in the RCMP's database. The requirement to register prohibited and restricted firearms would remain intact and no changes to the licensing regime are proposed.

The bill passed second reading in the House by a vote of 156 to 123. The legislation will now go to a committee of MPs to hear from witnesses. NDP MPs Bruce Hyer and John Rafferty, both from northern Ontario, voted with the Conservatives to pass the bill.

The NDP said in question period that easing the registration requirements will mean certain firearms, including the one used in the Montreal massacre in 1989 and the mass shooting in Norway this past summer, are exempt from registration and shouldn't be. . . .

"Mitt Romney's Top 5 Contradicting Comments"?

I don't know how ABC News determines what the top 5 contradicting comments are, but they have picked: The Flat Tax, Massachusetts Health Care, Abortion, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and Constitutional Amendment Defining Life. Their discussion is available here.

More conflicts of interest in Obama giving out money to "green energy" firms

Yet another problem. From Fox News:

A clean-energy firm led by a member of President Obama's jobs council has a stake in projects that have reaped nearly $2 billion in loan guarantees from Washington, a case that has raised conflict-of-interest concerns as the same jobs council pushes for more "government-backed" investment in renewable energy.
The company, NextEra Energy, secured a loan guarantee in August for a solar project in California. An affiliate has taken over another California project that won a separate guarantee in September. The firm is no lightweight -- NextEra Energy Resources, the subsidiary working on both solar projects, is the biggest producer of wind and solar energy on the continent.
But the company also enjoys a connection to the Obama administration -- company Chairman and CEO Lewis Hay sits on the president's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which last month issued a report calling, among other things, for a new federal financing program to attract private investment for clean energy projects via loan guarantees and other tools. . . .

Just how hard is it to start a business in India

The entire piece is pretty scary. From the WSJ:

It's tough to be an entrepreneur anywhere, but India presents special obstacles—byzantine bureaucracy, moldering roads and power grids, cultural pressures that penalize risk-taking, and corruption. Mr. Alva says the thugs demanded bribes to go away. He wouldn't pay.

Entrepreneurship is vital to India as the nation of 1.2 billion tries to reduce poverty through economic growth. Small and medium businesses are the largest nonfarm employers and account for 45% of manufacturing output, according to government data and a study last month by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Confederation of Indian Industry. Those small firms are adding some 3.3 million jobs per year—not nearly enough to accommodate the roughly 13 million people entering India's job market.

India ranks among the world's worst countries at encouraging entrepreneurs. For ease of starting a business, India is 166th out of 183 countries, just ahead of Angola, according to World Bank figures released recently. Only one country, Timor-Leste, is worse at enforcing contracts. . . .

Europe defines recessions the way that we used to define them

GDP declining seems like a pretty broad measure to me. It also seems like a lot more objective measure that can't be played around with for political gain. From the WSJ:

. . . . A rule of thumb, particularly in Europe, defines recession as two straight quarters of declines in gross domestic product. It usually takes a few more weeks for Europe's statistics agency to compile GDP figures than its U.S. counterparts. Third-quarter figures for the euro area won't be released until mid-November; in the U.S., they're already out. Assuming euro-zone GDP contracts in this quarter and the start of 2012, the earliest anyone would know would be when final GDP first-quarter figures are released in late spring.

"Even if it's very clear, it takes three-quarters of a year to confirm there was a broad-based decline in activity," says Harald Uhlig, who heads up the recession-dating committee at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a London-based think tank that is Europe's equivalent of the U.S.'s unofficial recession arbiter, the National Bureau of Economic Research.GDP isn't the last word on recession. The NBER looks at other indicators such as employment and industrial production to gauge whether a broad-based drop in U.S. activity has occurred, as does Mr. Uhlig's committee of eight economists. . . . .

25 biggest US newspapers by daily circulation

A list of the newspaper by sales is available here.

30 percent of employers may soon drop health insurance for their employees

Boy, this is a big surprise. NOT. The fee for going through the government insurance is very small compared to what the insurance actually costs, so why not let the taxpayers pick up the tab. So much for the government estimates on how many people would stay on private insurance. Remember these additional costs will blow the budget apart. From Fox News:

Three years before the new health care law takes full effect, a survey of employers has found 30 percent of them are thinking about dropping coverage, in part because most employees will have an alternative -- government-subsidized insurance exchanges.
McKinsey & Company commissioned a survey of 1,329 private sector employers in February and found that three out of 10 respondents who said their companies offered employer-sponsored health insurance said they would "definitely" or "probably" drop coverage in the years following 2014, the year the Affordable Care Act takes full effect.
"The employer knows there's no reason to provide private, expensive coverage if there's free options available from the government," said John Goodman, of the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas.
Workers in the exchanges making all the way up to more than $90,000 in income would get generous federal subsidies. For lower-wage workers, the government would pay almost the entire cost of insurance.
"For a $12,000-dollar health insurance plan, if you make about $30,000 a year, the government pays about $11,000 of the premium," Goodman said. . . .

Finally, after all these months, a political appointee in the Obama Justice Department admits that he knew about the Gunwalker program

The Obama administration is trying to do what it can to obscure the "Gunwalker" or "Fast & Furious" cases with the "Wide Receiver" case. The “Wider Receiver” program gave direct notice to the Mexican authorities so that they could try to track the guns when they went to the Mexican side of the boarder. "Fast and Furious" made no such attempt to notify the Mexican authorities in anyway. "Fast and Furious" made no serious attempt to actually trace the guns and what is worse they knew that the guns weren't being traced. The Bush officials might have learned that Mexican police weren't up to tracing the guns, but at least they had a plan to try to have the guns followed. "Fast and Furious" gave out the guns, but agents and middle level people complained that the guns weren't being traced. From Fox News:

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer became the first high-ranking official Tuesday to admit that he knew U.S. agents were letting thousands of guns sold in the U.S. fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
But Breuer says the controversial “gun walking” tactics he learned about in April 2010 weren't part of “Operation Fast and Furious,” but rather a previous investigation during the Bush administration called “Wider Receiver.” . . .
Some lawmakers find Breuer’s story implausible because he learned about Wider Receiver at the same time as Fast and Furious, run by the same agents and the same U.S. attorney’s office.
“He was asking questions about Wide Receiver at the very same time Fast and Furious was going on and it was going on in the same division within the Justice Department, so why wouldn’t they be asking questions about Fast and Furious the same way as they were about Wide Receiver?” Grassley told Fox News. . . .
As the Fast and Furious investigation enters its 10th month, the blame game grows more intense. . . .
“Lanny Breuer’s statement said he told the attorney general in January or February so that doesn’t jive,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “So we’ve just got some massive contradictions here.” . . .

Comparing the drop in employment during the past recession to previous ones

A couple of points:
1) The total employment drop falls below the drop during the 1980s recession in the 16th month, which is April 2009.
2) It fell below the 1948 recession in June 2009.
3) It hit bottom in February 2010.

Another company given government money goes bankrupt

Let's see, the government puts up $43 million of the $69 million needed and despite that the company can't raise all the remaining $26 million? Fox News reports:

An energy company that received a $43 million loan guarantee through the same federal program that backed Solyndra has followed the path of the failed solar firm and filed for bankruptcy.
Beacon Power Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. The company, which develops energy storage systems based on what are known as "flywheels," had received the federal guarantee for a 20-megawatt energy storage plant in Stephentown, N.Y., back in August 2010.
The loan was expected to cover the lion's share of the $69 million project, one of several that Beacon was developing across the country.
But the company's CEO said in a statement to the court that all those projects are "capital intensive," and the firm is struggling to attract the additional investment needed to keep everything running. The fact that the company faced being de-listed from the NASDAQ didn't help, he said. . . .

Obama knew that there would be serious legal problems with an insurance mandate

It would be nice to think that the Supreme Court was told about Obama's own doubts about the legality of the insurance mandate. Note that Obama never publicly stated his doubts about the legality of his center piece legislation.

DeParle, in her memo, stressed that Obama should embrace a plan much like that in Massachusetts, driven by the teeth of a mandate, where individuals would be fined for not having health insurance. Obama, never much for the mandate, was concerned about legal challenges to it but was impressed by DeParle’s coverage numbers. . . . . But the mandate, with its various features, was expensive, adding an estimated $287 billion across ten years to the total cost. . . .

Suskind, Ron (2011-09-20). Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President (Kindle Locations 5796-5801). Harper. Kindle Edition.