Let Them Eat Steak!

For those of you who don't watch Jon Stewart, you should start.  He seems to be one of the few who is telling it like it is.  In 9 minutes he made me laugh about the media, Occupy Wall Street, and Congress.  The last couple minutes are really funny, so watch the whole thing.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Non-Farm Payrolls jump to 103,000 for September

So much for the recession? September NFP prints at 103,000 on expectations of 60,000, with August revised to 57,000 from that roulette busting double zero. The unemployment rate held at 9.1 percent, as expected. From the report: "The increase in employment partially reflected the return to payrolls of about 45,000 telecommunications workers who had been on strike in August. In September, job gainsoccurred in professional and business services, health care, and construction. Government employment continued to trend down." Average hourly earnings also came in line with expectations at 0.2%, with the previous revised from -0.1%, to -0.2%. Yet not all is good: manufacturing jobs declined by 13K on expectations of an unchanged number. And, oh yes, real unemployment, U6, printed up from 16.2% to 16.5%, the highest since December 2010.
U6:


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You think it's hard selling cars these days?

Used Car Dealer Becomes Horse Trader


PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (CBS Tampa)  With the economy in troubled times car dealers are having to adjust their way of doing business, including trade-ins.
Park Auto Mall Preowned Car And Truck Superstore in Pinellas Park is taking car trade-ins to the next level in today’s cash poor times.

When this used car dealership says “Whether it rolls, floats or flies we will take it on trade,” they can now can add anything that gallops to the phrase.
Recently a woman with no cash came to Park Auto Mall needing a used van for her large family. The only thing of value she had to trade was a horse. The woman and her family now have a van and the horse has new owners thanks to the unique and non-conventional way Park Auto Mall sells used cars.
When they say they will make a trade with anything of value they not only mean it, they prove it. The growing list of items that they have taken in place of cash for a trade include a mobile home, signed baseballs, artwork, an airplane, jewelry and now most recently a horse.

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Who wants to help pay for a Harry Reid monument.  Too late, we already are...

Taxpayers to Pay for Reid Monument

You might be surprised to hear there is a Harry Reid Research and Technology Park. You won't be surprised to learn that U.S. taxpayers are funding part of it.
This monument to the Senate majority leader was not subsidized through some earmark Reid stuck in an appropriations bill. The $2 million grant came through a little-known part of the Commerce Department known as the Economic Development Administration. As Republicans assert that this time they are serious about cutting spending, killing a corporate welfare agency and pork machine like the EDA would be a great start.
Freshman Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., has introduced the EDA Elimination Act of 2011. In the upper chamber, conservative Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., proposed a similar measure. While EDA is relatively small and nearly unknown, Pompeo sees this as a crucial fight. He calls the EDA "pure redistribution" and the prime example of how federal involvement in the economy allocates wealth "by political processes rather than market processes."
If you've read about absurd congressional earmarks, the list of EDA grants will be dispiritingly familiar. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is building a $52 million convention center, with the EDA covering most of the cost. EDA paid $2 million to subsidize a "culinary amphitheater" and wine tasting room in Richland, Wash. Essar Steel Minnesota is building a new plant, and the EDA is footing $1.4 million of the $1.6 billion tab.
The EDA is not a "social" agency. It's not about subsidizing the arts, feeding the hungry, promoting diversity or caring for the poor. It is purportedly about increasing economic prosperity. While other aspects of the Great Society agenda (under which Lyndon Johnson created the EDA) are openly about sacrificing wealth for helping the less fortunate, this agency claims to do the same thing that the free market does: increase society's wealth.
Pompeo is right: Abolishing the EDA is an excellent test of whether Republicans actually believe what they say they believe.
Nearly every Republican voted against President Obama's stimulus in 2009, arguing that the deficit was too high, that government shouldn't be in the game of picking winners and losers, and that Washington doesn't create jobs. But the EDA adds to the deficit, picks winners and losers, and purports to create jobs. If Republicans vote to continue the EDA, they flaunt their hyprocrisy to critics, who charged in 2009 that GOP opposition to the stimulus was pure politics.
Is the Republican outrage over the subsidization and bankruptcy of solar company Solyndra anything more than political theater? If the Solyndra sound and fury signify any actual principle, the GOP would also kill the EDA.

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I hope everyone has a great weekend.  GO HOGS - BEAT AUBURN!!!