Forty Below

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While the title of this post may hint of recent 'Polar Vortex' temperature plunges in North America...  This is NOT the subject of the post.
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You may be scratching your head and looking at your computer monitor and asking, "Okay, WHAT then?  Come on man, get to the point...  Darn you Moos!"
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Don't worry, I'll get you there, just walk with me for a couple of minutes.  Be calm and take my hand as we'll going to dark and scary places - but don't be afraid, because there is light up ahead.  
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You have nothing to fear, we will come back out the other end alive.  Slow your breathing, get your scarf, gloves, wooly hat, bundle up (it's -2 degrees currently and there's a 'Polar Vortex' just outside) and follow me as I take you to discover some...
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Scary Statistics
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I've noticed some interesting patterns over the past few years that I wanted to share with you today.  What are those patterns, you ask??? 
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Might it be that people I know seem to look 'older' while I (at least to me) remain frighteningly the 'same' as I did twenty years ago?  No isn't the case, as I wasn't always this 'good-looking'.   
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Is it that you always run out of toilet paper, napkins, and paper towels all in the same week?  No, that's a joke stolen from George Carlin from back when there WERE words you couldn't say on Television.  
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Is it that - there is an eerie consistency in the Universe, one which you'd better understand, lest it run you down?
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Hmm, yup, this might be the one...  
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Come on, it'll be okay, walk with me now.
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Did you know that...
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• 37% Of Americans believe that houses can be haunted
• 36% of Americans believe in UFO's
• 32% of Americans believe that Ghosts (spirits of dead people) can come back in certain places/situations
• 31% of Americans believe that telepathy/communication between minds without using traditional senses
• 29% of Americans believe in Astrology
• 26% of Americans believe in Witches
• 25% of Americans believe in Bigfoot
• 06% of Americans believe US Astronauts never landed on the moon

.T 
Scared yet?  If not, don't worry, you will be soon enough...
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While the above are kind of scary, the following are truly frightening...

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• 37% of Americans now rate the president’s handling of issues related to economic fairness as good or excellent
• 33% of Americans believe that more government intervention can close the 'Income Gap' between rich and poor
• 30% of Americans believe the US is 'heading in the right direction' (Down from 39% one year ago)
• 29% of Americans believe that more government will make society 'more fair'
• 28% of Americans believe that State of the Union speeches are important for setting the nation’s agenda for the next year
• 27% of Americans believe it is better for the president to go around Congress if necessary to accomplish what he feels is important.
• 24% of Americans 'strongly approve' of President Obama's performance
• 21% of Americans believe that Congress has the 'consent of the governed'
• 08% of Americans believe that Congress is doing a good / excellent job

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Sources:  Harris Interactive , Gallup , Rasmussen , and  CNN
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Bottom line is that after uncovering the statistics above, I'm thinking that approximately 40% of Americans should not be allowed to operate heavy equipment, drive, or otherwise 'ever leave their homes'...  
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Additionally, about 24% of 'em ought to be sterilized, just like Al Gore thinks they should.  Who would have thought that Al Gore and I would be thinking...  Alike?  
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(The only difference is, of course, that I'm KIDDING.)
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I DO, however, believe that the White House IS haunted by the cold, dead spirits of FDR, LBJ, and Woodrow Wilson.  I also believe that their ideology continues to wash (post-mortem) upon the shores of this Nation as we endure the conclusion of Jimmy Carter's Third Term.  
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Hey, one last thing before I wrap for the day...  Based upon what Michelle Obama wore to the Hate of the Union Speech the other night? 
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I'm pretty sure that she IS a witch.   I'm thinking I saw a dress 'a lot like this one' in Disney's 'The Great and Powerful Oz'...
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 .T 

Oops, sorry, upon further examination, these two dresses are a bit different, and Michelle must have left her hat propped on her broom at the White House for the evening.
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Only difference is that the Wicked Witch of the West didn't scare me.  Now Michelle, on the other hand, well that's a completely different thing...
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Ratio Tensions and His Undying Love for His Non-Existent Son (Part I)

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Recently the President of the United States sat down with David Remnick for an interview for an upcoming issue of New Yorker Magazine.  An interesting read from many perspectives, but most particularly, because the interviewer spent time with the President who left his guard down.  The writer's story could have been as easily written about a rejected lover, an overthrown dictator, or an ex-Wall Street CEO following the hostile takeover of his corporation by a rival organization.
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There were many comments yesterday about how the President believed that some people do not support him because they are (of course)...  
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Racist.  
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However, quite a few of us have been called Racist since he first began moving his agenda through Congress.  How is THIS news?  If you oppose THIS President, you MUST only be doing it because you are a Racist...  
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I found more interesting content in the remainder of the interview as it provides a view into this President's psyche, as well as that of the guy writing the piece.  Both the President, and the author, are 'tragic figures' of epic proportions...
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Here are a few excerpts from this article:
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On the Sunday afternoon before Thanksgiving, Barack Obama sat in the office cabin of Air Force One wearing a look of heavy-lidded annoyance. The Affordable Care Act, his signature domestic achievement and, for all its limitations, the most ambitious social legislation since the Great Society, half a century ago, was in jeopardy. His approval rating was down to forty per cent—lower than George W. Bush’s in December of 2005, when Bush admitted that the decision to invade Iraq had been based on intelligence that “turned out to be wrong.”   
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[MoosNote:  What a pitiable man our President is.  Oh, poor baby.  He's being compared to GW Bush, how WILL he survive?]
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... 
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Usually, Obama spends Sundays with his family. Now he was headed for a three-day fund-raising trip to Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, rattling the cup in one preposterous mansion after another. The prospect was dispiriting. Obama had already run his last race, and the chances that the Democratic Party will win back the House of Representatives in the 2014 midterm elections are slight. The Democrats could, in fact, lose the Senate. 
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[MoosNote:  "Rattling the cup in on preposterous mansion after another"?  Seriously?  This poor, broken President, 'dispirited' by doing the thing he's been doing for his entire adult life - Organizing to raise money to push his Socialist Agenda forward?  This is where this guy LIVES.]  
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....
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Obama spent his flight time in the private quarters in the nose of the plane, in his office compartment, or in a conference room. At one point on the trip from Andrews Air Force Base to Seattle, I was invited up front for a conversation. Obama was sitting at his desk watching the Miami Dolphins–Carolina Panthers game. 
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Slender as a switch, he wore a white shirt and dark slacks; a flight jacket was slung over his high-backed leather chair. As we talked, mainly about the Middle East, his eyes wandered to the game. Reports of multiple concussions and retired players with early-onset dementia had been in the news all year, and so, before I left, I asked if he didn’t feel at all ambivalent about following the sport. He didn’t.
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[MoosNote:  "Slender as a switch" is an interesting choice of wording to describe the President, don't you think?  Might he be "Slender as a switch" that would have been used to punish his enslaved ancestors?  Sheesh, what's with all the metaphors when the author and Obama get together?  And then his "Eyes wander to the game" as if he's some lonely, cataract-afflicted senior citizen in a home looking wantingly to the atrium door for his daughter Sasha to come visit with news of her far-away family as he waits - alone...]



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“I would not let my son play pro football,” he conceded. “But, I mean, you wrote a lot about boxing, right? We’re sort of in the same realm.”
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[MoosNote:  First if he HAD a son 'he would look like Trayvon'.  NOW, if he had a son 'he would look like Trayvon' and he would not let his non-existent son play football?  At this point I feel the need to say that if I had a daughter she would look like Kirsten Powers and I would not let her be a Democrat.  I also would be 20 pounds lighter and my name would be Steve...  Just in case anyone is wondering - not that anyone IS wondering about crap which does not exist outside of Air Force One.]  
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The Miami defense was taking on a Keystone Kops quality, and Obama, who had lost hope on a Bears contest, was starting to lose interest in the Dolphins. “At this point, there’s a little bit of caveat emptor,” he went on. “These guys, they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re buying into. It is no longer a secret. It’s sort of the feeling I have about smokers, you know?”


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Obama chewed furtively on a piece of Nicorette. His carriage and the cadence of his conversation are usually so measured that I was thrown by the lingering habit, the trace of indiscipline. “I’m not a purist,” he said.
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[MoosNote:  So the President has a 'feeling about smokers'?  He should HUG smokers as they pay a huge percentage of their miserable incomes towards taxes - a thing which the President just can't seem to get enough of - taking money from people who can ill-afford to part with it.]
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...

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When Obama leaves the White House, on January 20, 2017, he will write a memoir. “Now, that’s a slam dunk,” the former Obama adviser David Axelrod told me. Andrew Wylie, a leading literary agent, said he thought that publishers would pay between seventeen and twenty million dollars for the book—the most ever for a work of nonfiction—and around twelve million for Michelle Obama’s memoirs. (The First Lady has already started work on hers.)
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[MoosNote:  Super!  His-and-her Presidential coffee table books to the tune of about $30 Million?  I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people will continue to 'buy his crap' out of office as they continue to 'buy his crap' while he's in office.]

....


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“The conventional wisdom is that a President’s second term is a matter of minimizing the damage and playing defense rather than playing offense,” Obama said in one of our conversations on the trip and at the White House. “But, as I’ve reminded my team, the day after I was inaugurated for a second term, we’re in charge of the largest organization on earth, and our capacity to do some good, both domestically and around the world, is unsurpassed, even if nobody is paying attention.”
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[MoosNote:  President Obama, you are disliked more than GW Bush was at this point precisely BECAUSE more people are paying attention to your actions.  And the reason they now understand who you are is because of 'what you have done' to their health care, their economy, and their collective future.  Yeah, YOU just wish that so many Americans were NOT paying attention to you as of late.  Oh, and the other thing, you're not running a business 'organization' you are supposed to be running a Nation - somewhere, I believe, you think you are still running "Organizing for America" which may be one of the reasons you continue to fail in your mission as POTUS.  While it's comforting for you to think of the United States of America as a not-for-profit political action committee, it gives us no comfort at all that you do not 'fundamentally understand' what your job as President is...]

More...  Tomorrow



      

Pump It Up

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I've been on tenterhooks, ending in dirty looks
List'ning to the Muzak, thinking 'bout this 'n' that
She said, "That's that, I don't wanna chitter chat"
Turn it down a little bit or turn it down flat
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.Pump it up when you don't really need it
Pump it up until you can feel it
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.Down in the pleasure center, hell bent or heaven sent
listen to the propaganda, listen to the latest slander
There's nothing underhand that she wouldn't understand
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.Pump it up until you can feel it
Pump it up when you don't really need it

..

Elvis Costello - Pump It Up

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The Freebeacon.com's, January 13, 2014 Headline reads:
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Taxpayers Paid Nearly $175M for Penis Pumps Between 2006 and 2011

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Hmm, should I go there?  

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Sure, why not...

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Yes, I've thought long and hard about what to do with this one.  As you can imagine, I have an aversion to using the word 'penis' in a post as it may attract the 'wrong sort' of readership online.  Especially in a post where I'll necessarily need to use the word 'penis' to convey the news reported recently by the alert folks at the Washington Free Beacon online.  

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In keeping with existing MoosRoom standards, I will replace the offending 'p' word with the word, 'winky' as to not offend, (or 'overly attract') anyone here.  So whenever the word 'winky' appears in the post below, please understand that I am saying PENIS without actually, um, you know, saying the word, 'penis'.  

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This will be the last time that I will type the word 'penis' in this post. 

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From the article referenced above:  Taxpayers paid nearly $175 million for vacuum erection systems (VES), commonly known as “penis pumps,” from 2006 to 2011, according to an inspector general report released on Monday.
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The federal government paid more than double the retail price for VES, the Department of Health and Human Services IG found. Medicare prices for the systems, the report said, “remain grossly excessive compared with the amounts that non-Medicare payers pay.” 
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[Translation:  If you purchased your own 'Winky Pump' it would have cost you approximately HALF of what Medicaid paid for it on your behalf.  Keep reading, it's coming...

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.“The fact that taxpayers have spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars over the past decade on penis pumps via Medicare is obscene and insulting – even more so when you consider that this is an arena of Medicare expenditures rife with fraud and where the government doesn’t even bother to assess medical necessity,” said Ben Domenech, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute.

“This is a perfect example of what happens when government becomes the be all and end all of human existence – a system where everyone has a right to a taxpayer-funded penis pump.”

Vacuum erection systems, which are used to treat impotence, are covered by Medicare Part B under its Durable Medical Equipment, Prosthetics, Orthotics, and Supplies (DMEPOS) competitive bidding program.
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.Medicare payments for VES have swelled [MoosNote:  Did they HAVE to use the word 'swelled' - really?] in recent years. The Department of Health and Human Services paid $20.6 million for 61,589 claims in 2006. It paid $38.6 million for 103,448 claims in 2011.

.Congress instructed the Government Accountability Office to examine the issue. It mostly concurred in 2000 with CMS’s recommendations for a revised fee schedule. HHS issued regulations granting CMS the authority to adjust the pay schedule, but the agency never actually did so.

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[MoosNote:  So Congress ordered the GAO to look into the over-billing for 'Winky Pumps' (and presumably other 'stuff' they were over-paying for) and the HHS told the CMS (Center for Medicaid & Medicare) that they could adjust their payment schedule, but the CMS...  Never did?  Who saw THIS coming???  This is the problem with Federally-sponsored Acronyms, they 'never, ever' take responsibility for themselves as no one has their name directly associated with them - for example do you ever hear of 'Sebelius's HHS'?  I did find an Organization Chart for the CMS which has NO EMPLOYEE NAMES on it at all, it posts merely job titles...  Good luck finding out who's spending your winky-enhancement dollars there.]

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Continuing from the article found at Washington Free Beacon Online:

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Most VES, the IG noted, are purchased through mail-order services online, over the phone, or by mail. The authors examined retail prices through Google and Yahoo! search results.
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“Medicare currently pays suppliers more than twice as much for VES as the Department of Veterans Affairs and consumers over the Internet pay for these types of devices,” the IG found.

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[MoosNote:  Ah, yes, the Federally-sanctioned Winky Enhancement costs more, but it probably also has Federally-mandated 'Safety Devices' built into them such as the 'Safety harness', 'Auto Eject Air Bag', 'Quick Winky Release Mechanism', and are powered by Green Energy (which requires you to power it with your own 'Methane'.  Go ahead, imagine THIS for a moment...  Ewwwww.)

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By exercising that authority and limiting Medicare payments for VES, the IG found, CMS could save taxpayers millions. For the six years examined in the report, a pay schedule on par with standard consumer prices would have saved Medicare, on average, $14.4 million per year.     

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Sure, I realize that when talking about the Federal Government $14.4 MILLION per year is 'chump change' but this is the number that a SINGULAR DEPARTMENT over-spent for a SINGLE PRODUCT on average, per year for six YEARS.  AND, that product, is used for a singular purpose.  That purpose?  Well, you know...

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If you actually don't know, here's a visual aid for you (just in case you're not an CMS employee who tosses these out as freely as Tootsie Rolls at your local Planet Fitness or condoms a Planned Parenthood Singles Weekend...)
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Your tax dollars at work (and play)

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So once again we have a story of wasteful spending by the people who are now charged with running ALL of your health care.  Big whoop - is anyone surprised by this?  
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However, I believe there may be a story which has been overlooked by the folks at the Washington Free Beacon.  An important story which can possibly impact about 51% of the U.S. Population!
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I am a little concerned that in funding a VES for men that we are forgetting...  The needs of women of America!
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After all, ObamaCare now pays for their birth control, wellness visits, abortions, and toe nail fungus removal, so why shouldn't the Federal Government pay for their 'arousal deficits' just as the CMS does for men?  Hmm???  And if you're going to 'help a guy out', why wouldn't you do the same for his spouse, girl friend, or booty call partner?
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I am sooooooo tired of the Federal Government being so one-sided in their support of MEN's 'needs'!  If they supply a winky enhancement device for a man, why not subsidize the female impotency equivalent?  I'm not exactly sure what this particular machine would look like, but how come the President of the United States, while speaking about 'Inequality' (during the tenure of his own Administration) fails to mention the fact that women are 'pretty-much-on-their-own' when it comes to arousing...  Themselves?  
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A guy, compared to a women, gets a Federally-subsidized VES, a couple of AA batteries, free Cinemax on cable, a few moments alone and he's able to take care of his personal (and 'impotent') business.  
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Viola!  Boom.  Done.
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Why is it always about the man?  Why?  Why?!?!?!
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Let me ask you this:  Why do President Obama and Kathleen Sebelius NOT want women to be happy too?  
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I want to know!  More importantly, I believe that America NEEDS to know!
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I will be contacting Kirsten Gillibrand's office to find out WHY she supports an Administration which wants women to be subservient to men.  
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And, as an aside, I need to find out why Gillibrand is beginning to look SO MUCH like Hillary Clinton?
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Of all the 'scary things' in the post above, this I fear, will be the one causing me to lose the most sleep this evening...
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6.7% Unemployment!!!

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday that Unemployment in the United States fell to...  6.7%!!!
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Yes, join with me now as I / we bask in the warming glow yet another of the Obama Administration's Economic Recovery Successes!!!
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Feeling better?  
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Super

Man

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The only problem is that while 'Numbers do not lie', people sometimes DO.  
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And a "government of the people, by the people, for the people" pretty much has 'people' written all over it.  Particularly when 'some people' are in charge.
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DISCLAIMER:  If you've been reading my scribbles for a while you know that I an NOT found of Math.  
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Why?  
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Mostly because Math requires rules, strict compliance of those rules, and mostly because Math does not typically lend itself to humor.
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The operative word in the prior paragraph, as you may have guessed (since it's in bold and italicized), is 'typically'.  
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When Math is used by the Federal Government to describe anything, 'Math' is in need of a shave.  Government Math tends to get 'Fuzzy' when caressed by the gentle hands of the friendly folks at the BLS (the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics)...
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DISCLAIMER ENDS...
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The Internet, TV, and Newspaper headline from Friday's BLS release is, "Unemployment Falls to 6.7%!"
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But digging down a bit below the surface we find that, unlike the Common Core Mathematical illustration above, not all numbers are 'equal'.  
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WARNING - BASIC MATH FOLLOWS!
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Buttercup and Bossie own a dairy farm called B & B Dairy.  They employ 98 other cows to make a product which we'll hypothetically call...  Milk.
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With 100 cows on staff, B & B Dairy has all the cows they need to make their product.  Since they need 100 cows to be at full production, they are also at 'full employment'.
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Then something terrible happens, some people buying B & B's milk turn out to be...  
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Lactose Intolerant!!! 
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With demand for milk falling, Buttercup calls a meeting with Bossie and they decide that they need to scale down production to meet the needs of the diminished milk market.  
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Ten cows get the proverbial (and unfortunately, literal) axe, and 'full employment' at the B & B Dairy is now set at '90' cows.  A REAL 10% reduction in employment, but if you ask the cows running the place, things are going 'just great' and they are still running with employment set at 'FULL' based upon the 'New Normal' Employment level.
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Two months later a new competitor enters the market making 'Milk' from Soy.  Why?  I have no idea as it sounds disgusting to ME, but there are some folks out there who are now Lactose Intolerant and feeling that they need to save the Earth from needless Methane gases which occur as a by-product of cows eating, digesting, and then, 'tooting' happily in the fields.
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NOTE TO SELF:  We'll need to tax this Methane gas production to punish dairy farmers for supporting their families  

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SECOND NOTE TO SELF:  Too late, someone already thought of it 
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Buttercup tries to schedule a meeting with Bossie, but Bossie is in Hawaii for most of December and she's temporarily unavailable during this, her 'umpteenth working vacation of 2013'.  
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Instead of meeting face to face, Buttercup decides to 'Skype' Bossie via that 'Internet thing' and they hold an emergency conference and decide that they need to reduce milk production once again.  They believe that they will only need the production of 75 cows to meet the needs of the remaining 'milk-drinkers' in their market.  
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Two weeks later, fifteen additional cows are sent to the "White Castle in the sky" and full employment for B & B Dairy now sits at 75 'head'.
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TWO COW TALES:
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WORKING COW PERSPECTIVE - If you're a working cow, you can accurately state that 25% of your friends and co-cows were 'laid off', 'butchered', or otherwise have involuntarily 'moo-ved on'.  You also probably spend a lot more of your day looking back over your shoulder(s) than you used to.  
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You know that employment at your dairy has been reduced from 100% to 75%.  
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Why?  Because even basic cows can do basic Math.  
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If, however, you are one of the 25% of cows 'let go' by B& B, you pretty much don't think nothin' at all because you're at 165 degrees resting between a couple of hunks of bread, adorned with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, special sauce and American cheese (ironically made by the dairy 'just up the street').
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DAIRY OWNER PERSPECTIVE - Buttercup and Bossie are still doing 'just fine'.  The B & B Dairy is still at full employment because they 'wrote off' 25 cows they no longer felt were 'necessary' for the greater good of the Dairy.  
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Yes, revenue is down due to a drop off in Milk sales, but they've also reduced their expenses since they have to purchase less hay for the other workers in the yard.  They've also discovered that White Castle really 'likes' getting its hands on excess un-necessary staff so they're contemplating additional 'Reductions in Force' next quarter, pending the results of their test marketing of a new Almond Milk product they're working on.  

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They don't really understand why anyone would drink it, but they've come to accept that humans are pretty much 'nuts' and will race to embrace anything new, and environmentally-friendly, at least until they realize that it tastes more like WD40 than it does... 'milk'.       
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Yeah, sure, 25 percent of their workforce is gone, but as far as they are concerned, Buttercup and Bossie's Dairy is at 100% employment.
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The End...
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Epilogue 
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The BLS, much like these Evil Capitalist Cows above, work their Unemployment Numbers similar to how Buttercup and Bossie do.  The BLS estimates (based upon a 'random sample' of 60,000 households) the number of people working in the labor force.  They also (think B & B Dairy's 'White Castle' example) eliminate workers from the work force who they feel have stopped looking for...  work.
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These workers simply CEASE TO EXIST from the herd.  They are no longer counted.

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Why is this a big deal?

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Because in order to get to the reduced unemployment rate of 6.7% the Bureau of Labor Statistics ERASED 5 workers for EVERY 1 worker finding a job in December.  
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In 'real numbers' this means that while 74,000 jobs were CREATED in December of 2013, during the same period, 347,000 workers LEFT THE WORKFORCE (you know, to the...  White Castle). 
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Instead of referring to our current unemployment rate as a by-product of the "Obama Recovery", perhaps we use the B & B Dairy analogy above and should begin referring to it as the "President Obama's White Castle Recovery Plan"?
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You should be feeling a sense of Deja' Moo right now

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Oh, and speaking of Recoveries, I found this spiffy little graph that plots employment recoveries of each 'Post World War II Recession'.   It charts the length, depth, and strength of employment recovery following each Recession over the past 50+ years..
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Yes, you are correct in assuming that the 'deeper, steeper, and longer' RED Recession Employment Recovery line DOES in fact belong to President Obama and his 'employment stimulating policies' of the past five years.  
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Worse yet, this unemployment calculation INCLUDES the omission of almost 92 MILLION American Workers who are no longer 'counted' as the BLS has sent them off to the White Castle for 'processing'.  
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Even worser than worse (yeah, I know, not grammatically correct, but just go with it) is the fact that when you add back in the 'Out of the Workforce' workers (White Castle) the REAL unemployment rate surpasses 13 percent, or about TWICE the 'Advertised Rate' of the mainstream Employment Recovery reporting.
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Is there more to this saga?
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Yes, there is, but it must be left for tomorrow, I have cud to chew and much more to do...

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Later.
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