It was only appropriate that on a day in which our chart of the day confirmed that the US consumer is getting increasingly more broke, we got an update of Personal Income and Personal Spending, both of which missed expectations and declined substantially. October income printed at 0.0%, down from 0.4% in September, and below expectations of 0.2%, while spending plunged from 0.8% all the way into negative territory at -0.2%, missing expectations of an unchanged print. Counterintuitively, the spin is that this miss was due to Sandy, when this makesabsolutely zero sense: as a reminder Sandy only hit in the last 4 days of October, which means it had no time to impact income, and if anything it prompted an increase in spending as consumers stockpiled ahead of the landfall. But that’s why they call it spin. Of course, none of this should come as a surprise: the implied savings rate in September hit a multi-year low of 3.3%, which means going forward the blend of spending and savings will be unpleasant for stocks as consumers have no choice but to rebuild savings once more. And finally, the most disturbing metric, and one which is a red flashing light for all those predicting yet another economic renaissance in 2013, is that real Disposable Income declined by 0.1%: the third decrease in 3 months, confirming that on an inflation adjusted basis the consumer peaked in the summer, and it is all downhill from here.

Source

Rightful Law is a society’s definition of “what constitutes an offense, against which an individual or group may defend itself .”   Rightful Liberty is everything which is not a violation of Rightful Law.

“The Law” in every rightful sense, does not directly protect one individual from another, nor does it directly protect any individual or group from another group, nor from the government which administers said law.  Any assertion to the contrary is pure hubris.  Even more ridiculous is the proposition, so popular today, that “The Law” can or should protect an individual or group from its own ignorance, cupidity, carelessness, or irresponsibility.

“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.”  –  John Locke

Our founding fathers did not give us a body of laws with a promise to protect us from anything.  “The Law” was never intended to be more complex than the average man could comprehend, nor was it ever intended to be burdensome upon any man of sound reason.  Of a certainty, they did not intend “The Law” to be a contrivance by which one class of people could wring social power and/or financial gains from the rest of society.

Continue reading →

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gODZzSOelss#!

I want to thank Ann Barnhardt for this link.

David DeGerolamo

This is why the American Spirit must survive, and is the inescapable reason why it WILL prevail.

A New York City police officer is photographed giving boots to a homeless man on Nov. 14. (NYPD/Facebook)

A photo of a New York City police officer kneeling down to give a barefoot homeless man in Times Square a pair of boots on a cold November night is melting even the iciest New Yorkers’ hearts online.

On Nov. 14, NYPD officer Lawrence DePrimo, who was on counterterrorism duty in Times Square, saw the older homeless man without shoes sitting on 42nd Street. DePrimo, 25, left and then returned with a pair of $100 boots he bought at a nearby Skechers store.

“It was freezing out, and you could see the blisters on the man’s feet,” DePrimo, a three-year veteran of the department who lives with his parents on Long Island, told the New York Times. “I had two pairs of socks, and I was still  cold.”

Continue reading →