So Newsbusters reports that Fox's Neil Cavuto "Rejects ABC's Economic Pessimism."

Coupla points:

It's not ABC News that is pessimistic. They take a poll. The results can be found here. I assume, though I can't say for sure, that they use standard, appropriate polling methodology. And what the respondents are telling ABC News pollsters is that the economy sucks:

Positive views of the national economy didn’t budge from last week’s 10 percent, matching the 15-year low hit in late May. That’s 30 points below the long-term average and only 3 points from the all-time low of 7 percent in late 1991 and early 1992. It’s been at or below 15 percent for 17 straight weeks, the longest run since 1992.

But despite what respondents are telling ABC, Neil maintains -- like Phil Gramm before him -- that this is all a mental recession:

If people have a feeling that things are so miserable, why are they buying $300, $400 IPhones with very expensive contracts. Why are they spending so much at the movie theaters? Why are they still going out in record numbers to restaurants?

1) The FCC reports that Americans are now spending almost as much on wireless service (43%) as they are on wireline (57%). (Those numbers are as of 2005, and are probably even closer now.) Ten years earlier -- in 1995 -- wireless represent 13% of telephone service expenses and wireline was 87%. There are now more wireless subscribers (65.6) per 100 population than there are wireline (60.1, down from a peak of 67.9 in 2000). So, to the extent that wireless is replacing wireline -- and it is -- people are going to make whatever initial investment they need to make to ensure they get quality hardware and reliable service.

2) False. Spending in Motion Picture Theaters peaked in last year's third quarter (Line 246).

3) Wrong again. Restaurant sales peaked some time ago, declined, and have been flat-lining ever since.

Thanks for playing, Neil.

Bonus question: When did NY get its 212 area code designation? Answer below the fold.

Buh-bye, Chad.

The Jets have pulled off one of the most stunning trades in their history, acquiring Brett Favre from the Packers late Wednesday night. The Jets outbid the Bucs for the 38-year-old Favre, whose arrival means the departure of 32-year-old Chad Pennington.

The story was first reported by FoxSports.com and confirmed by the Jets shortly after midnight.

The Jets were said to have made a better offer than the Bucs earlier in the day. It is believed the Jets traded a fourth-round pick in 2009, although the pick could go as high as second-rounder based on the team's performance.

Did the Knicks' management team (the one that screwed up the NYK franchise by getting big-name, past-their prime players) take over the Jets when I wasn't looking or something?

Straight Talk Express takes out minivan. Video at the link.

Wow, that campaign has a real grasp of this new-fangled technology stuff.

Spread John McCain's official talking points around the Web -- and you could win valuable prizes!

That, in essence, is the McCain campaign's pitch to supporters to join its new online effort...

People who sign up for McCain's program receive reward points each time they place a favorable comment on one of the listed Web sites (subject to verification by McCain's webmasters). The points can be traded for prizes, such as books autographed by McCain, preferred seating at campaign events, even a ride with the candidate on his bus, known as the Straight Talk Express, according to campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.

In case you're interested, here's the list of blogs they want you to troll contribute positive McCain comments to:

ColoradoPols, Crooks and Liars, DailyKos, MyDD, Think Progress, 24th State, A Bama Blog, Ace of Spades HQ*, Alaska State Politics, Anchor Rising, Ankle Biting Pundits*, Arena of Ideas*, Bates Line, Bearing Drift, Bearing Drift Ohio, Bill Hobbs, Blackfive*, Bluey Blog, Boots and Sabers, California Conservative*, Claremont Conservative*, Club for Growth*, ConservaBlogs*, Elephants in the Blue Grass*, Flashpoint Blog, Freedom Dogs, Frugal Hoosiers, Grassroots PA, Hot Air*, Hugh Hewitt (Townhall)*, Human Events*, IlliniPundit, JeffEmanuel.net, Katy's Conservative Corner*, Keeler Political Report, Little Green Footballs*, Make Blue Red*, Mason Conservative*, Michelle Malkin*, Michigan Conservative Dossier*, Montana Headlines, Mount Virtus, NC Republican Roundtable*, NW Republican*, Okie Campaigns, On Life and Lybberty, Oregon Commentator, Patrick Ruffini*, Power Line Blog*, Red Jersey*, Red Mass Group*, Red State*, Residual Forces, Riehl World View, Right Angle Blog*, Right Michigan*, Right Wing News*, Save the GOP*, Say Anything Blog, Shaun Kenney, Stay Red Kansas*, The American Mind*, The American Scene, The Corner*, The Right Track*, The Volokh Conspiracy*, ThinkRight Arizona*, Townhall.com Blog*, Urban Elephants*, Victory Caucus*, Virginia Virtucon, Voluntarily Conservative*, Weapons of Mass Discussion, Western Word, Wizbang Blog*, Wizblog, Delaware Politics, EnlightenNJ, Politico*, The Fix - Washington PostBizzy Blog, Granite Grok, Hedgehog Report, Instapundit*, KY Progress, Lincoln Walks At Midnight, Mario Burgos, Media Lizzy, Pajamas Media*, Peach Pundit*, Sound Politics, Tennessee Politics Blog, The Capitol Fax blog, Y'All Politics

Two points...

First, my disappointment is immeasurable that B3 is not on the list.

Second, at least 43 of the above listed blogs (I marked them with asterisks) are conservative blogs. What the fuck does it say about McCain's candidacy if they have to offer up nifty prizes in order for people to troll post positive comments about McCain on the blogs that are supposed to be supporting him?

And I won't even mention that many of those conservative blogs (The Corner, for one) don't even allow comments. Can't anybody on McCain's team play this game?

As we find ourselves on the eve of the Olympics Opening Ceremonies, I hope you'll indulge me in venting on a pet peeve of mine. The soccer competition has gotten underway already, and I just finished watching a very entertaining Argentina-Ivory Coast match. Unfortunately, JP Dellacamera was calling the play by play, and as usual, he drove me nuts, just as he did yesterday in the US Women's opening match. Now JP is very competent in calling out the action and the names of the players involved, which seems no small feat when he's watching on a monitor in NYC rather than at the venue. But the man is utterly obsessed with the clock in the game. He always is, in every damn game he calls. And since I've got nothing better to do this morning, I recorded exactly the depth of his mania this morning:

"We're in the 7th minute...the 17th minute...the 20th minute...the 22nd minute...the 24th minute...the 29th minute...the 35th minute...the 36th minute...the 38th minute [this was the very first thing he said after a goal had been waved off--no explanation, just the time]...the 39th minute...the 40th minute...the 49th minute...the 53rd minute...the 56th minute...the 56th minute [yes! he actually announced the same minute twice within 60 seconds]...the 62nd minute...the 67th minute...the 70th minute...the 73rd minute...the 75th minute...the 76th minute...the 80th minute...the 84th minute...the 2nd minute of stoppage time...the third minute of stoppage time...game over!"

Lordy Lordy, are his producers afraid to tell him about this ridiculous tic? Won't his friends tell him? Hey JP, we've got a clock running at the top of our screens too, since we're watching the exact same feed as you are! How can JP stand to watch someone else call a game, like the Italy-Honduras one that's on now--it's more than halfway through the first half, and no one has mentioned the damn time yet!

So there you have it, friends, the sort of trenchant sports-analysis you've come to expect from B3...

If you didn't buy our story on the significance of the long-term unemployed that ran last Saturday, perhaps you'll believe it when it comes from the research department of a Wall St. firm (two days later, I might add):

We continue to assess this metric from the jobs report – Unemployed > 15 weeks, which is an extremely reliable recession indicator: Since it bottomed in December 2006 at 2.094 million, it has since soared 49% to 3.118 million). On average, over the past 10 recessions, a 49% increase from the trough has been consistent with in economy exactly seven months into recession which, again, would pin the start of this recession in the December - January time frame (as if any more evidence were needed).

Hey, Stranger, I think we should open our own Research Dept., and you can put me on the payroll for some of those big Wall St. bucks, 'kay?

I guess my next project should be to figure out what this metric tells us with regard to when recessions end, since I don't think it's beginning is any longer in doubt.

It's a fact of life in political campaigns that someone - usually a low-level staffer or an advisor who lets his emotions get the better of him - ends up going off-message. Happens all the time.

But I think it's pretty big news when the candidate himself wanders off the reservation.

Last week in St. Louis, Obama told an audience that steps such as inflating tires to the correct levels could make a difference when it comes to conserving fuel.

Cue gleeful mockery from McCain. Obama was naive, inexperienced and not talking straight to the American people about energy, he said.

His campaign went further, distributing to reporters tire gauges engraved with the words “Obama’s energy plan.”

Predictably, Obama hit back calling McCain’s mockery “ignorant,” arguing his plans were being misrepresented and saying that experts backed his call over tire pressure. Equally predictably, McCain’s camp hit back.

The surprise came during a telephone town hall meeting McCain held on Tuesday with voters in Pennsylvania.

“Obama said a couple of days ago says we all should inflate our tires. I don’t disagree with that. The American Automobile Association strongly recommends it,” McCain said.

Is it just me, or is it starting to look like McCain isn't controlling his own campaign any more?

Yeesh. Talk about out of touch...

Sen. John McCain, R-Az., perhaps unknowingly, volunteered his wife for a beauty pageant on Monday that often features contestants topless -- and, occasionally, without any decency -- at the Sturgis, South Dakota, motorcycle rally.

"I was looking at the Sturgis schedule, and noticed that you had a beauty pageant, so I encouraged Cindy to compete," McCain told an audience at the rally. "I told her with a little luck, she could be the only woman to serve as both the First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip."

The audience, clearly better versed in the details of the pageant, cheered and whistled their approval.

Not sure which bothers me worse - McCain encouraging Maverick Barbie to enter a topless contest, or the mental picture of Cindy actually doing it.

Good to see Paris has a sense of humor about this whole celebrity thing.

(Apparently, Funny Or Die's embed code doesn't work here. So click the link, bitches.)

I finally got round to putting the SiteMeter code at the bottom of the page, so now we'll be able to tell if people are talking about us again.

[Invictus hereby asks our Corporate Secretary to file this post under "Better Late Than Never." Thanks, Stranger, you know I've been missing it.]

Finally, someone comes right out and says it.



Nothin' but net.

Our own President Not-Obama got his usual overseas reaction when he arrived in South Korea today. That's to say, while a welcoming crowd was arranged, there were plenty of other folks who were none too happy. And what happened to them leaves me scratching my head:

As evening approached, an estimated 20,000 anti-Bush protesters gathered nearby. Police turned water cannons on them as they tried to move onto the main central downtown boulevard, telling the crowd that the liquid contained markers to tag them so they could be identified later.

Water with special "markers"? Has anyone heard of such a thing? Will the police next go door to door with special fluorescent lights to hunt down these people? Maybe I'm just way behind in my 1984-style police state technology, but this sounds more like the people at public swimming pools who tell kids if they pee in the pool, the water will turn colors to identify them. Or is someone going to tell me that's really true too? Is it? Is it?

Update: In the comments, reader thurston tipped me off to a story that leads to a UK company called Smar*censored*er. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but this sounds interesting. From one of their "success stories" in catching some burglars:

The group made a decisive error when they attempted a second robbery at Jeremy France jewellers in Winchester in December 2006, as the store had opted to install a Smar*censored*er spray system following the first attack. Upon entering the store, the Smar*censored*er system was activated, spraying the offenders in a forensic liquid, which contained a DNA-style code linking the offenders with the crime scene.

Five months after the aborted robbery, Police carried out a series of raids on separate addresses in the Birmingham area. All premises were fully searched and a handgun was recovered. Upon inspection under a UV light, traces of Smar*censored*er were clearly visible and forensic analysis of the Smar*censored*er traced the gun back to the Winchester robbery.

So thurston's right that something like this is possible. Looking at the price list for individuals, it seems a little hard to imagine the police shooting this stuff out of water cannons, but maybe my imagination is just limited. Think I'll stay out of public pools in the future too, just in case.

ALSO Ha ha. I guess we can't use a compound name of Smart+Water here--seems that last "t" followed by the first 3 letters for H2O is Right OUT! (that's why I couldn't read your link, thurston. So to get the above link to work, you'll have to replace the *censored* that appears in the address bar with one of George Carlin's original 7 dirty words....

Top Story

Judge on Rove’s citizen arrest: ‘It’s about time.’ (Think Progress) [Mona] Shaw was the first called before Polk County Fifth Judicial District Associate Judge William Price. After entering her plea, the judge asked Shaw, “[Maam], what were you doing at the Wakonda Country Club?” “I was attempting to make a citizen’s arrest of Karl Rove, your honor,” Shaw answered. “Well,” the judge looked up and said, “it’s about time.”

Wrapped in the Flag

For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

This just went up over at TPM Election Central.

Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave the maximum of $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Nine of these contributions, seven from Hess executives and two from members of the Hess family, came on the same day, June 24th, the records show. The total collected in the wake of McCain's reversal for the fund, called McCain Victory 2008, from Hess execs and family is $285,000.

This is a campaign ad waiting to be made, and if Obama's guys can get it done quickly enough it will fit right in to this week's energy theme.

Nail Grouchy on this one, boys. Like shooting Republican fish in a barrel.

But wait, there's more! Apparently, office managers at Hess - and their husbands - make enough money to drop the corporate max, too. Smells like... campaign funding scandal.

I posted here, back in March, about an observation I'd made in the Fed's Flow of Funds report, to wit:

Real estate and securities very rarely decline concurrently. When the stock market was tanking from 2000 through 2002, the real estate market was inflating nicely, cushioning somewhat those equity losses.

In fact, the last time that securities and real estate had concurrent quarterly declines -- as we saw in the fourth quarter of 2007 -- was in the first half of 1974. You may recall that the economy slipped into a nasty recession in November 1973 from which it did not emerge until March 1975.

While I loathe making predictions, it seems almost a foregone conclusion that securities will post a down first quarter (if not, prepare for the rally of our lifetimes) and that real estate will also succumb to another down quarter (and likely more to follow). This double-whammy negative wealth effect on Americans' balance sheets -- declining securities prices and declining real estate values -- is going to compound what is already a very thorny, delicate and complex situation. It's bad news.

Fast-forward to today: On the household balance sheet (Table B.100 of the Flow of Funds report), real estate (Line 4) and equities (Lines 23 and 24) have now indeed declined for two consecutive quarters, and a third, unprecedented, decline for both is looming when this report is next released on September 18. Never before have we seen three consecutive quarters of declines on the household balance sheet in real estate and equity holdings. This will likely contribute to a never-before-seen third consecutive quarterly decline in Americans' net worth (Line 41), which also has already dropped in 2007:Q4 and 2008:Q1. Mental recession indeed.

An additional B3 reference to this situation can be found here.