Billings
Montana legislators are already disagreeing with one another.
Congressmen are already disagreeing with the president elect.
The intelligence community’s bullshit is falling on deaf ears.
And it’s cold as hell outside.
In Chicago it might well be hell.
Congressmen are already disagreeing with the president elect.
The intelligence community’s bullshit is falling on deaf ears.
And it’s cold as hell outside.
In Chicago it might well be hell.
Obama’s Hell Hole
The city of Chicago's been put on the national radar once again, this time in a kind of reverse-racism story about 4 black people beating the hell out of some white disabled person.
Hate crimes have been filed and I’m sure we’ll hear a lot more about it.
What’s with that city?
I mean, here in Montana we don’t see this stuff…unless it’s on an Indian reservation.
Even white-nationalist-lure Whitefish doesn’t have stories about people kidnapping other people and beating the shit out of them while lambasting the president elect.
What’s with that city?
In 2015 Chicago saw 2,900 people get shot and 468 of them died.
This is the city where our failed community organizer turned president is from.
It’s where his pal Rahm Emanuel is mayor.
It’s a city with 6.5% unemployment.
The city’s poorest residents are making about $18,000 a year when the average for the state is close to $50,000.
In other words, this place is failing and it’s failing bad.
Glad I don’t live in that shithole. I feel sorry for those that do.
But you know what?
It’s not my problem.
Just like those kids dying in Syria aren’t my problem and those kidnapped girls in Nigeria aren’t my problem.
It’s Chicago’s problem and they can fix it.
When enough black kids are shot and enough white retards are beat up, they’ll fix it.
Or the political elite will just strengthen their grip and nothing will change.
Either way, don’t much matter to me. Most Americans feel exactly the same way – it’s not our problem.
Hate crimes have been filed and I’m sure we’ll hear a lot more about it.
What’s with that city?
I mean, here in Montana we don’t see this stuff…unless it’s on an Indian reservation.
Even white-nationalist-lure Whitefish doesn’t have stories about people kidnapping other people and beating the shit out of them while lambasting the president elect.
What’s with that city?
In 2015 Chicago saw 2,900 people get shot and 468 of them died.
This is the city where our failed community organizer turned president is from.
It’s where his pal Rahm Emanuel is mayor.
It’s a city with 6.5% unemployment.
The city’s poorest residents are making about $18,000 a year when the average for the state is close to $50,000.
In other words, this place is failing and it’s failing bad.
Glad I don’t live in that shithole. I feel sorry for those that do.
But you know what?
It’s not my problem.
Just like those kids dying in Syria aren’t my problem and those kidnapped girls in Nigeria aren’t my problem.
It’s Chicago’s problem and they can fix it.
When enough black kids are shot and enough white retards are beat up, they’ll fix it.
Or the political elite will just strengthen their grip and nothing will change.
Either way, don’t much matter to me. Most Americans feel exactly the same way – it’s not our problem.
Economic Talk
So…the new jobs report is out today.
Isn’t that nice?
We always get our knickers in a knot over these jobs reports, like that somehow tells us how strong or weak our economy is.
They really tell us nothing, in my humble opinion.
CNN tells us that the report reveals that we had 75 months of job growth under Obama.
Wow, that is news to me!
We added 156,000 jobs in December, saw wages go up by 2.9% in December, and saw our December unemployment rate go to 4.7%.
The underemployment rate is at 9.2%.
Last year we added 2 million new jobs to the American economy and during Obama’s presidency we added 11.3 million.
Despite all those new jobs, the American economy is only expected to grow by a little over 2% next year.
That’s not very good.
Trump has promised that we’ll see growth around the 4% range.
News flash – that ain’t gonna happen.
He gave us the 4% number around September and then at the end of December he even suggested we could see growth around 6%.
Talk about clueless.
Monetary stimulus simply isn’t working.
We’ve been on quantitative easing for 8 years now. That’s the fancy name for printing money, and it’s not sustainable.
We won’t see growth, and Trump isn’t going to create it by switching from a monetary to a fiscal stimulus.
There’s just no way Trump is going to get us up to 4% growth each year.
Trump’s idea to come in like Ronald Reagan and do fiscal stimulus with infrastructure spending isn’t going to work.
The main problem is the demographic picture, with the American population getting older and older.
We know that 14.4% of Americans are 65-years-old or older.
If you break it down more you find that 46% of Americans are 40-years-old or older.
That means that just 26.8% are between the ages of 20 and 40 and another 26.9% are under the age of 20.
As a nation, we’re simply too old for the kind of economic growth that Trump thinks he can bring.
Old people are less productive, they use infrastructure less, they don’t buy homes, they pay down their cars, and they save money.
That’s not going to create an economic boost.
We’re not even going to be growing 2% as there’s just not enough workers to hire.
Montana’s been seeing this problem for some time now – employers can’t fill the jobs they need.
Sure, they won’t pay as much as neighboring areas, but let’s not get into that.
We know from a June 2015 Montana Department of Labor & Industry report that over the next decade the state expects to add 716 people each year that are between the ages of 16 and 64.
And this at a time when we’ll have 6,500 job openings each year.
In other words, we’ve got problems. They’re below the surface right now so we don’t worry about them much, but at some point they’ll hurt us.
Besides the dreary demographics picture, another big problem are the bubbles everywhere.
Here in Missoula we have a huge housing bubble, with the average house going for $236,000.
I recently saw an article that we’re in the Top 3 of metro areas in the US for housing prices.
Besides that we have bubbles in Europe, a huge bubble in China, and the stock market is nothing but a bubble.
China went down 45% last year, a real shock to them. It was their stocks, which just reflect the overall strength of an economy.
China peaked in 2011. It’s been downhill since then.
You don’t have to work hard for extraordinary stock and real estate gains.
They’re unsustainable.
At some point the bubbles will burst, the market will collapse, and most people will lose money.
Some people will make money, however.
Consider investing in nursing homes, pharmaceuticals that target old people, and commodities.
I’d hate to be in commercial real estate, tech stocks, or treasury bonds.
Your 10-year treasury bonds might get up to 3% but I expect they’ll quickly fall back to 1% and stay there for some time when things go south, as they will.
Don’t be surprised to see the Dow reach 22,000. Then don’t be surprised to see it fall back down to 5,000 or 6,000 and stay there for years.
The dollar will rise against the Euro, with the former seeing 120 and the latter probably the 0.85 range.
Gold will drop to the $600 level or lower as its 30-year commodity cycle comes to an end.
I expect we’ll see $60 a barrel oil prices before things slump later in the year. In a couple years the stuff will only trade for $10 a barrel or so.
But what do I know?
I’m not economist. I don’t own stocks. I barely have any money in the bank at all.
But maybe you do. So do some research like I did, and don’t just listen to the talking heads.
Good luck.
Isn’t that nice?
We always get our knickers in a knot over these jobs reports, like that somehow tells us how strong or weak our economy is.
They really tell us nothing, in my humble opinion.
CNN tells us that the report reveals that we had 75 months of job growth under Obama.
Wow, that is news to me!
We added 156,000 jobs in December, saw wages go up by 2.9% in December, and saw our December unemployment rate go to 4.7%.
The underemployment rate is at 9.2%.
Last year we added 2 million new jobs to the American economy and during Obama’s presidency we added 11.3 million.
Despite all those new jobs, the American economy is only expected to grow by a little over 2% next year.
That’s not very good.
Trump has promised that we’ll see growth around the 4% range.
News flash – that ain’t gonna happen.
He gave us the 4% number around September and then at the end of December he even suggested we could see growth around 6%.
Talk about clueless.
Monetary stimulus simply isn’t working.
We’ve been on quantitative easing for 8 years now. That’s the fancy name for printing money, and it’s not sustainable.
We won’t see growth, and Trump isn’t going to create it by switching from a monetary to a fiscal stimulus.
There’s just no way Trump is going to get us up to 4% growth each year.
Trump’s idea to come in like Ronald Reagan and do fiscal stimulus with infrastructure spending isn’t going to work.
The main problem is the demographic picture, with the American population getting older and older.
We know that 14.4% of Americans are 65-years-old or older.
If you break it down more you find that 46% of Americans are 40-years-old or older.
That means that just 26.8% are between the ages of 20 and 40 and another 26.9% are under the age of 20.
As a nation, we’re simply too old for the kind of economic growth that Trump thinks he can bring.
Old people are less productive, they use infrastructure less, they don’t buy homes, they pay down their cars, and they save money.
That’s not going to create an economic boost.
We’re not even going to be growing 2% as there’s just not enough workers to hire.
Montana’s been seeing this problem for some time now – employers can’t fill the jobs they need.
Sure, they won’t pay as much as neighboring areas, but let’s not get into that.
We know from a June 2015 Montana Department of Labor & Industry report that over the next decade the state expects to add 716 people each year that are between the ages of 16 and 64.
And this at a time when we’ll have 6,500 job openings each year.
In other words, we’ve got problems. They’re below the surface right now so we don’t worry about them much, but at some point they’ll hurt us.
Besides the dreary demographics picture, another big problem are the bubbles everywhere.
Here in Missoula we have a huge housing bubble, with the average house going for $236,000.
I recently saw an article that we’re in the Top 3 of metro areas in the US for housing prices.
Besides that we have bubbles in Europe, a huge bubble in China, and the stock market is nothing but a bubble.
China went down 45% last year, a real shock to them. It was their stocks, which just reflect the overall strength of an economy.
China peaked in 2011. It’s been downhill since then.
You don’t have to work hard for extraordinary stock and real estate gains.
They’re unsustainable.
At some point the bubbles will burst, the market will collapse, and most people will lose money.
Some people will make money, however.
Consider investing in nursing homes, pharmaceuticals that target old people, and commodities.
I’d hate to be in commercial real estate, tech stocks, or treasury bonds.
Your 10-year treasury bonds might get up to 3% but I expect they’ll quickly fall back to 1% and stay there for some time when things go south, as they will.
Don’t be surprised to see the Dow reach 22,000. Then don’t be surprised to see it fall back down to 5,000 or 6,000 and stay there for years.
The dollar will rise against the Euro, with the former seeing 120 and the latter probably the 0.85 range.
Gold will drop to the $600 level or lower as its 30-year commodity cycle comes to an end.
I expect we’ll see $60 a barrel oil prices before things slump later in the year. In a couple years the stuff will only trade for $10 a barrel or so.
But what do I know?
I’m not economist. I don’t own stocks. I barely have any money in the bank at all.
But maybe you do. So do some research like I did, and don’t just listen to the talking heads.
Good luck.
Talking the Special Election
Boy, was I wrong on Ron Quist.
In one fell swoop Brian Schweitzer both took himself out of the running for the U.S. House seat special election and gave about the biggest boost possible to Quist.
Besides that, Quist has a decent website up and running, one with issues, a bio, photos, and a place to donate.
So I think he’s the clear front-runner.
That seemed to send a few shockwaves through the Missoula wing of the Montana Democratic Party, which may have been going for Amanda Curtis.
I pretty much think this because of the way Martin Kidston wrote his Quist story on the Missoula Current.
“We’ve talked to (Quist) and like him a lot, but we’re sitting this one out,” Carol Williams said of her and her husband Pat – “often referred to as the silent leaders of the Montana Democratic Party” – and their decision not to endorse anyone like Schweitzer has.
Now would be a great time to get into the terrible penchant of the Democrats to endorse before the primary, but I guess we’re in a special situation.
I’d like to say, if the Williams’ are the “silent leaders of the Montana Democratic Party” then I feel we need to get some new silent leaders.
Dems aren’t doing too well in the state, in case you haven’t noticed.
This is the first time I’ve heard the “silent leaders” nonsense as well.
Makes me think twice about the Montana GOP membership fundraiser letter I got in the mail this week.
Heck, maybe I should have sent that in.
Democrats don’t even bother to send me anything anymore, so great is their hate for me.
I guess that happens when you continually point out their hypocrisy and their corruption.
No, Democrats in Montana have no one to blame but themselves for their problem.
As usual, I have no problem taking their ire – if they think blaming me will solve their problems, they can go right ahead.
Anyways, I noticed that I screwed up on my earlier assessment that the Quist candidacy was a joke.
Clearly it’s not.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to see one or more of the legislative Democrats to announce that their candidacy is now finished, mainly due to the unexpected workload of their legislative duties…of course.
Amanda Curtis will stay in it, and she has a good shot of beating Quist.
“Many of the Democratic state committee members who selected Curtis to replace Walsh will also sit on the committee that chooses a nominee for the special election,” Dan Brooks told us yesterday at the Missoula Independent.
So Quist might have the momentum and seem like the favorite, but Curtis could prove the top competitor.
She has the experience, she has the relationship with the committee members, and she has more name recognition.
Besides that she’s a known quantity when it comes to fundraising – she can do it, we don’t know if Quist can.
It remains to be seen when we’ll see fundraising report due dates for this special election, and I hope Corey Stapleton gets on that soon.
Still, smart candidates will ‘leak’ that information to the press around the time of Zinke’s departure, and definitely before the nominating convention.
Or were they not supposed to raise money to get a leg-up? The toughest race might not be against the GOP candidate but the other Dems vying for the nomination.
Regardless, we’ll have 5 to 6 Democrats that now have more statewide name recognition, and just because they’ve declared.
And what does declare mean? It seems like just about anyone can do it, as we saw with the Whitefish Spencer nonsense late last month.
The GOP has their own hills to climb, and we’ll see how that goes. Gianforte might want this, though some of the legislative Republicans do too.
I’ll tell you right now…if it’s Quist vs. Zolnikov I’d be tempted to vote for Zolnikov.
He’s young and has similar ideas to my own. Quist represents more of the old guard of the state, though I feel Quist will do a much better job at drawing crossover votes than Curtis will.
That might decide it – with Quist we know it’s truly up in the air; with Curtis we know it could be a loss just like it was before.
Hey, putting yourself out there also means you might earn a black mark too.
Mostly, I’m not that excited about Quist and I’m not sure why I should be.
I’m not really excited about anyone the Dems are throwing at us, to be honest.
That’s to be expected – the Party is dying.
It’ll be interesting to see how it all shapes up.
In one fell swoop Brian Schweitzer both took himself out of the running for the U.S. House seat special election and gave about the biggest boost possible to Quist.
Besides that, Quist has a decent website up and running, one with issues, a bio, photos, and a place to donate.
So I think he’s the clear front-runner.
That seemed to send a few shockwaves through the Missoula wing of the Montana Democratic Party, which may have been going for Amanda Curtis.
I pretty much think this because of the way Martin Kidston wrote his Quist story on the Missoula Current.
“We’ve talked to (Quist) and like him a lot, but we’re sitting this one out,” Carol Williams said of her and her husband Pat – “often referred to as the silent leaders of the Montana Democratic Party” – and their decision not to endorse anyone like Schweitzer has.
Now would be a great time to get into the terrible penchant of the Democrats to endorse before the primary, but I guess we’re in a special situation.
I’d like to say, if the Williams’ are the “silent leaders of the Montana Democratic Party” then I feel we need to get some new silent leaders.
Dems aren’t doing too well in the state, in case you haven’t noticed.
This is the first time I’ve heard the “silent leaders” nonsense as well.
Makes me think twice about the Montana GOP membership fundraiser letter I got in the mail this week.
Heck, maybe I should have sent that in.
Democrats don’t even bother to send me anything anymore, so great is their hate for me.
I guess that happens when you continually point out their hypocrisy and their corruption.
No, Democrats in Montana have no one to blame but themselves for their problem.
As usual, I have no problem taking their ire – if they think blaming me will solve their problems, they can go right ahead.
Anyways, I noticed that I screwed up on my earlier assessment that the Quist candidacy was a joke.
Clearly it’s not.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to see one or more of the legislative Democrats to announce that their candidacy is now finished, mainly due to the unexpected workload of their legislative duties…of course.
Amanda Curtis will stay in it, and she has a good shot of beating Quist.
“Many of the Democratic state committee members who selected Curtis to replace Walsh will also sit on the committee that chooses a nominee for the special election,” Dan Brooks told us yesterday at the Missoula Independent.
So Quist might have the momentum and seem like the favorite, but Curtis could prove the top competitor.
She has the experience, she has the relationship with the committee members, and she has more name recognition.
Besides that she’s a known quantity when it comes to fundraising – she can do it, we don’t know if Quist can.
It remains to be seen when we’ll see fundraising report due dates for this special election, and I hope Corey Stapleton gets on that soon.
Still, smart candidates will ‘leak’ that information to the press around the time of Zinke’s departure, and definitely before the nominating convention.
Or were they not supposed to raise money to get a leg-up? The toughest race might not be against the GOP candidate but the other Dems vying for the nomination.
Regardless, we’ll have 5 to 6 Democrats that now have more statewide name recognition, and just because they’ve declared.
And what does declare mean? It seems like just about anyone can do it, as we saw with the Whitefish Spencer nonsense late last month.
The GOP has their own hills to climb, and we’ll see how that goes. Gianforte might want this, though some of the legislative Republicans do too.
I’ll tell you right now…if it’s Quist vs. Zolnikov I’d be tempted to vote for Zolnikov.
He’s young and has similar ideas to my own. Quist represents more of the old guard of the state, though I feel Quist will do a much better job at drawing crossover votes than Curtis will.
That might decide it – with Quist we know it’s truly up in the air; with Curtis we know it could be a loss just like it was before.
Hey, putting yourself out there also means you might earn a black mark too.
Mostly, I’m not that excited about Quist and I’m not sure why I should be.
I’m not really excited about anyone the Dems are throwing at us, to be honest.
That’s to be expected – the Party is dying.
It’ll be interesting to see how it all shapes up.
