Tag: news

Watch: Keene Pumpkin Fest Lady Accuses Journalist of Being ‘Free-Stater,’ Tries to Censor Him

The weekend drunken
riots in Keene, New Hampshire, didn’t actually happen at the
annual pumpkin festival. But obviously they’re still going to be a
big deal in a small town of 20,000. Of course, some folks are going
to be more concerned about the reputation of the festival than the
matters at hand. And some folks are going to make fools of
themselves doing so.

That person would be festival organizer Ruth Sterling, who
interrupted the broadcast of public access reporter Jared Goodell
and threatened to shut him down because she apparently didn’t like
him bringing up the rioting. She attempts to grab his microphone,
attempts to block him from the camera and demands to know if
Goodell is a
“Free Stater,” the term for New Hampshire’s libertarian
Free State Project
efforts. Watch below:

 

Sterling seems a bit dumbstruck at the idea that the media
aren’t there to do as they’re told. She subsequently
defended her censorship efforts to Boston.com Monday in
language no less silly than her behavior on the air:

“I needed to keep 80,000 people safe. And one self-promoting
punk could help me do that or TRY to impede me from doing that. I
never regret when I try. Last night I was trying. I was not
surrendering to fear, intimidation, threats,” Sterling wrote.

No, she looked like she was surrendering to fear to me. Did she
think the people walking around the pumpkin festival were also
watching Goodell’s coverage at the same time and were going to
start stampeding in a panic?  Goodell took a different
perspective:

“I would say over eight hours [of coverage] it was probably 90
percent about the festival, just talking to the families and kids
with costumes, about the pumpkins, talking to local non-profit
leaders,” Goodell told Boston.com “We talked about the riots in a
safe way because we’re playing to viewers at home and we want to
let the viewers at home know what the safety concerns are.

“Cars were being turned over, fires were being set, a mass
casualty [incident] was announced,” he added. “I’d say we
underreported on the riots.”

(Hat tip to Hit and Run commenter Also Ran)

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Lene Johansen on Oslo Freedom Forum 2014

Oslo Freedom ForumFamiliar D.C. faces, such as former
Reason editor Michael Moynihan, Tom Palmer from Atlas
Foundation, and John Fund and Jay Nordlinger from National Review
Online were meandering across Eidsvoll Square in front of the
Norwegian Parliament around noon, squinting in the bright,
low-hanging winter sun. They are in town for the sixth Oslo Freedom
Forum, notes Lene Johansen, where human rights activists from
across the globe, including a woman who risked her life to get a
glimpse at life outside North Korea in the movie Titanic,
get together to talk about how to defeat dictators.

View this article.

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‘These are are all folks who vote with me,’ President Says of Dems Trying to Escape His Lethal Clutch

ObamaDemocratic candidates may run, but they can’t
hide—not from a president determined to tie them all to the mast of
his sinking ship and take them down with him. After acknowledging
to Al Sharpton in an MSNBC interview that many members of his party
are disassociating themselves from him in an effort to gain
traction with voters unimpressed by his agenda, President Obama

noted, “the bottom line is, though, these are are all folks who
vote with me; they have supported my agenda in Congress.”

Those racing from Obama’s embrace and desperately trying to
convince all and sundry that they supported nothing of the sort
include Alison Lundergan Grimes. The Kentucky senatorial candidate
made national headlines by
refusing to say whether she voted for her party’s own
presidential candidate.

President Obama’s massively complex and endlessly tweaked
healthcare
monstrosity is just one albatross around Democrats’ necks.

Nobody is thrilled with the economy in the middle of his second
term. His foreign policy is
no winner. Two-thirds of Americans say the
country is on the wrong track. Dissatisfaction with the
president’s
handling of Ebola has proven…infectious.

In an article noting the legions of Democrats around the country
treating the incumbent president as kryptonite, Time

noted, “Democrats are hoping this election won’t be a
referendum on the president, as midterm elections so often
are.”

But President Obama is having none of that. “Now, I am not on
the ballot this fall,” he
commented earlier this month at Northwestern University. “But
make no mistake:  These policies are on the ballot—every
single one of them.”

“It was a mistake,” former White House Senior Adviser David
Axelrod
said of that particular blown kiss of death to the disloyal
minions. The latest comment, too, he’d probably say, was a
boo-boo.

But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the president took a look at his

plunging approval numbers and decided he wants some company on
the way down.

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Existing Home Sales Jump To Highest Since Sept 2013. Midwest Tumbles 5.3%

Existing Home Sales bounced back from the worst miss in 2014 in August to print 5.17mm SAAR – the highest since September 2013. Of course the surge is driven by Condos/Co-Ops (up 5.2%) rather than single-family homes (up 2.0%) and median home prices are the highest ever for a September at $209,700. It was not all ponies and unicorns though as Midwest saw sales plunge 5.6%. NAR’s Larry Yun has some crucial insight for why home sales are rising…”Economic instability overseas is leading to volatility in the stock market and is causing investors to seek safer bets [in housing],” so we assume he is disappointe dby the 1000s of Dow points we have surged off last week’s lows?

 

 

Lawrence Yun , NAR chief economist, says the improved demand for buying seen since the spring has carried into the fall. “Low interest rates and price gains holding steady led to September’s healthy increase, even with investor activity remaining on par with last month’s marked decline,” he said.

“Traditional buyers are entering a less competitive market with fewer investors searching for available homes, but may also face a slight decline in choices due to the fact that inventory generally falls heading into the winter.”

*  *  *

Regional Breakdown

In the Midwest, existing-home sales declined 5.6 percent to an annual level of 1.17 million in September, and remain 4.9 percent below September 2013. The median price in the Midwest was $165,100, up 4.9 percent from a year ago.

 

In the Southsales increased 5.0 percent to an annual rate of 2.12 million in September, and are now 1.4 percent above September 2013. The median price in the South was $180,900, up 5.1 percent from a year ago.

 

In the West existing home sales jumped 7.1 percent to an annual rate of 1.20 million in September, but remain 4.0 percent below a year ago. The median price in the West was $294,200, which is 4.0 percent above September 2013.

Inventories, Supply, Demand

Properties typically stayed on the market in September longer (56 days) than last month (53 days) and a year ago (50 days). Short sales were on the market for a median of 116 days in September, while foreclosures sold in 59 days and non-distressed homes typically took 55 days. Thirty-five percent of homes sold in September were on the market for less than a month.

And there is no return of the ‘normal’ homebuyer yet…

The percent share of first-time buyers continues to underperform
historically, remaining at 29 percent for the third consecutive month.
First-time buyers have represented less than 30 percent of all buyers in
17 of the past 18 months. 

All-cash sales were 24 percent of transactions in September, up slightly from August (23 percent) but down from 33 percent in September of last year. Individual investors, who account for many cash sales, purchased 14 percent of homes in September, up from 12 percent last month but below September 2013 (19 percent). Sixty-three percent of investors paid cash in September.

And finally, some more from Yun:

“Economic instability overseas is leading to volatility in the stock market and is causing investors to seek safer bets, which will likely keep interest rates in upcoming weeks hovering near or below where they are now,” said Yun. “This is welcoming news for consumers looking to buy, although they could temporarily become more cautious by less certain economic conditions.” 

So let’s hope stocks crash?




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1x4D69q Tyler Durden

“The press should have no rights that the average citizen does not have.”


On Wednesday, November 5,
I’ll be speaking at Washington, D.C.’s Newseum as part of Spiked
Online’s Free Speech Now! conference.
Go here for details.

Spiked‘s Tim Black interviewed me last week and the
Q&A just went up, under the title
“The Best Answer to Bad Speech? More Speech.” Here are
some snippets that help explain why I’m “nearly utopian” about free
expression:

“People have a right to free expression, and they have a right
to free speech and free assembly. And that is what undergirds our
press freedom. The press should have no rights that the average
citizen does not have….

 I think what unites the right and the left in stupidity
and error when it comes to this broad-based understanding of the
media, which is really the sum of the press as well as the
entertainment industries, is that they’re wedded to an old model,
which grew out of the Frankfurt school, whereby the audience is
assumed not really to have a mind of its own. It just kind of gets
pushed along by whatever it reads and sees. And this argument is
wrong, because everyone who watches a TV programme, or goes to a
play, is an active participant, a person who processes information,
who makes decisions every second about what things mean….

Look at Reason Foundation, which is the non-profit which
publishes Reason. You take a non-profit that doesn’t
have a lot of money, that doesn’t have a lot of power or insider
connection. And we have come from publishing a monthly magazine and
occasionally writing op-eds in newspapers to now, 20 years later,
when we have a complete media operation, where we’re online
everyday and we reach over four million people every month. We have
the ability to reach out and engage an audience as well as the
people we disagree with that was virtually unthinkable when I
joined the staff in 1993. And that’s why I’m nearly utopian. And
every day, there are new sites of information and expression that
were simply not able to exist in any meaningful way a quarter of a
century ago.”


Read the whole thing here.

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Hong Kong Chief: Can’t Have Democracy Or The Poor Will Have A Say

Clearly, Leung Chung-Ying, Hong Kong’s embattled leader, did not get the Jean-Claude Juncker memo that “when things are bad, you have to lie.” As The NY Times reports, Leung – rather stunningly – said overnight that it was unacceptable to allow his successors to be chosen in open elections, in part because doing so would risk giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics. Instead, rather unsurprisingly, he backed Beijing’s position that all candidates to succeed him as chief executive, the top post in the city, must be screened by a “broadly representative” nominating committee appointed by Beijing, and offered several thinly veiled warnings on Monday that it was risky for the protesters to try the patience of the national authorities.

 

 

As The NY Times reports,

…

 

Mr. Leung’s blunt remarks reflect a widely held view among the Hong Kong elite that the general public cannot be trusted to govern the city well. His statements appeared likely to draw fresh criticism from the democratic opposition, and to inflame the street struggle over Hong Kong’s political future.

 

Representatives of his government are scheduled to hold televised talks with student leaders of the protests, who have said that Mr. Leung was defending a political system stacked against ordinary citizens.

 

Mr. Leung said that if “you look at the meaning of the words ‘broadly representative,’ it’s not numeric representation.”

 

“You have to take care of all the sectors in Hong Kong as much as you can,” he said, “and if it’s entirely a numbers game and numeric representation, then obviously you would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month.”

 

“Then you would end up with that kind of politics and policies,” he continued.

*  *  *
Finally, we also note, Leung comments on the drivers of the pro-democracy movement…

He also raised again the suspicions of his government and of Beijing that “foreign forces” had played a role in the street protests, although he declined repeatedly to identify those forces or provide any examples.

 

“I didn’t overhear it in a teahouse, and it’s something that concerns us,” he said. “It’s something that we need to deal with.”

*  *  *
Mr. Leung offered several thinly veiled warnings on Monday that it was risky for the protesters to try the patience of the national authorities.




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1FwzQcZ Tyler Durden

McDonalds Sales Plunge In Worst Month Since 2003 Following Dollar Meal “Sticker Shock”

Moments ago, McDonalds not only released earnings and revenues, both of which missed – something which was largely expected since the backward looking data had been telegraphed by MCD’s recent global selling collapse – blanketed by atrocious commentary, but it disclosed its September global retail sales which were for lack of a better word, a disaster, after reporting global sales which dropped 3.8%, below the 3.2% expected, and the worst global month since at least 2003. The pain was everywhere, with Europe plunging 4.2% (est -0.9%), Asia down 7.5%, and the US down a whopping 4.1%, far below the 2.8% expected, and also the worst month in over a decade.

 

In fact, McDonalds sales in the US have have now gone a whopping 11 months without posting a positive sales month, the longest stretch on record!

 

But while collapsing MCD sales are a combination of both the insolvent US consumer, who can no longer afford to buy either MCD or Coke (as we commented earlier) especially after purchasing the latest and greatest iThing on credit, as well as shifting tastes and eating the “cool food du jour”, things are only going to get worse from here.

Because in a world that is allegedly flooded with deflation, the one place where everyone considered safe for “dollar meals”, just got more expensive. Bloomberg reports:

Mike Hiner used to take his grandsons to McDonald’s (MCD) when they wanted a treat. With higher wage and food costs pushing up prices at the Golden Arches, he’s increasingly taking them to IHOP, Denny’s and Chili’s instead.

 

The loss of bargain-seeking customers like Hiner underscores a growing challenge for McDonald’s Corp.: While the company still offers several items for $1, its menu is quietly getting more expensive. McDonald’s said its prices were up about 3 percent through the end of June compared with 12 months earlier. That’s more than the 2.5 percent gain in prices for food Americans purchased away from their homes in the year through August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 

The chain’s diminishing appeal among budget diners — coupled with rising meat costs — are projected to take a bite out of third-quarter earnings due to be reported tomorrow. Analysts estimate that McDonald’s revenue fell 1.8 percent to $7.2 billion in the period. Net income, which also were hurt by a food-safety scare in China, slid 11 percent to $1.36 billion, according to the projections.

And sure enough, see the charts above. But that is only the beginning:

Some Americans are extremely price sensitive, and any increases may send them elsewhere, said John Gordon, principal at San Diego-based Pacific Management Consulting Group, an adviser to restaurants and franchisees.

 

“If you encourage and kind of seed the notion that you can come in for a couple bucks and get some food — and then you can’t do that anymore — there’s bound to be a reaction,” he said.

There is also bound to be a reaction when the already broke US consumer maxes out their credit card on a telephone and forgets to eat.

The result has been that fast-food chains, long thought of as the cheapest place to grab a quick bite, may now have that reputation working against them, said Joel Cohen, president of Cohen Restaurant Marketing Group in Raleigh, North Carolina. The higher prices may be driving some customers to seek alternatives either at fast-casual chains like Panera Bread Co. (PNRA) or even at sit-down places, he said.

 

“It’s sticker shock,” Cohen said. “You’re up at price where you could just about be dining at a casual-dining restaurant.”

And when you hear the phrase “sticker shock” in the same sentence as a McDonalds dollar meal, you know the end is in sight.




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1r8e3P7 Tyler Durden

“God protects fools, drunkards, and the United States”: Here’s Hoping.

In his new
USA Today column, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit produces a tidy and edited
list of the current crises in the Middle East:

In reverse order: ISIL is winning in Iraq, and we are
losing. Airstrikes — quite modest ones compared to
those unleashed against Saddam Hussein’s armies over a
decade ago — aren’t doing the job, and the Defense Department
doesn’t seem to be able to round up enough (any?) of those
much-touted “moderate” Syrian rebels to form a serious
opposition force. The Kurds are stressed, and we’re not
getting them enough supplies. Meanwhile, the Kurds’ long-term
enemies, the Turks — Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States —
are actually bombing the Kurds rather than ISIL.

Then there’s Ebola, of course:

We don’t seem to be doing very well at treating the handful of
cases of Ebola we already have. Dallas patient Thomas Duncan has
infected at least two nurses who treated him,
and about 1,000 people are being monitored. The Dallas
hospital that treated Duncan is hemorrhaging patients and
money as no one else wants to stay there. And this is just the
consequence of one imported case of Ebola….

As quite a few people have remarked, the most troubling
thing about the Ebola crisis isn’t even the Ebola, but rather
the widespread incompetence it
has revealed among people who are supposed to take threats to the
nation seriously. And that incompetence,
alas, isn’t limited to
Ebola.


Read the whole thing.

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Shikha Dalmia on the Illiberal Liberals on Campus

campus sexAmerica’s sexual revolution handed women control
over their sexual destiny while hanging on to liberal notions of
due process and civil liberties. But now affirmative consent or
“yes-means-yes” law proponents think that these notions are
inconvenient obstacles in their quest to deliver total safety to
women. Rape, they claim, is such a big problem that they have to
trade in their “ends don’t justify the means” philosophy with “by
any means necessary” battle cry.

But this is a scary development that shows that utopianism and
totalitarianism are two sides of the same coin, notes Shikha
Dalmia.

View this article.

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