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US Deploys Third Carrier Group In Asia To Boost "Naval Air Forces" In Disputed South China Sea

via by Tyler Durden on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 19:56:20 GMT

For a brief but tense period, two weeks ago the US found itself without a single aircraft carrier in any area of the globe. The absence of a deployed U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, long seen as a symbol of American power projection, was noteworthy because according to Fox, "it is believed to be the first time since World War II that at least one U.S. aircraft carrier has not been deployed."

However, things are gradually getting back to normal following the recent deployment of ships and units from the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group, which departed San Diego for a regularly scheduled deployment to the western Pacific last week.

Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2, and embarked Destroyer Squadron (CDS) 1 deployed with Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain (CG 57) and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Michael Murphy (DDG 112) and USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG 108).

The Vinson Strike Group is deployed to "support" the diplomatically tense situation in the Pacific Rim. According to Naval Technology, this new deployment is part of US Navy’s attempt to boost its naval air forces in disputed part of the Asian region.

"Our forward presence contributes to freedom of navigation and lawful use of the sea, as well as furthers operational training and enabling the exchange of culture, skills, and tactical knowledge," said Commander, CSG 1, Rear Adm. James W. Kilby. Ported in Pearl Harbor, Michael Murphy will join the Carl Vinson CSG later this month as the strike group makes their way to the western Pacific according to the Navy's website.

The Carl Vinson CSG deployed with approximately 7,500 Sailors and will focus on maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts. The strike group assets will conduct bilateral exercises in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region to include anti-submarine warfare, maneuvering drills, gunnery exercises, and visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) subject matter expert exchanges.

Carl Vinson also deployed with the embarked aviation squadrons of CVW-2 which include the "Black Knights" of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 4, the "Blue Hawks" of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 78, the "Bounty Hunters" of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 2, the "Blue Blasters" of VFA-34, the "Kestrels" of VFA-137, the "Golden Dragons" of VFA-192, the "Black Eagles" of Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron (VAW) 113, the "Gauntlets" of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 136, and the "Providers" of Fleet Logistic Support Squadron (VRC) 30.

* * *

In Asia, the Carl Vinson will join the Carrier Strike Groups of the aircraft carriers USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) from the U.S. Navy Third Fleet (currently back at home base in Kitsap-Bremerton in Washington) and the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) from the U.S. Navy Seventh Fleet (currently at home port in Yokosuka, Japan).

The South China Sea is also where China's only aircraft carrier, in a recent show of force to Taiwan, conducted naval drills in late December and early January.

Anarchists Plan To "Stop The Trump-Pence Regime Of Grave Danger Before It Starts"

via by Tyler Durden on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 19:10:00 GMT

By Shepard Ambellas via Intellihub.com,

“In the name of humanity we refuse to accept a fascist America,” the group’s slogan reads at the top of their website. Anarchists from the group Refuse Fascism plan to “take to the streets” on Inauguration Day and “bring D.C. to a halt” after claiming that Donald Trump has “assembled a regime of grave danger.”

The group says that a Trump presidency is “illegitimate” because he did not win the “popular vote” but rather won the Electoral College which the group claims “is an institution set up in 1787 to protect slavery.”

stop trump flyer

Via RefuseFascism.org

Stopping the Trump regime is not “wishful thinking” the group says, claiming a “massive mobilization” could turn it into a “reality.”

The shenanigans are set to begin at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 14 starting at McPherson Square.

We Begin Jan 14 at 4PM… March into the night…every night

 

Grow in Numbers…

 

We will be:

 

First: Hundreds & thousands taking to the streets

 

Then: Becoming ten and a hundred thousand

 

Grow each day to become millions across the country

 

as the week of Jan. 16-20 unfolds…

And with the call for such anarchy, one can only imagine how all of this could quickly spiral out of control, leading to a massive riot or even martial law as called for by Rosie O’Donnell via Twitter on Thursday.

“According to O’Donnell, the one way to stop Trump is to effectively end the Constitution and set up a military dictatorship, all because of documented disinformation spread by the corporate media about supposed Russian ties to the president-elect,” Alex Thomas with Intellihub wrote.

“O’Donnell continued with multiple follow up Tweets that described her thought process which is either completely brainwashed by corporate media disinformation or worse, is all part of a wider conspiracy to stop Trump from taking office.”

Trump’s Inauguration could, in fact, turn out to be the biggest, single most important event to take place in human history as pointed out by radio talk show host Alex Jones in a key transmission.

* * *

As previewed, on Saturday afternoon civil rights activists kicked off a week of protests ahead of Donald Trump's presidential inauguration with a march in Washington on Saturday, vowing to keep fighting for equality and justice under the upcoming administration.

Chanting "no justice, no peace," a few thousand protesters headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton marched along the National Mall toward the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, about two miles (3 km) from the steps of the U.S. Capitol, where Trump will be sworn in as president on Friday.

Pre-march speakers denounced Trump to protesters, who braved drizzle and temperatures just above freezing to show their support for minority rights and President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, which Trump has vowed to dismantle.

"We stand together, not as a people of hate, but as a people of hope," said Charley Hames Jr., president of the Oakland, California, chapter of Sharpton's National Action Network. "We believe this march is the first of many."

"He's a clown," said marcher Ken Coopwood Jr., 17, of Washington. "I think he's not going to care about much, unless it's personal."

Civil rights groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Council of La Raza, as well as Democratic lawmakers had all said they would take part in Saturday's march.

The march began hours after Trump blasted U.S. Representative John Lewis after the Georgia Democrat and civil rights campaigner said he did not see Trump as a legitimate president. Lewis told NBC News in an interview for Sunday's "Meet the Press" that he believed Russia's alleged hacking aimed at helping Trump put his legitimacy into question. Trump replied on Twitter on Saturday that Lewis should focus instead on his Atlanta district. "All talk, talk, talk - no action or results! Sad!," he wrote.

About 30 groups, almost all of them anti-Trump, have gotten permits to protest before, during and after the inauguration. Thousands of demonstrators also have vowed to shut down the inauguration, including by closing off security checkpoints along the inaugural parade route.

Here's How You Can Make More Money in Retirement

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 19:28:00 GMT

Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, retirement is hardly an inexpensive prospect. Here are a few options for generating extra income when you need it.

Now on the Macy's Clearance Rack: Lots of Real Estate

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 19:15:00 GMT

After announcing plans to close dozens of stores in the next few months, the retailer has a lot of excess real estate to sell.

Illumina Lights It Up

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 19:07:00 GMT

News of a new family of sequencers got the market excited this week -- with good reason.

As Wall Street Tries To Trade On Trump's Tweets, Problems Emerge

via by Tyler Durden on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 18:33:22 GMT

Remember when investing was about reading financial reports, following news, anticipating cash flows, inferring the impact of monetary policy on risk prices, occasionally looking at charts (because while traders say past performance is not predictive, virtually everyone expects a chart to forecast precisely what will happen). Well, now it is about simpler things: like what asset will China's great bubble-chasing army send into the stratosphere or, as has been the case over the past few weeks, what will Donald Trump tweet about next.

However, as Wall Street's traders, starved for alpha, scramble to convert Trump's tweeting into profitable trades, they have run into problems, and as the WSJ writes, "investors are grappling with the president-elect’s highly visible but capricious social-media presence, which is upending well-worn Wall Street formulas for assessing the likelihood of certain developments and baking them into market prices." Specifically, Trump’s tweets are challenging large firms to funnel his off-the-cuff remarks into trades in an age of increasing automation, "while forcing banks to revisit restrictions on social-media use. At the same time, the tweets are creating openings for smaller investors to make money on abrupt market moves."

The first problem, of course, is that with many Wall Street firms having banned Twitter, their traders are flying blind in an age when Trump's tweets have become the biggest market moving event on any given day. For example, at Mizuho in New York, foreign-exchange trader Daniel Riveira said last year he began discussing with co-workers plans to get the Japanese financial firm to lift its longtime ban on Twitter after Mr. Trump’s threats to revise trade policies with Mexico prompted a sharp decline in the peso.

This month, Mizuho granted read-only access for its U.S. banking staff, according to a spokesman. The firm said it lifted the ban to give traders greater access to market-moving information, not just to Trump’s tweets.

 

“We never thought we needed it before,” said Mr. Riveira, who is a managing director at Mizuho. Now, “the people who have Twitter are going to have an advantage over those who don’t.”

And yet somehow, Jack Dorsey is still unable to boost the value of Twitter, whose market cap is 30 times lower than that of FaceBook, which is despite allegely used by everone, hasn't moved a market in years.

Meanwhile, Trump has tweeted more than 300 times since the election. Excluding media companies, he has called out publicly traded companies by name or product in 18 separate tweets, including Boeing Inc., Ford Motor Co., and United Technologies Corp. unit Carrier Corp. Big firms haven’t been the only targets. Shares of Rexnord Corp., a maker of bearings and gears with a market capitalization of $2.2 billion, fell as much as 2.5% last month on the first trading day after Mr. Trump took aim at the Milwaukee company’s plans to move jobs to Mexico. Trading volume was double the daily average.

Twitter's market influence is so big that it has become a daily part of strategist decision-making.

“I used to ask our analysts what was happening with the S&P, or what Janet Yellen said,” said Larry Adam, chief investment officer for the Americas at Deutsche Bank Wealth Management. “Now I also ask if there are updates I need to be aware of” on Twitter.

* * *

As the WSJ notes, so far trading on Trump’s tweets is skewed toward younger individuals, traders and analysts said. An E*Trade survey earlier this month of more than 900 active investors with at least $10,000 in an online-brokerage account found that three-fifths of those aged 25 to 34 had traded based on a tweet by Mr. Trump. Among those between 35 and 54, 36% had done so, and among those 55 and over, 20% had. Well, hedge funds have always complained there was no dumb money left in the market, here's their chance to finally make alpha courtesy of all the newly minted "traders" who respond to nothing more than a Trump announcement.

However, while it would be easy to fade Trumps tweets -  assuming banks unblock twitter that is - a more significant problem has emerged for most large trading firms, which are increasingly dependent on electronic algorithms that can be programmed to buy or sell an instant after an economic-data release or corporate-earnings report. The issue is that algos are unable to immediately infer whether Trump is bashing or praising a company, as the unscripted nature of Mr. Trump’s tweets poses a challenge.

High-speed trading strategies can quickly identify that a stock was referenced in a tweet. But discerning whether the underlying message is bullish, bearish or indifferent presents a significant programming challenge.

And just like that, courtesy of his head-scratching tweets, some of which arrive in ALL CAPS, Trump may have eradicated the HFT scourge which has been slayed by Trump's linguistic finesse, or lack thereof.

“You have an issue of interpreting through language, that’s the first problem,” said Blair Hull, a pioneer of electronic-trading strategies and founder of Ketchum Trading LLC and Hull Investments LLC. “Experts in linguistics have been working on this for years and still don’t get it right.”

* * *

There are more problems: a big one, is that the small number of examples limits a machine’s ability to see consistent patterns. It took at least four seconds after Trump’s Jan. 5 tweet attacking a Toyota Motors Co. plan to build a plant in Mexico for the first trade in U.S.-listed shares to hit the tape.

That is practically a lifetime for high-speed traders who blanch at delays in the milliseconds, and who spend millions to relay their trades to the NYSE using lasers instead of using "ancient" microwave technology, in hopes of shaving off microseconds.

Rather than rely on machines to make murky real-time decisions, Hull said, some of his firm’s trading strategies use analysis of shifts in mood caused by tweets as they slingshot across the internet.

 

“The trading opportunity in a president who tweets isn’t so much in the immediate tweet as much as the fact that he’s starting a conversation about an issue,” said Jamie Wise, founder of Buzz Indexes, which creates a benchmark of stocks based on quantitative analysis of comments made across social media.

The good news for bank traders, of course, is that they will all soon have access to the social network, alleviating hours of boredom.

Banks are in some cases being forced to rethink what has been a chilly relationship with social media. Bruce Klaw, an assistant professor at the University of Denver and former white-collar crime attorney, said recent scandals involving rigging of the London interbank offered rate have led banks to restrict the use of the internet and personal devices while at work.

There is a financial motive behind the restrictions, as well.  “You don’t want your traders who you’re paying a ton of money to be on Twitter all day,” he added. Now, thanks to Trump, you have no choice. Which likely will mean that as trading becomes increasingly more reactive instead of proactive, and discounting, trader comp may well tumble even more.

Meanwhile, Tweets are increasingly becoming part of Wall Street's analytical engines. While many big bank employees are blocked from visiting Twitter.com while in the office, at institutions such as JPM and Morgan Stanley, traders use their Bloomberg screens to track tweets. At Goldman traders can see key tweets and follow individuals through Symphony, a messaging service operated by Symphony, which is partly-owned by Goldman. 

Yet even with everyone having access to Trump's tweets, the underlying problem remains: he is so unpredictable that humans, let alone algos, have no idea when or why Trump, who has tweeted at all hours of the day, can strike.

Trump’s lack of predictability has a way of frustrating Wall Street. A year-ahead outlook presentation in December by Bank of America Merrill Lynch biotechnology analyst Ying Huang asserted that “the Republican sweep of Congress should ease manufacturers’ worries of drug pricing legislation.” As Huang spoke, drug stocks slumped, reflecting a comment by Trump in Time magazine that he aims to bring down drug prices.

“It’s a brave new world,” said Brett Hodess, head of Americas equity research at Bank of America.

And it all revolves around Trump's twitter feed - just as he wants it. In fact, at this rate Trump's tweets will soon... er, well ...  trump the Fed's own announcements in terms of market-moving importance.

Beijing Responds: Tells "Relevant Parties" In The U.S. That "One China" Principle Is Non-Negotiable

via by Tyler Durden on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 18:25:44 GMT

Following Trump's Friday night interview with the WSJ, in which the president-elect suggested he would use any available leverage to realign the U.S.’s relationship with its two biggest global strategic rivals, China and Russia, Beijing responded promptly when China's foreign ministry said on Saturday that its "One China" principle was the non-negotiable political basis for China-U.S. relations, and urged all "relevant parties" in the United States to recognize the sensitivity of the Taiwan issue.

“The one-China principle, which is the political foundation of the China-U.S. relations, is non-negotiable,” China's foreign ministry said in a statement on its foreign ministry website.

The statement was address to "relevant parties" in the US, by which Beijing meant Donald Trump.

“In order to avoid disruption to the sound and steady development of the China-U.S. relations and bilateral cooperation in key areas, we urge relevant parties in the U.S. to fully recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan question, approach Taiwan-related issues with prudence and honor the commitment made by all previous U.S. administrations of both parties on adhering to the one-China policy and the principles of the three joint communiques”

The comments, posted on the foreign ministry's website, were a direct response to remarks by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in which he said the "One China" policy was negotiable, although he also conceded that he would not label China of being a currency manipulator "on day one", as he had stated previously.

Since 1979, the United States has acknowledged Taiwan as part of "one China", but Trump prompted a diplomatic protest from Beijing by accepting a congratulatory phone call on his election win from President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan on Dec. 2.

Here's How the Wireless Networks Are Preparing for Donald Trump's Inauguration Spectacle

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 18:21:00 GMT

The event will put tremendous strain on Washington, D.C.'s infrastructure, including its wireless carriers.

These 3 Deals Show Just How Desperate Sears Holdings Is

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 18:13:00 GMT

There are only so many times you can go to the well before it dries up.

The Low-Cost Oil & Gas Producers to Focus on Amidst a Production Rebound

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 18:09:00 GMT

U.S. oil production has bottomed out and is on the upswing -- here’s what you need to know to position your portfolio the right way.

Detroit Auto Show: Why the Wild 2018 Kia Stinger Sports Sedan Matters to Investors

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 18:05:00 GMT

Kia and Hyundai have high hopes for the striking low-slung sports sedan that go far beyond its expected sales totals.

Debunking Loretta Lynch's One-Sided 'Chicago Cops Are Racist Villains' Statistics

via by Tyler Durden on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 18:02:12 GMT

Is it fake news when on MLK weekend Loretta Lynch issues a scorching 164 page report blasting Chicago police for using force on Blacks 10 times more often then Whites... but nowhere mentioning that Blacks are murdered 15 times more often than Whites, or that Blacks are the murders 20 times more often than Whites, or that Police are 30 times more often to be killed by a Black than by a White?
 
Seems like a shot in the face at Jeff Sessions and a gift to BLM and civil rights leaders, in the final hour...

Statistical Ideas' blog's Salil Mehta exposes the one-sided statistics outgoing AG Loretta Lynch used to villify Chicago Cops...

Outgoing Attorney General for the Department of Justice, Loretta Lynch, has distributed an environmentally-friendly, 164-page report that finds (after a year-long investigation) that my hometown Chicago Police Department "engages in a pattern or practice of using force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution." 

The longwinded defense glosses over critical statistics to allow any reader to truly understand what is at the nucleus of their most scorching claim against the Chicago Police.  That in addition to economic hardships for minorities (and is that 100% essential?), police use excessive force 10 times more often against Blacks as they do against Whites.  And that's a deceptive headline shocker, which combined with selective data-mining, simply states what they feel is obvious with their constituents across the country.  The leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement joined other civil rights groups in responding lockstep with the findings, demanding "we are not going to take it any more".  What does that mean?  Are the big concerns in life that (Chicago) police are simply villains?  Life would be coziest if they used kids’ gloves?  And why were these groups righteously hushed in recent months, as Blacks were multiple times caught on video group-assaulting Whites who "may have voted for Trump"?  Look at the top of the chart -below- which shows this 10x rate for Blacks versus Whites, when it comes to use of excessive police force.  Now we'll discuss some other self-computed statistics that should be considered, and which were not provided as meaningful background.

 

“more often”

This naughty expression incorrectly implies that each Black criminal is subject to 10 times as much excessive police force as each White criminal.  But that's a false trap.  The actual statistics, for the few who cared to look at them, show that simply the overall population of Blacks saw 10 times more excessive use of force versus the overall population of Whites.

Blacks are a small minority

It is true that in the United States there are nearly five times as many Whites as there are Blacks (put differently, there is 0.2 Blacks per White).  So it would be arousing to incorrectly deduct that while there is 0.2 Blacks per White, there is nearly 10 times as many Blacks experiencing excessive force versus Whites.  Recall we are discussing the U.S. here.  Instead we must drill down to just The Windy City: and there we see an equal number of Blacks versus Whites.  Blacks are not a small minority at all.  And let's hold on to this 1:1 statistic as we go through some other relevant settings information below.

who is getting murdered

Even though there is one Black per White in Chicago, there are nearly 15 murdered Blacks per murdered White.  It's not the Chicago Police Department killing these Blacks, and certainly not White civilians.  We should note that in 2016 Chicago Mayor Emmanuel, former Obama Chief of Staff, oversaw the largest number of homicides in Chicago, in the past two decades!  These murders are one of the primary reasons that Chicago isn't anymore a top 100 places to live, and it sees great emigration of its citizens to other parts of the U.S.  Including people who want to be police officers.  And with strained municipal and state budgets and fearing their own life, the Chicago Police Department have to bring justice to whoever is killing all of these Blacks (happening at a rate of nearly a dozen weekly).  It’s unfortunately a treasured, yet sometimes unappreciated job.

who is doing the murdering

Without surprise but part of the probability data, Blacks are committing these record murders across Chicago (even under a Democratic leader and with their unemployment rate falling to cyclical lows).  Butchering at 20 times the rate of Whites!  So while the population is equally split between Blacks and Whites, the Department of Justice (DOJ) report chose to fleece us from the fact that Blacks accounts for 20 times as many of the city's slayings (instead only highlighting the policy focus of Blacks experience 10 times as much use of excessive force). 

As appalling as these levels of excessive uses of force against Blacks are, we need to also appreciate that the Chicago Police (as a demographic segment) are >30 times more likely to be killed by a Black, then any other demographic segment killing any other (in chart below, see these drivers of the current 5-year national record-slaughtering of police).  It should be part of this report and not a random result but from the most statistically significant predictive factors such as:

  • the nature of the suspect in relation to others at the scene,
  • the age difference between the suspect and police,
  • and how this same suspect interacts with police when approached.

Now given all of this context above, wouldn't you precisely conclude that there should be some balanced compassion for the Chicago Police?  Even if not, understand that police have their supporters who don’t feel Whites deserve to experience excessive force in equal number as Blacks, even if see less violent crime.  This absurd measure of executing violent criminal justice is unhinged, even though we have the same number of brash disparagers against the police, anyway.

 

Though we should equally note that nothing in here proves that the Chicago Police have executed their public duties in a racially fair way.  Minorities deserve to feel more at ease in their own homes and communities.  It's just that showcasing one-sided statistics, as the DOJ did here, is clearly more confrontational and less likely to be embraced.

All of this mortality science has been brought up earlier (here, here) and in a couple high-profile, peer-review academic research articles on race within the police ranks (one of which I was the journal editor for).  Though it is worth noticing here every time we get untrue violent justice statistics put forward.  This final-hour parting gesture by Attorney General Lynch fall squarely into that category, and one the new successor (perhaps President-elect Trump's nominee Jeff Sessions) is entitled to handle differently.

Mortality probability math is very tough, as shown in our calm debunk of an Oxford University research paper, which they then immediately and mortifyingly redacted with Erratas.  Though the teachings are often the same and are worth reminding ourselves of, every time the occasion arises.

Amazon Is Too Late to the Athleisure Party

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 18:00:00 GMT

The e-commerce giant is working on its own activewear line, but the trend seems like it's already peaked.

Can Your Ex Collect Social Security Spousal Benefits?

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 17:49:00 GMT

Listener Stan doesn’t need to start collecting his own Social Security checks yet. But if his ex is collecting hers, can he get a spousal benefit without penalizing his own payouts later?

We Are Getting Worried About Paul Krugman

via by Tyler Durden on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 17:27:10 GMT

When a delicate snowflake is suddenly faced with a perceived reality so devastating as to be an existential crisis, the mind's reaction to dealing with this cognitive dissonance can be disabling for some. Certainly for The New York Times' flip-flopping, hate-mongering, fact-twisting, Keynesian poster-boy Paul Krugman it appears coping with "no" is not going well and his tirade last night in Twitter has us gravely concerned for his mental stability, which is ironic given how he began yesterday...

But that was followed quickly by a six-tweet-rant nothing short of what we would expect from a dejected five-year-old who just got denied another scoop of ice cream...

Krugman once again blames the ignorance of the deplorable masses (who just don't get what a "fraudster" Trump is) in shunning him and his "know-it-alls", but he has been heading down this hill of manic-depressive lashing out for weeks now having recently suggested Trump will unleash a 9/11-style attack to legitimize his presidency.

Is he hoping to maintain a groundswell of "well, if he is not hitler... he must be worse" thoughts among those so easily led? Still, coming from a man who has prognosticated alien invasions as a global economic growth engine, we are not sure if he is mental situation is improving or deteriorating. We wish him well.

7 Shocking Ways You Could Be Hurting Your Credit Score Without Realizing It

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 17:25:00 GMT

Ignorance isn't bliss in when it comes to your credit.

What Does 2017 Hold for Obamacare?

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 17:12:00 GMT

Many see its days as being numbered. Will Obamacare survive or disappear?

3 Signs Twitter Inc. Needs New Management

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 17:00:00 GMT

Should CEO Jack Dorsey step aside and let an outsider call the shots?

The Top 10 Trump Myths

via by Tyler Durden on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 16:50:32 GMT

Submitted by Gavin McInnes via TakiMag.com,

Fake news site Buzzfeed just published a fake news story that is so fake, it’s not even fake news. “It’s just fake,” as Kellyanne Conway put it. The editor of Buzzfeed himself says he has “serious reason to doubt the allegations in it,” but he published it anyway because this is “how we see the job of reporters in 2017.” So, the role of reporters is to just barf out whatever anyone throws at them? The dossier implicates the president-elect in everything from being a stooge for the Russian government to demanding women pee on him. It’s written like a prank from our side to lampoon how gullible and biased their side is. It’s also a good jumping-off point to discuss 10 other myths about our next president.

(1) TRUMP IS AN ADMITTED SEXUAL PREDATOR
Jesus LORD in heaven above am I sick of talking about a private conversation two guys had in a bus 11 years ago. I’m honestly stunned this devoured so much of the presidential election. It’s completely irrelevant, but if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of the whole thing, it’s the opposite of sexist. That’s right. Trump was marveling at what groupies let you get away with and saying it’s crazy. It’s the same as the time he said he could “shoot somebody” in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it. The tone was “Can you believe this shit? These women will basically let you do anything.” Megyn Kelly said he “grabbed women against their will.” This is a lie. He said, “They let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

The real problem here is that people revile Trump so much they can’t imagine women adore him as much as, say, Elvis, who kissed whoever he wanted whenever he wanted. Sorry, libs, money and power are a bigger aphrodisiac than being a “feminist ally.”

(2) TRUMP MOCKED A HANDICAPPED REPORTER
Are you as frustrated by these myths as I am? Why would anyone on earth brag about randomly grabbing women by the vagina? Why would anyone mock a handicapped reporter? Insulting someone just because they’re handicapped is something you might do when you’re 7 years old and then deeply regret it when you’re 8. Meryl Streep won a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes and dedicated her entire speech to criticizing Trump for making fun of a crippled reporter. He wasn’t. He was making the same flustered gesture he makes to mimic everyone he sees as flustered. Video of him doing this to everyone is very easy to dig up (I made one too), but that doesn’t stop the likes of The Washington Post from claiming our “assertions are not supported by video evidence.”

(3) TRUMP’S BANKRUPTCIES PROVE HE’S A BAD BUSINESSMAN
This is yet another example of people who have never tried something judging those who have actually done it. I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life. You’re pretty much looking at 12 failures for every successful venture. When you run hundreds of businesses, bankruptcies are an inevitability.

Also, lots of companies took advantage of bankruptcy laws in the 1990s. This was a problem with the system and its roots are in government intervention. It’s like the real estate collapse. Yes, Wall Streeters took advantage of the collapse, but that money was just sitting on the floor. It was sitting there because big government decided every black and Hispanic person in the country deserved a mortgage.

(4) TRUMP’S A HYPOCRITE BECAUSE CHINA MANUFACTURED HIS TIES
The same answer applies to this question. When everyone is cheating, to play by the rules is to lose. I made action figures for my old company many years ago and was determined to make them in America. I quickly learned this wouldn’t just make them expensive, it would make them so expensive we couldn’t do the project. That’s the world we are living in. It’s not a fantasy and it’s not based on what you would like to happen. Trump wants to get us to the point where we don’t have to outsource manufacturing to stay not just competitive, but in business.

(5) TRUMP’S INHERITANCE WOULD HAVE MADE MORE MONEY IN THE STOCK MARKET
Again, these are broke people scoffing at a businessman who made billions. Trump got $40 million in equity when his father died and today he’s worth $3.7 billion. Getting a million dollars and not blowing it all is an accomplishment. Look at lottery winners or retired athletes. According to economist Matt Palumbo, if Trump invested $40M in the market, today he would have $1.91 billion after tax. This assumes dozens of variables against Trump including the assumption he could liquidate his inheritance. At any rate, even when we throw liberals a bone with this hypothetical scenario he ends up almost $2 billion poorer.

(6) HE SAID “MEXICANS ARE RAPISTS”
A fun game to play with liberals is to demand, “What exact sentence did this person say that is factually incorrect?” He never said all Mexicans are rapists. He said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” His point was that a disproportionate number of the illegals who cross the border are rapists. I’d say 80% is a fairly disproportionate number. The age of consent there is 12. They’re certainly not NOT rapists.

(7) TRUMP WILL OVERTURN ROE V. WADE AND GAY MARRIAGE
I have no idea where this comes from, but abortion is pretty much the only thing I can get women to cite as a reason they chose Hillary over him. They seem to think he’s going to shut down Planned Parenthood and make abortions completely impossible in America despite absolutely zero evidence or any quote that even implies that.

The gays say the same thing about gay marriage, and when pressed for evidence, they say Mike Pence wants gays to be electrocuted. Trump has never implied he wants to do anything about gay marriage. His exact words were “It’s done.” Also, Pence never pushed for electroshock therapy for gays. His website once implied AIDS money should be redirected to “those seeking to change their sexual behavior.” Incidentally, if you got AIDS at a circuit party on meth after having sex nonstop for 36 hours, change your sexual behavior.

(8) TRUMP IS A BIGOT
Trump is the opposite of a bigot. He is Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack, a loud, obnoxious blowhard who wants to party with anyone and everyone, right now. In fact, that’s what the old-money bigots hate about him. His country clubs refuse to cater to the elitism that defines most clubs. If you’re black or Jewish or a weird immigrant grocer but you’ve got the money to join, come on in.

Trump’s exposure to blacks has been the employed family men he worked with on job sites and the educated elites he’s worked with in business. He’s never lived near the ghetto. If anything, his life experience with blacks is abnormally positive. In other words, he likes them more than reality does.

As for Jews, all his adult kids are having sex with a Jew right now. His businesses are crammed to the ceiling with Chosen Ones. How can Jews not get this? I think their obsession with Nazis has been going on for so long, they’ve brainwashed themselves into being petrified of anyone who seems Aryan and alpha, even when the guy is on their side.

Do I need to include gays in this list? Sorry, LGBTQ, Trump doesn’t have a stance on you. He doesn’t care about you. Actually, we’re all pretty bored of you, to be honest. We’re not homophobes, we’re homoboreds.

(9) TRUMP WANTS TO DEPORT MUSLIMS
My reaction to most of these myths is “I wish.” Trump never said one thing about deporting Muslims. He didn’t even suggest a database of Muslims living in America. That was a reporter’s idea.

All Trump said was he’d like to have a “shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” This was during a time of unprecedented attacks on America, France, Britain, and Canada. Almost without fail, when we learn about these Muslim terrorists, we discover they spent time in a Muslim country being further radicalized and trained to better attack us. Would have been nice if we caught them on the way in or the way back in.

Of course, this idea—and it was an idea, not a dictum—gets morphed into an America where Muslims are randomly picked up off the street and thrown in a van. Indian millionaires like Aziz Ansari can moan that Trump makes him scared for his family and The New York Times bawls their eyes out.

(10) TRUMP’S WALL WON’T HAPPEN BECAUSE MEXICO SAID SO
Ex-president Vicente Fox keeps telling us he’s “not going to pay for that fucking wall,” like anyone asked him. Dude, you haven’t been president for over a decade, shut up. Nobody asked you or Enrique what you think of our plan.

We spend $58 billion more on Mexican goods than they spend on us. If a restaurant were making that much money off of you, you could ask for a seat by the window. You could also ask for a wall. Add to that the estimated $100 billion illegals cost us and coming down hard on immigration becomes very profitable. That’s more than enough for the $8–10 billion the wall will cost. Barack wasted that on Obamacare alone.

There are problems with Trump. I’m not nuts about him hiring his son-in-law and I don’t get why he’s making fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ratings. However, the left is too lazy to dig up anything valid so they stick to drama-club myths that make great headlines. This might have been effective if we hadn’t all figured out that the mainstream media is #FakeNews. Lie all you want about the president-elect, we’re no longer listening.

3 Reasons The Priceline Group Can Keep Growing

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Sat, 14 Jan 2017 16:55:00 GMT

A fast-growing share price and rich P/E ratio might keep some investors away, but here are a few reasons to reconsider the leader in online travel.

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