Macy's drops Trump's menswear line over comments, keeps line from convicted felon Martha Stewart

New York Magazine's "definitive American woman of our time" in 1995 was convicted of four felonies in 2004. She spent five months in a Federal prison camp and five months in home confinement.

It's a good thing.

Third and final revision of 3Q2014 GDP surges to 5.0% on personal consumption and investment revisions

Personal consumption added 2.21 points to today's revision of 3Q2014 GDP at 5.0% while government consumption added 0.80 points. TOGETHER they represent 60% of the total, which again gives the lie to the meme that 70% of the economy is still consumer spending.

Not any more. Frugality is still operative in this economy when only 44% of it is from the consumer side. Keep in mind that that's a one month IMPROVEMENT in the BEA's assessment of the contribution of personal consumption by 46%.

Hm. The difference a month can make.

In the second report a month ago personal consumption had added just 1.51 points, and government consumption 0.76. Personal consumption had been averaging just 1.48 points in contribution in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Government consumption had been averaging -0.45, actually adding a SUBTRACTION to GDP over the same period. The positive contribution from government spending now, however, is nearly 83% defense spending . . . the war on ISIS.

More war, more GDP.

Gross private domestic investment added 1.18 points in today's revision, but only 0.85 in the second. The three year average had been 0.94. The 39% improvement in the estimation for this category is a very healthy and welcome sign for the economy.

Net exports added 0.78 in today's report, unchanged from the second, but way up from the prior period average contribution of just 0.08 points.

Refined petroleum exports, up 3.7% on average in 2014 year to date over the 2013 average. It's a good thing.

Joni Ernst scares Paul Begala: It's a good thing

The Forehead wets himself, here:

[I]f it was a serious statement of philosophy, it was chilling -- even scary. Joni Ernst, the Iowa candidate who has vaulted to within an inch of United States Senate due to her boasting of hog castration in this year's most inventive political ad, was speaking to the National Rifle Association in 2012. "I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family -- whether it's from an intruder, or whether it's from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important." . . . [I]t's one thing to hear, say, goofball Ted Nugent honk off that way. (The Nuge, by the way, has boasted about how he avoided taking up arms in defense of his country during Vietnam.) It is another to know that someone with those loopy views is one step away from the United States Senate.

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Speaking of loopy views, Thomas Jefferson, a step away from the presidency and writing about Shays Rebellion in 1787, had liars like Paul Begala who talks only of The Whiskey Rebellion in mind when he said this about taking up arms as a warning to rulers:

The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of its motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.