Wednesday, March 08, 2017

Bloomberg says the China deficit is nothing to worry about. Really?

I don't think this is about trade tariffs either. China is working to correct it's climate record. Importing is a way of transitioning during the change in China's infrastructure.

It was a 40 percent surge in imports. That is not a minor surge. Additionally, one has to look at the imports such as pork from their purchase of "Smithfield Farms." China may own Smithfield, but, it is still imports.

China is changing and not in minor ways. I would be surprised if March does not show a significant import market in China as well.

June 2013
By Dominic Barton

The explosive growth of China’s emerging middle class (click here) has brought sweeping economic change and social transformation—and it’s not over yet. By 2022, our research suggests, more than 75 percent of China’s urban consumers will earn 60,000 to 229,000 renminbi ($9,000 to $34,000) a year....

I find it a little disheartening and flat out wrong that a more detailed analysis of the imports does not appear in any financial paper. China is suppose to be a guarantee in stability. That is nonsense.

China's economy is highly dynamic with a burgeoning income demographic that is new, exciting and good for the country. Better incomes for the Chinese means they want choices. Those choices can come in the form of imports.

China is becoming a country where human rights violations do not dominate the criticism of the leadership. We have waited for this for China and to ignore the particular facts and analysis of the choices made by the Chinese people is simply an insult.

They are people, not simply exploited workers that The West can take advantage of. The financial markets need to grow up, they don't have control and that is good for the people of any country. China is not catering to Wall Street, it is growing a better country and Wall Street is lost in the fog.

March 7, 2017

China’s imports surged in February (click here) from a year earlier with the nation posting a rare trade deficit as exports slipped. Analysts said seasonal factors mostly explain the swings.

Key Points

Imports soared 38.1 percent in U.S. dollar terms, almost double economist projections

- Exports dropped 1.3 percent versus estimated 14 percent increase in Bloomberg survey.

- Trade deficit was $9.15 billion, the first negative reading in three years. That compared with projections for a $27 billion surplus

Big Picture

Economists said the results were skewed by the week-long Lunar New Year holidays that shutter factories and ports across the nation. The holiday occurred in February 2016 versus late January this year, distorting base year comparisons. Taking January and February data together, the imports figures suggest resilient domestic demand while exports are getting a boost from an improving global outlook....

Typical FOX News. They have no facts, they have no morality, they have no real purpose but to pump out propaganda.

So, when FOX News shortcomings are pointed out to them, they revert to personal attacks. Personal attacks accomplish nothing, EXCEPT, it promotes Hannity and FOX News as a hate filled bullies with no real journalist basis to his ranting. 

FOX News the channel for "Fake News."

Ratings. That is all that matters to FOX News. Not content or class or dignity. Simply put out a product that has "Truthiness" and anyone can harness the public. Rating is NOT content. Ratings at FOX News is how well they bowl over the public with a message that more judgmental than truth.

March 8, 2017
By Brian Flood

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” has beef with Fox News. (click here)
On Tuesday’s edition of Fox’s “Outnumbered,” the panel mocked “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski’s for emotionally speaking out against actions taken by President Trump, calling her a “commentator,” not a “journalist.”
“Nothing sexist there,” Brzezinski’s male co-host Joe Scarborough sarcastically noted on Wednesday morning’s show, which just so happened to fall on International Women’s Day.
Brzezinski went on to describe “Outnumbered” as a program where “all these people with long legs and short skirts talk about how people feel about the news.”
Scarborough continued: “They had like 30 women or something and like one guy in the middle and its called ‘Outnumbered.’ Yesterday it was poor Eric Bolling and he was wonderful.”...

Hey, Comey, Osama bin Laden is dead! Get rid of the Patriot Act and send the FBI back to work in the field.

In April 2003, the FBI Laboratory moved into its first standalone facility. The building, located on the campus of the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, Virginia, tripled the Lab’s workspace and included new state-of-the-art technologies and equipment.

What do you need next, Comey? Another half trillion $ US? Will that give you the dreamscape of computer capacity to detect terrorists in the next moon base?

March 8, 2017
By Adam Vaccaro 

FBI Director James Comey, (click here) speaking at Boston College Wednesday morning, said widespread digital encryption of devices and apps has made the FBI’s work more difficult.

“In October, November, and December, the FBI received to our examiners 2,800 devices for which we had lawful authority to open,” he said. “Twelve-hundred of those devices, so about 43 percent, we could not open with any technique.”

Speaking at BC’s cybersecurity conference, Comey said encryption used to be utilized by “the sophisticated actor.” Now, he said, it is used by drug dealers and other lower-end criminals.

Comey said he was not calling for weaker encryption, and that “strong encryption is a great thing” for cyber security efforts. But should Americans have an expectation of total privacy through encryption? That still needs to be answered, he said....

That still needs to be answered? Here is the answer, get out from behind the desk and work for a living.

The FBI has some of the worst attacks on citizens on record and how does Comey get a pass to dead Americans? He had no clue about the 2014 Isla Vista killing, 2015 San Bernardino killing and the 2016 Orlando killings. This wasn't even a near miss as with Zacarias Moussaoui, these deaths resulted because of complete FBI failure.

THAT IS YOU COMEY!

There is scant water vapor at the Intertropical Convergence Zone.

March 8, 2017
2130.19z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite of the North and West Hemisphere (click here for 12 hour loop)

Water vapor has been in the Arctic Circle over the past month. Earth has distinct patterns in it's physics. Minor and occasional movements of its physics shows up and then it grows into a permanent change. Then the change becomes enormous and overwhelming and very damaging. if the sequestering of water vapor at the Arctic Circle continues beyond a seasonal trend as this has been we are looking at a drying planet.

The United Nations determination of 2 degrees centigrade is accurate and every country in the world needs to pay attention and put their best effort forth to eliminate CO2 emissions. 

While some folks feel blessed by god because they beat the odds, Midwest farmers DON'T!

Nothing like complete devastation from an inferno completed by tornadoes.

This is March and the USA is experiencing tornado outbreaks. This is not normal, nor has it been. If the summer of 2017 is as hot as I expect it to be, there may not be crops harvested at all in the USA.

March 7, 2017
By Margaret Stafford

Mark and Jennifer Swartz (click here) moved into their first home in November. On Tuesday, only a section of floor was left of their three-bedroom, two-bath house in Oak Grove, Missouri, after a storm system that dropped more than 30 tornadoes across the Midwest tore it apart.
"It's all we got left, just a slab," Swartz said as he surveyed the damage to his home in the town about 25 miles east of Kansas City, Missouri. "Right now, I'm in total shock. We're blown away, figuratively and literally."
Despite the destruction, Swartz said he and his wife felt blessed by God because they were eating dinner at a restaurant Monday night when the storm hit. Their home had no basement, so they would have had nowhere to hide.
"If we'd been here, we'd be dead," he said, adding, "We'll try to pick up the pieces and move on."
The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said dozens of tornadoes struck overnight in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Illinois. The National Weather Service was assessing the exact number and strength of twisters Tuesday. The same storm system brought huge hailstones and powerful winds as far south as the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas and as far north as Wisconsin....

Small farmers may prove invaluable this year as they can manage to protect crops and their outcomes better than larger operations. Local economies should prepare for the possibilities of seasonal food shortages. The produce farmers may prove to be the best outcome for crops. As a rule the growing season for produce is shorter than grain crops. The plants tend to repeat their success in production of vegetables. The produce crops can also be maintained in greenhouses as well.

Svalbard global seed bank is a vital resource, but, if the weather doesn't permit growth of crops, seeds aren't going to valuable at all.

March 7, 2017
By Thomas Geyer

Twisted steel and rubble are all that is left of one of the silos on Jeff Dietz's farm on Wisconsin Avenue in Davenport. Two other silos along with a large cattle shed and utility shed were damaged beyond repair by Monday night's tornadoes.

As storms rolled (click here) through the area and tornadoes danced along the ground Monday night, Jeff Dietz knew something bad was afoot.
“It got real quiet,” said Dietz, 57, who has lived in the same farmhouse at 6535 Wisconsin Avenue in Davenport for 52 years. While he has not farmed the land since his last crop in 2001, he maintained the four silos, a large cattle shed and a large utility shed on the property.
When it got quiet, Dietz said Tuesday as he and friends picked up the debris about his place, “I knew this wasn’t going to be good.”
Dietz said he took a look out a window and saw the sheet metal siding on the cattle barn and shed being blown away.

Another peek out the window and he could tell he’d lost one silo completely while two others lost about 30 feet from their tops. Only the silo with the flat roof survived unscathed.


Kansas winter wheat are planted the year before the expected harvest. This is an example of research conducted to help Kansas farmers with crop yields.

...Date of seeding (click here) greatly affects development of tillers in winter wheat, the source of as much 
Table 1. Winter wheat seeding dates and yields at North Platte.
Seeding dateYield
(bu/ac)
Sept. 22
Sept. 1527
Sept. 2542
as 70% of the grain yield in a normal year. Seeding during the optimum period enables wheat to form sufficient but not excessive tillers. Early seeding results in too many fall tillers, which may compete with each other, become diseased, and deplete soil moisture so that grain yields are low. Late seeding gives plants little time to develop tillers, resulting in an inadequate numbers of spikes (heads) for high yields the following spring....

Yes, the Kansas winter wheat crop is already in the ground.

The winter wheat crop is emerging in Kansas.

Yes, an inferno has just rolled through Kansas with it's winter wheat crop already seeded. The farmers are going to lose their first crop this season and will be facing fiscal decisions NOW!

The last fews days have been interesting.

March 7, 2017
1230.18z
UNISYS Enhanced Infrared Satellite of the North and West Hemisphere (click here)

The intertropical 
convergence zone is attempting to repopulate over South America. The ITCZ has been absent from it's equatorial physics for at least the past month.

March 8, 2017
by Jeremy White and Henry Fountain

After a mild winter across (click here) much of the United States, February brought abnormally high temperatures, especially east of the Rockies. Spring weather arrived more than three weeks earlier than usual in some places, and new research released Wednesday shows a strong link to climate change...

The northern troposphere has become completely bizarre. This satellite below shows the power of the climate crisis. The ITCZ is completely absent of water vapor and the two vortexes in the Pacific off the west coast of North America has soaked up that water vapor.

March 2, 2017
1930.20z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite of the North and West Hemisphere (click here for current 12 hour loop - thank you)

The State of Kansas has become an inferno. It is because of the winds of a vortex that has taken residence in the center of the USA.


Flames and smoke (click here) envelope a grain elevator in Sitka, Kan., early Tuesday, March 7, 2017. Grass fires fanned by gusting winds scorched swaths of Kansas grassland Monday, forcing the evacuations of several towns and the closure of some roads. 

The Latest on wildfires burning in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado (all times local):
12:10 p.m.
Three young friends, (click here) including a couple, were overcome as they tried to steer cattle away from the flames of a wildfire in the Texas Panhandle.
Gray County Judge Richard Peet said Wednesday it appears 20-year-old Cody Crockett was on horseback and his girlfriend, 23-year-old Sydney Wallace, was nearby on foot as fire and smoke swirled around them in Gray County.
Peet says Wallace may have tried to run at the last moment Monday evening but she couldn't escape the smoke. He says she died of smoke inhalation.
Crockett suffered burns, as did 35-year-old Sloan Everett who also was on horseback. The bodies of all three were found close to one another.
A fourth person who died in the Texas Panhandle — 25-year-old Cade Koch (cook) — was attempting to drive home Monday night when smoke from a separate fire enveloped him....

Large Incident Fire Maps (click here)
March 08, 2017


A surreal scene of a glowing tree covered in ash and cools after fire swept through. Firefighters from across Kansas and Oklahoma battle a major wildfire near Protection, Kansas, Monday night and early Tuesday morning. The fire driven by winds gusting up to 50 mph threatened the towns of Protection and Ashland. There were reports of numerous structures lost in the fire. (March 7, 2017) Bo Rader The Wichita Eagle

March 7, 2017
By Bryan Horwath, Michael Pearce, Oliver Morrison, Suzanne Perez Tobias and Time Potter



Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/state/article136909803.html#storylink=cpy
...Fire burned more than 400,000 acres in 21 counties in Kansas. (click here) By late Tuesday, a half-dozen counties were still burning.
“We’re not out of the woods, by any means,” Gov. Sam Brownback said Tuesday afternoon. “We’ve got to stay on top of this.”
Virtually all of Kansas was under a red flag warning on Tuesday. Fire risk is expected to continue through Thursday. Brownback urged residents to avoid roads near the fires, for their own safety.
“This is just too dynamic of a situation that we’re in now,” Brownback said.
An Oklahoma truck driver died after he was overcome by smoke in southern Kansas on Monday night. Another seven people have been injured in fire-related incidents, state officials said, though none of the injuries have been serious....

WS: 2 tornadoes hit Minn., earliest on record (click here)
March 7, 2017
AP and Dana Thiede, KARE

Grand Forks, Minn.  - The National Weather Service (click here) has confirmed that two rare March tornadoes are the earliest to ever strike Minnesota.

Forecasters say the tornado that damaged buildings and took down trees and power lines near Zimmerman Monday evening was the earliest twister recorded in Minnesota. Previously, the earliest tornado ever reported in Minnesota happened on March 18, 1968 in Truman.

Zimmerman is about 35 miles from Minneapolis-St. Paul. Preliminary survey results indicate it was an EF-1 tornado with peak winds estimated at 107 mph that traveled nearly nine miles....

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/state/article136909803.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/state/article136909803.html#storylink=c

International Woman's Day, it is time for

March 8, 2017
by Tierney McAfee

The former first lady (click here) marked International Women’s Day with a surprise visit to 12 female students at a combined middle and high school in Washington, D.C.

Obama had a roundtable talk with the girls at Cardozo Education Campus, several of whom are from the school’s international program for recent immigrants, including some girls from Africa and Latin America.

She announced the visit on Snapchat Wednesday morning, saying: “We’re celebrating International Women’s Day with a group of amazing young women. We’re going to talk about education — the importance of it in their lives and in mine.”

Another snap showed the moment Obama walked into a classroom and surprised the stunned young women, who responded with a chorus of “Oh my Gods!”

“Did you know?” the former first lady said with a smile. “You didn’t know.”

“This school is amazing,” she added as she greeted the girls.

We really do need for a woman to break that last, hardest ceiling.


March 8, 2017
By Peter Walker

Wall Street firm (click here) has fitted a statue of a girl in Lower Manhattan to stare down the well-known bronze charging bull on International Women’s Day.

State Street Global Advisors placed the primary school-aged child squarely in the path of the rampaging beast in a plea to fellow companies for more gender diversity.

More than 85 per cent of financial advisors on Wall Street are said to be men, and State Street says 25 per cent of Russell 3,000 Index companies have no women on their boards.

However, a Morgan Stanley report found that since 2011, more diverse companies outperform less gender-diverse counterparts by an average of 1.5 per cent....

From Mozilla:

March 8, 2017
By Michaela Smiley

On International Women’s Day each year, (click here) we celebrate women in our own lives who we respect and admire, and we remember with gratitude women of history who have championed gender equality. We’re also reminded that there is so much more work to be done. Closing the wage gender gap will take 177 years if we don’t pick up the pace; only 14.6% of CEOs are women; women’s leadership in government is strikingly low; and education access and enrollment continues to lag for girls around the world.

Every gender disparity demands laser focus. And, the internet is a building block on which many solutions can be built. Therefore, digital inclusion — the idea that the Internet is accessible, welcoming and safe for all — is essential so that all people, women included, can both contribute to and also reap the benefits of the open Web....

March 8, 2017
By Kaitlan Collins

Melania Trump (click here) hosted a luncheon in the State Dining Room at the White House Wednesday in honor of International Women’s Day.


The first lady received a standing ovation from the 50 or so guests when she entered the room, according to the pool report. Vice President Mike Pence’s wife Karen Pence, Kellyanne Conway, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Sen. Susan Collins, Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon and Ivanka Trump were all in attendance....

A magnificent finding in the world of Marine Mammal biology.

March 7, 2017
By Carl Engelking

The first underwater images of True’s beaked whales offered insights into their coloration patterns and group behavior.
True’s beaked whale (click here) sightings are so rare, that scientists who devote careers to studying these animals may never actually witness one swimming in the wild.
But thanks to an international team of scientists that compiled True’s beaked whale sightings, we can all watch the first underwater video of True’s beaked whales swimming near Pico Island in the Portuguese Azores. Researcher’s collection also included the first close-up images of a young calf of the same species, and a genetic analyses of two stranded whales....

The truth is the global community needs to set standards through the United Nations that are amendments to the "Law of the Sea" that protects all species including endangered marine mammals.

The global community does not have protections for fisheries. As a result countries that do protect their fisheries are sometimes invaded by illegal fishing vessels. International waters remain a place where exploitation still occurs. The United Nations should recognize this valuable resource and protect it more.

The protections should include ending any dumping into the oceans and seas, especially plastics that never degrade. Three quarters of the reason fisheries are in trouble is because of overfishing. Fisheries can be adversely effected by pollution including floating trash. If the oceans were clean, monitored and protected the fisheries would be far healthier and more abundant.

The oceans are the largest part of Earth's surface, does anyone actually believe if they were pollution free there would ever be overfishing?

First abortions, them contraception, then increased adoption rates and then basic health issues.

Planned Parenthood will survive without Donald Trump's gender bias.

March 6, 2017
By Maggie Haberman

The White House, (click here) concerned about the possible political repercussions of the Republican effort to defund Planned Parenthood, has proposed preserving federal payments to the group if it discontinues providing abortions.

The proposal, which was never made formally, has been rejected as an impossibility by officials at Planned Parenthood, which receives about $500 million annually in federal funding. That money helps pay for women’s health services the organization provides, not for abortion services.

“Let’s be clear: Federal funds already do not pay for abortions,” Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said on Monday. “Offering money to Planned Parenthood to abandon our patients and our values is not a deal that we will ever accept. Providing critical health care services for millions of American women is nonnegotiable.”

But the outreach to allies of Planned Parenthood is a glimpse of the internal struggle inside a White House torn between trying to satisfy the conservative base that elected President Trump and responding to the views of his daughter Ivanka Trump, who urged her father to tread carefully on the Planned Parenthood issue during the Republican primary contest....

When are men going to do their part? They have no problem treating ED, what are they doing about pregnancy? There should be a WARNING LABEL on any ED medication, "Caution: Could cause pregnancy."


March 6, 2017


“My body, my choice.” (click here) So say the signs at the pro-choice marches. It’s a great slogan. Unfortunately it does nothing to promote women’s rights. Feminists, progressives and educated elitist men have sold women a bill of goods.
No one would argue a woman’s rights. I’m just not sure abortion is one of them. One thing is for certain. By taking on the "right" of abortion, men are absolved of any rights as it pertains to a life that is half his. It also effectively absolves him of all his responsibility and dumps it all on the woman.
A little planning and self-control would make abortion a non-issue. Women need to demand that men do their part in proactively preventing an unwanted pregnancy. As long as biology and society’s default position places the lion's share of pregnancies responsibility on the woman, it seems counter productive for women to fight for the right to go it alone.
— Steve Lame, Des Moines