What?
2022 Already?
To all you regular Pencil-Necks out there, Big Liberal
Art Monkey has been remiss in providing his usual brand
of scrawls the past week as he's beset by illness. I
don't know what the hell I got but there's
every
possibility
it's the Big O. (And good luck finding a test.) Considering
I've been triple vaxxed this has come as quite a shock
and
a disappointment.
But worry not as the only symptom thus far has been a gruesome
sore throat and even that is ameliorating every day. I
will survive.
-------------------
Today marks the 17th year of the old Raging Pencil's
existence so, with the above in mind, I thought I'd dredge
the archives for a New Year's themed 'toon to use as
a place-holder but,
nope,
it
apparently has not been my habit to remark the temporal
occasion. The
'toon you see above is from 2014 and it's about as close
as I ever got, though you might check the Classic Cartoon
link below for a prediction of things that came to pass.
Enjoy.
--------------------
Now that's it's 2022 it's time to begin saving Democracy,
only we'll ave to do it without Betty White.
-------------------
Let me preface the following by stating the obvious,
which is that the news media prefers to paint a dour
economic picture in the U.S. Lately they've focused
on inflation and American really
people worry about their beer money.
But is the U.S. really in such bad economic shape?
Let's run the numbers.
To begin with, Gross Domestic Product in Biden's first
year is at 5.5%. That's almost double the GDP of first
year results of Presidents over the last 40 years.
(This is, of course, a partial indication of what a
crappy job Trump did as "leader", though
Mr. Obama didn't fare nearly as well in his first year
thanks to Dubya's world-wide recession which left little
to work with.)
In addition, if you compare the first year performance
of every President in the past 40 years the Biden administration
bests them all in the following categories, save one:
Gross Domestic Product
Profit Growth
S&P 500 Performance
Consumer Credit
Non-Farm Payrolls
Manufacturing Jobs
Business Productivity
Dollar Appreciation
S&P 500 Relative Performance
Per capita disposable income (#2)
What this adds up to is that U.S. financial markets
are out-pacing world markets by the biggest margin
since 2000. We are the envy of the industrialized world.
If Build Back Better is miraculously passed we can
expect similar results in Year Two. If not, it's not
Biden's fault. It's Manchin and Sinema's. Full-stop.
----------------
See you Monday!
=Lefty=
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