BBC News just called the election for Brexit. “UK votes to leave European Union with 309 out of 382 results declared.”
No time to do instant-analysis tonight, but markets will undoubtedly be in panic-rollercoaster mode tomorrow. This will pass, but there’s a real risk this is the event that pishes the world into the cyclical recession that’s been looming for years now. Let’s hope not.
More tomorrow.
Short answer: Yes.
Medium Answer: Answer cloudy, ask again later.
Early tidings were that “Remain” was polling ahead, enough so that even UKIP head Nigel Farage said it looked likely that Remain would pull out a win. But the “Leave” vote seems to be outperforming in areas where “Remain” was expected to be strong, and I’m not seeing any areas where the reverse is true.
Looks like its going to be a long night for global market watchers…
Update: Leave is currently up by about 800,000 votes. Including Wales which is, I think, a significant surprise.
This week’s roundup of Clinton Corruption is being headlined by Guccifer 2.0 revelations. The stuff released so far is interesting, but (and I say this as someone who thinks Hillary Clinton should be in prison) pretty weak sauce.
Oh sure, it’s nice to have documented proof that the DNC and the media were out to support Clinton and to screw Bernie Sanders, but everyone already knew that.
There are dozens of Clinton shoes (especially from Hillary’s own email server and the Clinton Foundation) still to drop…
Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft.
She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund – doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash.
Then, when she left, she made $21.6 million giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interests – in less than 2 years – secret speeches that she does not want to reveal to the public.
Together, she and Bill made $153 million giving speeches to lobbyists, CEOs, and foreign governments in the years since 2001.
They totally own her, and that will never change.
I can hardly resist throwing up a link to this Kevin D. Williamson National Review piece on Buc-ee’s, can I?
Over the weekend, I stopped to buy gas at a Buc-ee’s in Bastrop, Texas, and was greeted by (in addition to a man dressed as a giant aquatic rodent) an A-frame sign advertising Buc-ee’s version of the minimum wage: cashiers, $12 to $14 an hour; food-service and car-wash help, $13 to $15 an hour; team leaders, $14 to $17 an hour; assistant, $17 an hour and up. Each job came with three weeks paid time off each year, which employees are welcome to use, roll over, or exchange for cash. If you want 40 hours a week, there’s 40 hours a week to be had; if you want more than 40 hours a week, that can happen, too.
Everyone’s needs vary, of course, and I am not among those who believe that a two-income household is ideal for every situation. But I also believe that you can raise a family decently on $70,000 a year in Bastrop, where you can buy a perfectly serviceable house for less than $100,000 and where a nice, new one keeps you under the usual 2.5-times-your-income rule. Assuming a couple of raises and a bit of overtime, a married couple both working at a gas station could bring home something close to a six-figure income between them.
He mentions the kolaches but not the fudge. He also omits something the non-Texan audience wouldn’t be aware of, namely of just how large Buc-ee’s is; the Bastrop location is bigger than most supermarkets…
Imagine that there’s a thoughtful, in-depth introduction here that explains the pros and cons of the Leave and Stay positions.
You’ll have to imagine it, because I have no time to write it and the vote’s tomorrow. Instead, have a quick-and-dirty shotgun scatter of Brexit links.
The European Union’s bureaucracy and paper-parliament were set up to be as insulated as possible from the concerns of actual voters. Representatives to the European Parliament are selected by party elites as a kind of highbrow patronage. They invariably defer to the permanent bureaucracy, which acts like a transnational cartel, one that happens to be composed of governments. As Daniel Hannan, the rare Euroskeptic skunk to infiltrate the garden party that is the EU parliament, put it, “faced with a choice between democracy and supra-nationalism, the EU will always choose supra-nationalism.”
This is more like “this last two months in Jihad,” it’s been so long since I did an update. But there’s a whole host of Orlando updates, and a lot of other jihad-related news, so let’s dig in.
From here on down it’s mostly old news, but maybe you didn’t read it the first time around.
Here’s a lesson in caution when buying Chinese-made goods in the global marketplace.
When it comes to the clothes I wear I’m both particular and cheap. I only wear 100% cotton, because Polyester and other artificial materials irritate my skin. I keep hearing that the new “polyfine” materials feel better, but every time I try to put on a poly/cotton shirt, I instantly go “Nope!” and take it off.
Since I live in Austin (and work in high tech, where I can get away with it), I tend to wear cargo shorts in the spring, summer and fall. I used to buy them at Academy, but they haven’t had any 100% cotton cargo shorts in black the last few times I dropped by.
So I did what everyone does when they can’t buy something locally: I bought from Amazon.
Here are the precise shorts I ordered: All black, the right look, under $20 and 100% cotton.
Or so the Amazon listing said:
So I ordered them, and a few weeks later I get them shipped straight from China. Upon arrival, I see these tags:
(Note that nowhere on the Amazon page did it list “Gaok and Congs” as the manufacturer.) And this is the only material label inside the shorts:
I can’t read Chinese, but I had a firm suspicion what 聚酯纤维 meant in English, and an Internet search confirmed my suspicions. What Amazon sold as “100% cotton” were actually 10% polyester fiber.
There’s always been a bit of caveat emptor when buying goods manufactured abroad, but one of the roles of traditional middle men was verifying the quality and content of goods before accepting them for sale. Amazon’s business model effectively eliminates that quality control role, letting consumers buy directly from global suppliers. This saves money, but frequently Chinese suppliers are willing to forgo such niceties as telling the truth about their products…
Today is a quadruple witching hour for markets, so try not to freak out if there’s more than the usual market volatility today.
More Dwight’s bailiwick than mine (and I think he’s covered two of these), but several stories of interest have popped up:
In case you hadn’t noticed with all the jihad shooting and Hillary corruption and the GLAVEN, the UK is voting next week on whether or not to leave the EU. Here Pat Condell makes the case for Brexit.
“[The EU’s] primary purpose is to eliminate the need for democratic consent, to empower politicians at people’s expense, and to make them our rulers, not our servants.”
“If you can’t remove the people who govern you, you live in a dictatorship, however many fancy labels and buttons and bows they dress it all up in. We cannot remove the people who run the European Union, no matter what they do, so they do what they want.”
“Do we want to live in a strong, free, independent country governed by laws to which the people have consented, or do we want to be a province of a federal dictatorship where we do what we’re told by unelected bureaucrats? When you sweep away all the speculation and verbiage, that is the choice.”
Don’t agree with his view on Ukraine, but the rest seems pretty solid. Also includes a fine slam on Obama.
The Brexit vote occurs June 23.