America

Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Today, however, a detached elite shapes our buildings, and only then do they shape us—mostly to our detriment.

Despite Yellen's best efforts today to basically dismiss any and all data as irrelevant going forward in The Fed's decision-making process, we suspect all eyes (and algos) will be firmly glued to this week's payrolls' data. Will it be another record month for Obama to crow about? Will Mark Zandi do the "told you so dance" to all the trump supporters who seem less exuberant about the recovery? One look at this chart  - and the disastrous trend - and we suspect, sooner-rather-than-later, the fecal matter will be striking the rotating object in America...

Update on the Boston Marathon Bomb Case

Paul Craig Roberts

Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

I am “not isolationist, but I am ‘America First,'” Donald Trump told The New York times last weekend. “I like the expression.”

Of NATO, where the U.S. underwrites three-fourths of the cost of defending Europe, Trump calls this arrangement “unfair, economically, to us,” and adds, “We will not be ripped off anymore.”

[This piece has been adapted from Thomas Frank’s new book, Listen, Liberal, or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (Metropolitan Books).]