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All Three Subindexes, HMI Components Fell in December

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Homebuilders and construction in the housing market. (PHOTO: REUTERS)

The National Association of Home Builder’s gauge of homebuilder sentiment fell to 61 in December from 62 the month prior, missing the median forecast of 63.

“Overall, builders are optimistic about the housing market, although they are reporting concerns with the high price of lots and labor,” said NAHB Chairman Tom Woods, a home builder from Blue Springs, Mo.

All three HMI components of the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) posted losses in December. The index gauges homebuilder sentiment regarding current single-family home sales and sales expectations for the next six months as “good,” “fair” or “poor.”

“For the past seven months, builder confidence levels have averaged in the low 60s, which is in line with a gradual, consistent recovery,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “With job creation, economic growth and growing household formations, we anticipate the housing market to continue to pick up traction as we head into 2016.”

The index measuring sales expectations in the next six months fell two points to 67, the component gauging current sales conditions decreased one point to 66, and the index charting buyer traffic dropped two points to 46.

The National Association of Home Builder’s gauge

Two Classified Emails on Clinton Server Top Secret ‘at Birth’, 1 Remains Today

Hillary-Clinton-Watermark-Silicon-AP

Hillary Rodham Clinton jokes during her keynote address at the Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women in Santa Clara, Calif., on Feb. 24, 2015. (Photo: AP)

Fox News reported that an intelligence community review re-affirmed Hillary Clinton received two classified emails marked “top secret” on her unsecured personal server, despite a challenge to that designation by the State Department and claims made by the former secretary. The report backs up previous reports by PPD last month citing sources claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is focused on two top secret emails that were deemed so at birth.

The emails contained subject matter including a satellite image showing the movement of North Korean missiles and a top secret U.S. drone strike.

Two sources familiar with the review told Fox the dispute over whether the two emails were classified at the highest level at birth is a “settled matter.” The agencies that owned and originated that intelligence–the CIA and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA–reviewed the emails to determine how they should be properly stored. The sources, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said that not only were the emails marked “top secret” when they hit Clinton’s server, one of them remains “top secret” even to this day.

POLITICO, the leftwing Beltway news site, reported last month that the intelligence community was backing away from the classification of the two emails, a revelation that would’ve no doubt helped the secretary’s presidential election prospects. However, PPD reported quite the opposite, claiming instead the FBI was expanding their investigation. The POLITICO report clearly contradicted that account, but the latter now appears to have been the more accurate.

Meanwhile, the State Department continues to challenge the intelligence community’s conclusions though they are aware of the review of all the emails. Unfortunately for Mrs. Clinton, the State Department has no authority to change or challenge the classification because the emails and content in question did not originate at their agency.

Fox News reported that an intelligence community

LAUSD-Superintendent-Ramon-Cortines

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines. (Photo: AP)

All Los Angeles Unified School District schools have been closed after receipt of a “credible terror threat,” according to school district and Los Angeles Police Department officials.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines said an “electronic” threat was made against “many schools,” while sources tell PPD a phone call from a board member prompted him to make the decision.

The district, which is the second largest in the nation, is home to over 900 schools–including 200 charter schools–that are attended by over 600,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. It spans 720 square miles including Los Angeles and all or part of more than 30 smaller cities and some unincorporated areas.

“We need to cooperation of the whole of Los Angeles today,” school board President Steve Zimmer said at a press conference Tuesday. “We need families and neighbors to work together with our schools and with our employees to make sure our schools are safe throughout today.”

The development and move comes less than two weeks after a terror attack in San Bernardino, some 50 miles to the east, left 14 dead and 21 wounded.

“I think it is important that I take this precaution based upon what has happened recently and what has happened in the past,” Cortines said. “It was not to one school, two schools or three schools, but to many schools. It was ‘to students at school.'”

Cortines said LAUSD receives threats all the time, but this was a “rare” threat.

All Los Angeles Unified School District schools

John-Kerry-Sergei-Lavrov

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, right. (Photo: AP)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he will “hope” the meetings with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin will produce “common ground” on Syria. Prior to the meeting with Lavrov, which is shortly before another with Putin, Kerry said both Russia and the U.S. believe the Islamic State is a “threat to every country.”

“The world benefits when powerful nations can find common ground and I hope today we can find some common ground,” Kerry said. “These are the worst of terrorists, they leave no choice but for civilized nations to join together and push them back and destroy them.”

Lavrov also said he hoped the two could also address the ongoing strife in Ukraine with Kerry. However, the real talk coming from the Pentagon this week raised concern over Russia’s commitment to resolving the Syrian conflict. Officials said Monday only 3 in 10 Russian airstrikes are targeting ISIS fighters, while U.S.-Sunni allies are demanding Washington commit to toppling and replacing Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Putin rejected aa statement of principles released after last week’s meeting of Syrian opposition political and armed factions in Riyadh, which he said included “terrorist groups.”

Russia launched an air campaign to bolster Mr Assad’s government back in September, claiming it has only targeted “terrorists” and, most of all, jihadist militants from Islamic State. But activists say its strikes have mainly hit Western-backed rebel groups. Further, there have been mixed signals to say the least over whether Russia is supplying what is left of the rag-tag Free Syrian Army with weapons and supplies. Last week, Putin said he gave such an order, but his spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied it only a few hours later.

“I have nothing to add to what’s already been said,” Peskov told the BBC, who was attempting to clear up the confusion. “I have nothing to add and I don’t want to explore this subject.”

Meanwhile, a Russian navy ship fired warning shots at a Turkish fishing boat on Sunday in yet another dangerous incident between Russia and the NATO member nation. It follows Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter jet in November. Russia complained that the Turkish fishing boat strayed too close to one of its destroyers off the coast of Syria, resulting in the warning shots and threats of “potentially disastrous consequences” for Turkey.

Secretary of State John Kerry said he

Empire-State-Manufacturing-survey

Empire State Manufacturing Survey (PHOTO: New York Federal Reserve)

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey, the New York Federal Reserve’s gauge of manufacturing activity in the region, remained stuck in contraction territory in December. The gauge rose to –4.59 from -10.74 in November, though it widely missed the median forecast and remained in contraction for fifth consecutive month.

Wall Street had expected to the gauge to rise to -6. Readings above 0 point to expansion, while those below indicate contraction.

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey, the New

Consumers-Target-Reuters

Consumers shop at Target on Black Friday. (Photo: Reuters)

The Labor Department reported on Tuesday that the Consumer Price Index (CPI), their gauge to measure inflation at the consumer level, was flat in November and matched expectations.

Excluding the volatile food and energy components, prices gained 0.2% in November, which also matched the median forecast.

The Labor Department reported on Tuesday that

Obama-San-Bernardino-Guns

President Barack Obama pauses while making a statement on Wednesday’s mass shooting in San Bernandino, Calif., in the Oval Office of the White House, left, while law enforcement, right, searches for a suspect in a mass shooting at a social services center Wednesday in San Bernardino, Calif. (Photo: AP /Evan Vucci/Chris Carlson)

The Obama administration is not only at odds with America, as founded, but also woefully out of touch with ordinary Americans, and it is deceitful or delusional (or both) on guns.

President Obama twisted himself into a pretzel to deny that the San Bernardino, California, massacre was committed by Islamic terrorists. Even as facts accumulated — making the obvious undeniable — he continued to cling to the preposterous narrative that it was workplace violence. It’s those high-stress jobs, you see, that cause otherwise peaceful people to fire up their time machines and go back to buy weapons to kill dozens of people who have nothing to do with their workplace grievances.

The ever-clueless White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, referring to recent shootings and the San Bernardino terror attack, said: “The more that we see this kind of violence on our streets the more people go out and buy guns. And that is both ironic and tragic.”

In the first place, these liberals have never been able to refute the axiomatic truth that making our gun laws more restrictive would not have prevented the various mass shootings they invariably use to launch new salvos against gun ownership. So the fact that they even raise the issue after these incidents is obscenely dishonest, opportunistic and hyper-partisan.
In the second place, guns are not the cause of these shootings. Indeed, in many cases, guns could help prevent them or reduce injury and death. It is no accident that these evildoers often unleash their hellfire in gun-free zones.

In view of the facts, how could Earnest call it “ironic and tragic” that in response to these acts of violence, more people buy guns? It is not ironic, because people rightly believe they will be safer with guns, and the American people know that Obama and his ilk want to confiscate their weapons, which they make clear every time there’s a mass killing involving guns. It’s not tragic, either, because increasing gun ownership is quintessentially American and constitutional, and it increases the safety of the American people. What’s tragic about that?

What is tragic is that this administration uses these terrible incidents, whether terrorism-related or not, to distort and politicize the gun issue. What is tragic is that it selectively cares about shootings depending on the identity of the perpetrators and victims and the motivation of the killers.

The administration barely blinks an eye at all the black-on-black gun shootings around the country, especially in Obama’s hometown of Chicago, though far more people are killed by those often-gang-related gun killings than the mass shootings Obama always politicizes. It begins federal investigations when there’s a shooting by a rogue cop but ignores the chronic inner-city murders where cops are not involved. It’s not the killings that Obama cares about but his agenda. He showcases one type and ignores others to serve his political obsessions.

If President Obama cared about the safety and security of the American people, would he go out of his way to deny it when Islamic terrorism is obviously the cause and ignore that there is a disturbingly increasing pattern of such on American soil? Would he deceitfully pretend that ready access to guns and excessive gun ownership are the proximate cause of blatant acts of Islamic shootings?

To deny that Islamists, including those here at home, are at war with the United States and represent a threat to Americans puts Americans at greater risk. To make it harder for Americans to buy weapons to defend themselves puts Americans at greater risk. Why does this administration want to put Americans at greater risk?

Only God knows why Obama pursues his destructive policies, but more and more Americans realize that he is putting them at greater risk by trying to make them less safe personally and degrading our national security and our leadership presence around the world.

As ordinary Americans are fully aware of Obama’s dangerous policies, it is neither ironic nor tragic that they are running out and gobbling up all the weapons they can get their hands on. It is eminently rational behavior for people interested in self-preservation.

So please continue to spew nonsense, Mr. Earnest, and even more Americans will wake up to this administration’s recklessness.

[mybooktable book=”the-emmaus-code-finding-jesus-in-the-old-testament” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

The Obama administration is not only at

Obama-Paris-Climate-Change-Conference

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the Paris Climate Change conference on Nov. 30, 2015. (Photo: AP)

“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Those were Winston Churchill’s words of battle-weary comfort when World War II started decisively shifting in the Allies’ favor.

They could also be applied to the climate change accord just reached in Paris — 196 countries all agreeing to cut or limit greenhouse gas emissions. The long slog to slow global warming and avoid its worst environmental, economic and security consequences is hard and often thankless political work.

Republicans running for president are obviously not keen on picking up that shovel. They treat the issue as not a problem, a problem for others to solve or unsolvable. Ted Cruz: “Climate change is not science. It’s religion.” Donald Trump: “I don’t believe in climate change.” Ben Carson at least concedes its existence but says that there is “no overwhelming science” that humans are involved.

It may be true that the electorate is focused on the more immediate and dramatic threat of terrorism, and not just Republicans. Global warming can seem boring by comparison.

But terrorism was pretty much ignored until Sept. 11, 2001. Then disaster struck domestically, and the public erupted. Trying to prevent the awful things from happening in the future is what mature leaders do. Sadly, their efforts go largely unappreciated by a public too busy or detached to take notice.

It would be unfair to paint all Republicans as limp on climate change. A survey released in September found that 54 percent of self-described Republican conservatives believe that climate change is happening and that humans play a part in it. Only 9 percent don’t think the planet is warming. (Other polls show far lower levels of concern among Republicans, it must be noted.)

The survey was ordered by Jay Faison, a wealthy Republican from North Carolina determined to sell his party on the need for confronting climate change. Faison created a group called ClearPath to frame the issue in conservative terms.

Its website rumbles against government efforts, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. But it promotes the solar boom, noting that from 2010 to 2014, the price of solar energy dropped 50 percent. That’s something conservatives, liberals, libertarians, independents and Whigs would all applaud.

And some of the ideas are quite interesting. The survey found that 54 percent of conservative Republicans would support a tax on carbon if the money collected were rebated. A tax on carbon is a solid way to discourage use of fossil fuels.

Climate change activists criticized the Paris agreement as too little too late. They are correct that it’s not a cure. (Even if the promises are kept, the Greenland ice sheets, for example, probably will remain perilously close to collapsing.)

What the agreement could do, though, is make the bad things happen more slowly and perhaps buy time. And it will give a boost to the good developments — improvements in green energy technology, conservation and the very exciting field of “negative emissions” technology (taking planet-warming gases out of the air).

Here’s where American ingenuity can save the world and make big money at the same time. That’s a conservative talking point, free for the taking.

Think Churchill. The agreement is not the end of the problem. But it’s a lot better than inadequate. It gives hope that something resembling victory is possible. A sense of futility makes people not want to try. Churchill’s brilliance was giving people optimism without sugarcoating the work ahead.

So think “end of the beginning.” The struggle to avoid the most frightening results of global warming has just begun in earnest.

Churchill's words could also be applied to

Supreme Court

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (Photo: AP)

Among the many sad signs of our time are the current political and media attacks on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for speaking the plain truth on a subject where lies have been the norm for years.

The case before the High Court is whether the use of race as a basis for admitting students to the University of Texas at Austin is a violation of the 14th Amendment’s requirement for government institutions to provide “equal protection of the laws” to all.

Affirmative action is supposed to be a benefit to black and other minority students admitted with lower academic qualifications than some white students who are rejected. But Justice Scalia questioned whether being admitted to an institution geared to students with higher-powered academic records was a real benefit.

Despite much media spin, the issue is not whether blacks in general should be admitted to higher ranked or lower ranked institutions. The issue is whether a given black student, with given academic qualifications, should be admitted to a college or university where he would not be admitted if he were white.

Much empirical research over the years has confirmed Justice Scalia’s concern that admitting black students to institutions for which their academic preparation is not sufficient can be making them worse off instead of better off.

I became painfully aware of this problem more than 40 years ago, when I was teaching at Cornell University, and discovered that half the black students there were on some form of academic probation.

These students were not stupid or uneducable. On the contrary, the average black student at Cornell at that time scored at the 75th percentile on scholastic tests. Their academic qualifications were better than those of three-quarters of all American students who took those tests.

Why were they in trouble at Cornell, then? Because the average Cornell student in the liberal arts college at that time scored at the 99th percentile. The classes taught there — including mine — moved at a speed geared to the verbal and mathematical level of the top one percent of American students.

The average white student would have been wiped out at Cornell. But the average white student was unlikely to be admitted to Cornell, in the first place. Nor was a white student who scored at the 75th percentile.

That was a “favor” reserved for black students. This “favor” turned black students who would have been successful at most American colleges and universities into failures at Cornell.
None of this was peculiar to Cornell. Black students who scored at the 90th percentile in math had serious academic problems trying to keep up at M.I.T., where other students scored somewhere within the top 99th percentile.

Nearly one-fourth of these black students with stellar qualifications in math failed to graduate from M.I.T., and those who did graduate were concentrated in the bottom tenth of the class.

There were other fine engineering schools around the country where those same students could have learned more, when taught at a normal pace, rather than at a breakneck speed geared to students with extremely rare abilities in math.

Justice Scalia was not talking about sending black students to substandard colleges and universities to get an inferior education. You may in fact get a much better education at an institution that teaches at a pace that you can handle and master. In later life, no one is going to care how fast you learned something, so long as you know it.

Mismatching students with educational institutions is a formula for needless failures. The book “Mismatch,” by Sander and Taylor is a first-rate study of the hard facts. It shows, for example, that the academic performances of black and Hispanic students rose substantially after affirmative action admissions policies were banned in the University of California system.
Instead of failing at Berkeley or UCLA, these minority students were now graduating from other campuses in the University of California system. They were graduating at a higher rate, with higher grades, and now more often in challenging fields like math, science and technology.

Do the facts not matter to those who are denouncing Justice Scalia? Does the actual fate of minority students not matter to the left, as much as their symbolic presence on a campus?

Among the many sad signs of our

Bill Cosby Performs At The Treasure Island

Comedian/actor Bill Cosby performs at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino on September 26, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Bill Cosby (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Entertainer and comedian Bill Cosby filed a lawsuit alleging seven of the woman who accused him of sexual assault engaged in “nothing more than an opportunistic attempt to extract financial gain from him.” Cosby, 78, is seeking an unspecified amount in monetary damages and claimed the women inflicted emotional distress.

In July, PPD reported that Bill Cosby admitted to drugging several women with the intent to have sex with them, his favorability has plummeted among Americans. According to a recent survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports, just 21% of American adults now have a favorable view of Bill Cosby. Now, as a result of the revelations, Boston University announced Monday that it was rescinding an honorary degree they awarded to entertainer Bill Cosby in May 2014.

“Mr. Cosby’s admitted conduct, which the University learned about only after awarding him the degree, demonstrates that his character fails to reflect the integrity and virtues that the University values and esteems in members of its community, and in those persons the University holds up for this particular honor,” a statement released by BU said.

The university said in the statement the board of trustees voted to rescind the degree “based on a determination, supported by Mr. Cosby’s sworn deposition testimony, that his treatment of women has brought significant and lasting discredit upon himself and is inconsistent with the University’s mission and values.”

In 2005, Cosby admitted to obtaining quaaludes — which are no longer distributed — with the intent of giving them to women he wanted to have sex with. He further admitted to giving the drug to several women in testimony for a sexual-abuse case filed by former Temple University employee Andrea Constand. In documents obtained by The Associated Press, who sought the contents of the deposition in court, Cosby said he obtained seven quaalude prescriptions in the 1970s during questioning by Constand’s lawyer, who also asked if he had kept the powerful sedatives through the 1990s, after they were banned.

The outspoken comedian has been accused by more than two dozen women of sexual misconduct in episodes dating back more than four decades. Cosby has never been charged with a crime, and the statute of limitations on most of the accusations has expired. Cosby resigned in December from the board of trustees at Temple University, where he was the popular face of the Philadelphia school in advertisements, fundraising campaigns and commencement speeches.

Entertainer and comedian Bill Cosby filed a

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