And so it begins.

The Obama administration will begin to tap federal retiree programs to help fund operations after the government loses its ability Monday to borrow more money from the public, adding urgency to efforts in Washington to fashion a compromise over the debt.

Rather than find somewhere to cut spending, Obama and Geithner will start raiding pension funds of federal retirees. No doubt they feel that this will cause the seniors and unions to start pressuring the GOP to cave on allowing increased borrowing from China to replace increased borrowing domestically.

I love this part.

Geithner, who has already suspended a program that helps state and local government manage their finances, will begin to borrow from retirement funds for federal workers. The measure won’t have an impact on retirees because the Treasury is legally required to reimburse the program.

Sure, for this and the Social Security IOUs the government can just print enough money to cover the debt. The money might only be worth 25 cents on the dollar to what it was the day before, but hey that’s just a technicality.

Another gem.

The Obama administration has warned that it is dangerous to make a vote on raising the debt limit contingent upon other proposals. But Boehner is demanding that Congress use the debt vote as a way to bring down government spending.

Funny, it seems like Obama’s going away party for Osama is being used as an excuse that Obama should be given anything he wants, including a “clean” debt ceiling vote. So he can tie OBL to it, but the GOP shouldn’t tie anything like oh let’s say cutting spending to it.

I hope a significant percentage of average Americans can see through this nonsense.

Just like when we have bad housing data or jobs numbers over here and it’s always called ‘worse than expected’, we have the same situation with the PIGS – well at least the PIG – across the pond, according to Forbes.

The European Union says the debt loads of Greece, Ireland and Portugal will be much bigger than previously forecast, adding to fears that international bailouts are failing to solve the region’s crisis.

Note the wording used. It’s as though the bailouts were supposed to solve the crisis without Greece having to do anything other than take the money. As an aside, it strikes me the same as so many liberal causes over here – public schools, Head Start, etc. – where reform is unheard of even as more and more money is demanded.

It sounds like it’s time for another round of promised austerity announcements, followed by riots and fire-bombings, followed by more good money flushed down the the toilet after bad, followed by more ‘surprisingly bad’ news, ….

A European Central Bank official said Greece hasn’t done enough to meet the terms of its bailout agreement, a warning of as European leaders consider whether to give the stricken country more help.

The gist of the rest of the story is that Greece made some small moves, but hasn’t really bit the bullet like it needs to. Of course that won’t stop them from demanding even more handouts from Germany et al.

The NY Times is reporting that the IRS is firing a warning shot across the bow of donors to 501(c)(4) groups engaging in political advocacy by sending letters to five unnamed donors saying that their donations might be subject to gift taxes. In addition to reading between the lines as to how Obama and the IRS could manipulate this to Democratic advantage, it’s also interesting to examine how the NYT spins the story.

Big donors like David H. Koch and George Soros could owe taxes on their millions of dollars in contributions to nonprofit advocacy groups that are playing an increasing role in American politics.
…
These advocacy groups have been drawing more scrutiny, from President Obama as well as others, as they have proliferated and funneled vast sums of money in support of campaigns and causes, without having to publicly disclose their donors.

This comes on the heels of Democrats announcing that they – because Republicans do it – are planning to use secret money in the 2012 election. Gee, of the two people named in the first paragraph, I wonder which one of them is more likely to draw IRS scrutiny?

After naming Koch and Soros in the first paragraph, let’s see how balanced the NYT is in the rest of the article.
- Paragraph 4: Crossroads GPS / Karl Rove
- Paragraph 4: Americans for Prosperity / Koch brothers
- Paragraph 5: No comment from the Koch brothers or Soros
- Paragraph 14: Rove and the Kochs and their groups get another mention
- Paragraph 15: Only if you make it this far, after several instances of naming non-liberal groups, do they admit that liberals are doing it too.

Democrats have embraced the model, too. Bill Burton, Mr. Obama’s former deputy press secretary, was skewered by critics of these groups for creating Priorities USA Action to help Democrats. In 2009 and 2010, Mr. Soros, the billionaire investor, donated more than $12 million to advocacy groups.

But even this is completely misleading of the true situation. The article reads like this when you put the pieces together:
- Obama was a great fund-raiser for the 2008 election.
- Republicans started using all these shadowy donations in response.
- Purely out of fairness for the election process, the Democrats had to follow suit.

It’s as if George Soros had never spent a political dime until after the Kochs and Rove started doing it. And there’s no mention of Peter Lewis or any others who’ve donated tens of millions to liberal political groups for the past decade.

From the diaries by Erick

As so often seem to be the case, the GOP doesn’t follow the Democratic playbook when it comes to obstruction. They caved when it came to a vote last week on the nomination of Jack McConnell as a US District Court Judge. He’s only 52 or 53, so we can look forward to decades of his rulings.

Among the items on his resume are being the unpaid director of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island and being involved in successful tobacco litigation, for which he’s still due to receive $2-3M/year for another 13 years. He’s been a trial lawyer for 25 years.

It’s not difficult to figure out what we can expect in terms of his judicial philosophy.

Read More →

I guess it all depends on your point of view.

United Steelworkers Union “Sun Council” president Jerry Dugan stood outside the Sunoco shareholders’ meeting … to tell reporters that … Sunoco CEO Lynn Elsenhans seems to want to sell or close the Philadelphia and Marcus Hook refineries — a move that would put 1,600 employees out of work.

“She just wants to be a marketer, meaning selling gas in the gas stations,” says Dugan. “She has no interest whatsoever to produce gasoline in our petrochemical refineries.”

Are they going to organize union thugs to protest at Obama events that his policies causing gas prices to rise are driving down demand, so shutting some of these facilities is inevitable?

Maybe the NRLB can come in and tell them they can’t close the facilities. If they can tell Boeing they have to keep a WA plant open, can’t they do the same with Sunoco in Philly?

As week 7 of the ‘days not weeks’ war nears its close, we get a few updates from meetings in Rome that Secretary of State Clinton is participating in along with representatives of 21 other countries and various international organizations.

“Everyone is always impatient. We expect things to be done immediately in our very fast world,” Clinton said.

Gee, she didn’t have a problem with her boss promising everything would be over in a matter of days, but now we’re supposed to be patient.

Clinton met with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini ahead of the meeting on Libya, which focused on financially helping the rebels, who say they need $1.5 billion in the coming months just for food, medical and other basic supplies.
…
Clinton said she would be formally presenting the U.S. pledge to provide $25 million in surplus, nonlethal goods to support and protect the rebels.

It’ll only take 59 other countries to also kick in $25M in order to reach the goal. No problem. Maybe the rebels are overestimating their needs, but at the same time we were promised that Europe would take the lead, so they should be kicking in more than we are anyway, right? And BTW it seems this is just to get through the next few months, not necessarily however many days / weeks / months / years it takes to bring this to a close.

With NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen among the participants, Frattini said “military pressure is not a goal per se but it is a very important tool.”

Since the uprising against Gadhafi broke out in mid-February, the two sides have largely been locked in a stalemate. A U.S. and now NATO-led bombing campaign, launched in mid-March, has kept Gadhafi’s forces from advancing to the east, but has failed to give the rebels a clear battlefield advantage.

NATO said earlier this week its warplanes will keep up the pressure on Gadhafi’s regime as long as it takes to end the violence in Libya.

Frattini’s remarks reflected increasing realization by NATO mission participants that air strikes and other military action alone won’t do the job of ending Gadhafi’s relentless assault on his people, and that funding the opposition as well as working for the Libyan leader’s ouster could be the key to success.

“Stalemate”, “as long as it takes” – next thing you know we’ll be hearing the ‘q’ word. Wait, never mind – here it is. Sorry Minister Juppe, I think we’re already there.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, whose country is at the forefront of the military campaign in Libya, has said the military intervention must end “as rapidly as possible,” and warned that sending in international ground troops would set the stage for a “quagmire.”

And Frattini has said while it was impossible to set a date for an end to NATO’s military operation the “political goal is for military action to cease as soon as possible.”

Haven’t we heard all this sort of political claptrap before? In addition to his ‘days not weeks’ promise, wasn’t candidate Obama always demanding that Bush set timelines in Iraq and Afghanistan and promising that as CinC he wouldn’t get us into military action that didn’t have a clear plan / mission / end game? We’re more than a month and a half into this, and still no one has the slightest clue what the goal is, much less any plan to meet it.

Lastly, Secretary Clinton’s comments at the start of the article remind me of the close of a famous movie scene. Aren’t we looking more and more like this poor guy, except that we’re bleeding cash?

“We have made it abundantly clear that the best way to protect civilians is for Gadhafi to cease his ruthless, brutal attack on civilians from the west to the east, to withdraw from the cities that he is sieging and attacking and to leave power,” Clinton said. “This is the outcome we are seeking.”

Here are two examples from this weekend. The titles are:
Obama’s McCain resolution demands ‘American’ parents
and
Online ‘birth certificate’ document ‘was changed’

In the first one, they say Obama’s bill in 2008 requires two American parents.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that the U.S. Senate didn’t take up a resolution on Barack Obama’s status as a “natural born Citizen” in 2008 – as members did for GOP candidate Sen. John McCain while both were seeking the U.S. presidency.

The Democrat might not have qualified under the requirements the Senate, including Obama, a co-sponsor and then-senator, put in the resolution, including the demand that the candidate have “American citizen” parents.

If you jump to the link to see the text of that bill, you find what they are talking about.

…
Whereas there is no evidence of the intention of the Framers or any Congress to limit the constitutional rights of children born to Americans serving in the military nor to prevent those children from serving as their country’s President;
…
Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born to American citizens on an American military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936: …

Now you can see how stupid their argument is. McCain was born of American parents and so is a natural-born citizen. Nowhere does it indicate that it’s only valid because BOTH of them are Americans.

In the second one, the title is even more misleading. It starts out ominously.

A computer expert who analyzed the online image of Barack Obama’s purported Certificate of Live Birth for WND confirmed there are anomalies inconsistent with a simple scanning process, and there is evidence it has been manipulated, but there’s no way to determine exactly what may have been modified.

The end result is that while it is known there were changes, the full extent of operations that were done to the image cannot be determined at this point.

But if you read the rest of the article, the expert says there’s no way to know without seeing the original, but the layers etc. are consistent with trying to enhance the copy. That would make sense if we have a 50-year old typewritten document that could be a touch faded and they are trying to darken the copy to make it more readable.

So while it’s incredibly fishy that Obama has hid so much for so long and is still hiding so many other things, just lying about what is there doesn’t do anything except make the birthers look like blithering idiots.

This sad story came out last week. Princeton had a popular Spanish (as in “actually from Spain”) lecturer named Antonio Colvo in the Spanish Dept for past decade. Unfortunately for him, a couple of grad students and another lecturer decided he needed to go.

His offenses? Well they are really quite severe … if you’re a thin-skinned spoiled brat who can’t stand criticism. The second one is a relatively common Spanish expression by the way.

Calvo once raised his voice in a meeting with a female graduate student, who interpreted the confrontation as “aggressive behavior,” the pal said.

Another incident apparently involved a grad student whom Calvo chided, “You’re spending too much time touching your balls. Why don’t you go to work?”

Princeton seems to be trying to whitewash it (pun intended), whereas the true story seems to be quite nasty. Not renewing his contract at the end of the semester would be one thing, but the way they handled it showed a complete lack of class.

On Friday, April 8, a representative of the administration, essentially a security guard, entered Antonio’s office (without informing either him or anyone else in the department more than a few minutes beforehand), demanded his keys and told him to leave. He was not “on leave,” and certainly not for “personal” reasons,” as per Nassau Hall’s press release. This is a euphemism for their having cancelled his contract against the wishes of the department.

So the dept wanted to keep him, but Princeton sent in a rent-a-cop in the closing weeks of the semester to physically kick him out with no notice to him or to the dept. And Princeton sponsored his work visa, so kicking him off campus meant kicking him out of the country.

Four days later he was dead by his own hand. The PC crowd at Princeton should be proud.

Obama and his fellow liberals are falling all over themselves to backtrack on their votes against raising the debt limit under Bush.

Until today, I had to hand the hypocrisy crown to Obama, who said in 2006 that Bush’s request to increase the debt limit was “a sign of leadership failure”. Now that HE is the “leader” (using the term loosely), it must be a sign of leadership greatness. Go figure.

When you’re dealing with more flips than a diving meet and more flops than a soccer match it’s hard to stand above the crowd, but James Clyburn has managed to do just that.

Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn (S.C.) said through a spokeswoman: “My vote was in protest of Bush’s unwise and obscene tax cuts. The circumstances today are entirely different.”

Let’s take him at his word, even though that’s usually a mistake. He’s saying that it’s okay to vote to create financial Armageddon as long as you’re casting it as a protest vote. But on top of that, doesn’t his reason for casting that protest vote still exist since Obama signed off on extending those “unwise and obscene” tax cuts?

The rating scale used by the Washington Post fact checker consists of 1-4 Pinocchios for lies, a Gepetto checkmark for 100% truthfulness, or a teetering scale if it’s unclear.

The latest piece there about Obama’s position on Libya starts with quotes in Boston Globe interviews from Senators Obama, Biden, and Clinton from 2007 saying that Bush had better not launch any sort of military action without first getting Congressional approval.

He adds that Gingrinch seems to be flipping and flopping (not sure why that’s in there), but he also notes that the Iraq War did have Congressional approval, whereas Clinton did not when sending troops to Haiti in 1993, launching two weeks of airstrikes in Bosnia in 1995, and doing four days of bombing in Iraq in 1998. (Apparently Obama is following the precedent that only Republican Presidents require Congressional approval to act.)

In trying to rate Obama’s truthfulness, he sums it up with:

This is a tough one to judge on the Pinocchio scale, because it does not involve an outright falsehood. This is more of a flip-flop, since we cannot find much consistency between Obama’s 2007 statement and his current stance on the Libya intervention. So we will, for the first time, award an upside-down Pinocchio, signifying a change in a previously held position. On the Libya war, where you sit is where you stand.

Today Obama made it perfectly clear, to use one of his favorite phrases, that a ground invasion of Libya ain’t gonna happen.

Obama was asked in an interview with the Spanish-language network Univision if a land invasion would be out of the question in the event air strikes fail to dislodge Gadhafi from power. Obama replied that it was “absolutely” out of the question.

Asked what the exit strategy is, he didn’t lay out a vision for ending the international action, but rather said: “The exit strategy will be executed this week in the sense that we will be pulling back from our much more active efforts to shape the environment.”

Okay, so we’re going to pretty much done over there within a week. But on the same day comes this news from North Carolina.

We’ve seen Camp Lejuene Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan and now they are joining the fight against Libya.

About 2,200 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, or 26th MEU will take part. Their mission is to help end the violence directed at the Libyan people.

Now I know not all Marines are infantry, but can someone explain why we’re shipping more than 2,000 Marines over for an operation what will be done by the time they get there and are in-processed?

Not that we see much news of it here where the MSM is in Obama’s pocket, but in the UK the reporting is just a wee bit more open. We already know the Arab League flipped and flopped as soon as the first missile was launched, but how about our western allies? Here are some snippets from this overnight Daily Mail piece to give some insight on that.

…
A German military spokesman said it was recalling two frigates and AWACS surveillance plane crews from the Mediterranean, after fears they would be drawn into the conflict if NATO takes over control from the U.S.
…
Yesterday a war of words erupted between the U.S. and Britain after the U.K. government claimed Muammar Gaddafi is a legitimate target for assassination.
…
President Barack Obama, seeking to avoid getting bogged down in a war in another Muslim country, said on Monday Washington would cede control of operations against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces within days, handing the reins over to NATO.

But Germany and European allies remain unwilling to have NATO take on a military operation that theoretically has nothing to do with the defence of Europe.
…
France, which launched the initial air strikes on Libya on Saturday, has argued against giving the U.S.-led NATO political control over an operation in an Arab country, while Turkey has called for limits to any alliance involvement.
…
Meanwhile the head of the Italian Senate’s defence affairs committee, Gianpiero Cantoni, said the original French anti-NATO stance was motivated by a desire to secure oil contracts with a future Libyan government.
…
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu suggested that air strikes launched after a meeting in Paris hosted by France on Saturday had gone beyond what had been sanctioned by a U.N. Security Council resolution.
…
Adding pressure to the already fractured alliance, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has also reiterated a warning that Italy would take back control of airbases it has authorised for use by allies for operations over Libya unless a NATO coordination structure was agreed.
…
Mr Obama has not directly discussed the military action with British Prime Minister David Cameron since it began on Saturday – an omission that would have been unthinkable under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
…

So let’s see… It doesn’t appear that the US, the UK, France, Italy, and Germany see anything eye to eye here, with whining from Turkey added for good measure. And it appears Obama was too busy vacationing to even chat with his UK counterpart up front. Amazing.

It’s almost quaint to look back on the brief statement the President gave announcing the war action. A “unified” message, eh?

In this effort, the United States is acting with a broad coalition that is committed to enforcing United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which calls for the protection of the Libyan people. That coalition met in Paris today to send a unified message, and it brings together many of our European and Arab partners.

Last week he said the action there would last days, not weeks, and that we’d just be in a supporting role as others led the way.

Hmmm…. I wonder then why Illinois Air National Guard folks are being deployed to Libya. (I guess they really mean Italy.) Won’t we be finished by the time they get there? Shouldn’t whoever is going to be in charge ask for this help before we disrupt these families’ lives in such a way?

Wholesale prices skyrocketed last month. The price of vegetables was up 50%. With $4/gallon gas, everything will keep going up.

Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years. Excluding those volatile categories, inflation was tame.

I love the last line. Translation: “Other than the places it hits you every day, inflation’s not really that bad.”

Meanwhile, housing starts were – you guessed it – “way below the estimates of economists“. The “experts” predicted it would be 570K vs actual of 479K – isn’t this falling off a cliff by comparison?

Housing starts posted their biggest decline in 27 years in February while building permits dropped to their lowest level on record, suggesting the beleaguered real estate sector has yet to rebound from its deepest slump in modern history.

As before, don’t you love how they put it? “Yet to rebound”? Translation: “Blame Bush.” How about like with pretty much everything else, things got much worse during the two years Obama and the Democrats controlled everything? Could you admit that? Just once even?

Most of you are probably used to getting a good chuckle out of Iowahawk from his blog or his hilarious tweets. But he got serious earlier this week and used actual facts and figures to obliterate the KnownFacts™ that we are bombarded with by the teacher unions in WI and “experts” like Paul Krugman.

Iowahawk examined published 2009 figures for 4th and 8th graders by race in math, reading, and science. That gave a total of 18 figures to compare in TX vs WI vs USA. The numbers were mostly close, but Texas beat the national average in every case and beat Wisconsin in every case but one (4th grade Hispanic Science). Wisconsin beat the national average only half the time.

I can’t sum it up any better than Iowahawk did.

…White students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin….

Perhaps the most striking thing in these numbers is the within-state gap between white and minority students. Not only did white Texas students outperform white Wisconsin students, the gap between white students and minority students in Texas was much less than the gap between white and minority students in Wisconsin. In other words, students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools – especially minority students.

He also looked at HS dropout rates, and found that in Texas, whites and Hispanics had slightly higher dropout rates than in Wisconsin (but still well below the national average), but blacks in WI dropped out at a much higher rate than in TX. The black dropout rate in TX was 3x that for whites; in WI it was 6.5x higher. It seems pretty clear that those “progressive” teacher unions in WI must be a bunch of racists who can’t teach any kids nearly as well as TX teachers can.

14 CWA drivers of disabled people called in sick the other day. Maybe they have a cadillac health care plan or maybe Obamacare is working miracles, but in any case several of them were healthy enough a short time later that same day to show up at a protest in Trenton. The ones who have been identified on camera have been suspended.

This is one of those delicious cases where no matter which side you believe, the outcome is the same – these “workers” are not needed and should be fired. I know you find that hard to believe, but check out yourself the county vs union positions. (emphasis is mine)

The county said the workers were among 14 in the department who called out sick; officials alleged that 174 developmentally disabled adults who depend on the county’s services ended up “waiting for buses that never came.”
…
The CWA statement added “When all the facts come out, it will be clear that whatever errors in judgement were made, no one served by the county missed a medical appointment and no one should be fired.”

See what I mean? If you believe the county, the guys lied about being sick and left scores of disabled people stranded on the street. If you believe the union, the guys weren’t missed at all. So take your pick – fire them for lying and abandoning their jobs or fire them because even their union agrees they are dead wood.

From the diaries by Bill S.

Update from Erick: The U.S. Naval Institute has more here.

Frank Buckles, the last of the 4,734,991 Americans who served in World War I, has passed away. When you think of most kids today, his story is just staggering.

He was born on a Missouri farm when William McKinley was President. When the US entered WWI in April 1917, he had turned 16 barely two months earlier, but was determined to enlist.

After being rejected by Marine and Navy recruiters, Buckles tried the Army. When the recruiter asked to see his birth certificate, Buckles said Missouri didn’t keep birth records when he was born and the only record was what was written in the family Bible.

That was good enough for the Army and he enlisted that August at age 16-1/2. He said a sergeant told him, “If you want to get to France in a hurry, then join the ambulance service.” He did that and was on his way to England by that December. He wanted to get closer to the fighting and was eventually sent to France, then after the war ended he helped bring POWs back to Germany.

Read More →

This is a new one. We’re used to variations on the victim card, but this may be a new low.

Providence RI, which last I knew was not controlled by heartless Republicans, faces a possible $40M school deficit next year. State law requires them to notify teachers by March 1st if they will not be retained. Therefore the superintendent is apparently going to tell every teacher they are fired. Obviously many will be invited back or not actually fired, but this is the only way they can be flexible in addressing this deficit.

The president of the Providence Teacher’s Union had this to say about it.

This is beyond insane. Let’s create the most chaos and the highest level of anxiety in a district where teachers are already under unbelievable stress. Now I know how the United States State Department felt on Dec. 7 , 1941.

I’m guessing this is not the best way to draw the average citizen to your cause, even in a state as deep blue as RI. No word yet on unions shutting down the city, invading homesteads of (most likely Democratic) officials, etc. Maybe they’re too busy making anti-GOP signs and boarding buses for Wisconsin.

Promoted from the diaries…

They’re currently gathering signatures so it can be placed on the November ballot.

You can’t help but read this story about the guy behind it without doing a compare and contrast with abortion a certain safe/legal/rare medical procedure.

Schofield’s ordinance would outlaw the procedure throughout San Francisco, even for religious reasons. The only exception would be “a clear, compelling and immediate medical need.” It would make all other foreskin cutting a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and jail time for up to a year.
…
“The base of our argument is you’re spending incredible amounts of money doing painful and damaging surgery to an unwilling patient,” he said.

Imagine that, a medical procedure doing painful and damaging surgery to an unwilling patient should be forbidden unless there is a compelling and immediate medical need.

Gee, what would happen if some doctor developed a late-term intra-uterine circumcision procedure? Then it really wouldn’t be cutting a baby, just a lump of tissue. No different than lancing a boil, right? Shouldn’t that mom have the right to choose what to do with her body?

That would be difficult and dangerous though. Maybe they can just combine it with the birth and get everything except one foot out, snip the foreskin, and then pull the baby out the rest of the way. I mean heck, if you could legally shove a pair of scissors into the baby’s brain when it’s partially born, then a quick use of the scalpel at that point should be okay, right?

Jan 20th – “lower than expected” at 404,000

A Labor Department official said the larger-than-expected decline was partly explained by jobless claims returning to trend after the big rise the earlier week.

Translation: Last week’s rise was just a blip. This proves the Obama economy is working.

Jan 27th – “higher than expected” at 454,000

A labor spokesman said snowstorms earlier in the month forced unemployment offices in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina to open fewer hours and process fewer claims. A reduction in the backlog contributed to the sharp increase in new claims, the spokesman said.

Translation: This week’s rise is just a blip. This proves the Obama economy is working.

Here we go again! This is just like last year, when temporary census jobs were considered proof of Obamanomics’ greatness, but when the jobs went away that didn’t really count as bad news because we knew they were only temporary. In this case they are once again saying this week’s rise doesn’t count because it’s artificial, but they still want credit for last week’s drop that was artificial.

Heads I win; tails you lose.