SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

UNBELIEVABLE – From Allen West via Fox News:  "Whenever you hear our dear politicians in Washington DC say there’s nothing more to cut or that they’re just like us, let me give you a friendly reminder. As Breitbart reported after his jail sentencing, convicted ex-congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) receives $8,700 per month in government disability pay, as well as a partial federal pension of $45,000.  That generous $8,700 in disability comes thanks to Jackson’s sudden development of a 'mood disorder' as the federal government began looking to indict him. Jackson, who was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison, had no history of mental illness during his prior 17 years in Congress."  Daddy taught him well.

PROBE – An odd development in the probe of the missing Malaysian airliner, from the Daily Mail:  "A group of 11 terrorists with links to Al Qaeda were yesterday being interrogated on whether they are behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.  The suspects were arrested in the capital Kuala Lumpur and in the state of Kedah last week and are members of a violent new terror group said to be planning bomb attacks in Muslim countries.  The interrogations come after international investigators, including the FBI and MI6, asked for the militants, whose ages range from 22 to 55 and include students, odd-job workers, a young widow and business professionals, to be questioned intensively about Flight MH370."  Interesting, but I've seen no evidence whatever that terrorism was involved, although some have speculated that a member of the cockpit crew was a terrorist operative."

GRIM VIEW ON JOBS – From Newsmax:  ""In April, almost a million Americans left the labor force in one month. I think that's the largest exodus from the labor force since they began keeping the statistics,' economist Peter Schiff says, adding that he doesn't believe 280,000 jobs were created.  'Better than 80 percent of them potentially were just made up by the government because over 240,000 of the jobs were the result of the birth-death assumptions where the government simply assumes that new businesses were created in April and that they hired people,' Schiff told J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Kahn on 'America's Forum' on Newsmax TV.  'But they don't have any actual proof that any of this happened and it's the statisticians at the Bureau of Labor Department — everybody assumed that people hired more people in April because the weather got better,' he added.  And that is why Schiff says that he doesn't 'even believe the 280,000 jobs being created.'" I suspect there's a lot of truth here, for if the "recovery" were real, people would be sensing it around them, and they aren't.

May 3, 2014