Okay so either I am an absolute idiot, or haven't had enough coffee this morning, but for the life of me I can't make any sense of today's retail sales data...especially the part about autos.

We see that "car dealers suffered a 2.8% drop in sales in April, adding to the .5% drop in March".

So what is wrong with that you ask. Well try this...

The blogs are full of it. Thousands of bits in cyberspace declaring the Democratic primary is over before it is over, misogynistic rhetoric abounds, talk of somehow this is a great political realignment and if you aren't paying attention you would swear the second coming of Christ is upon us.

There are those of us who actually pay attention to policy positions, who want the new political realignment to be about policy change. Are we really going to get that? Well, frankly I don't think so and this is why.

Firstly, there are 49% of Democratic voters who are having their candidate of choice ripped a new one daily in the main stream press and in the blogs. That's half of all those who voted in the Democratic primary.

There is one campaign issue that for me at least, is just not understood and that is the debate on whether or not to lift the payroll tax cap on FICA taxes above current Social Security Wage Base, $97,000.

John Miller is professor of economics at Wheaton College said in Dollars and Sense:

Over at TPM Cafe, this week Fareed Zakaria's new book, "The Post American World" is being discussed. In it, Zakaria repeats the theory of globalization's most toxic and unproven claim: that countries which participate in trade together do not make war upon one another. So if you want to prevent war, just participate in deep and interwoven trade with the other country and everything will be hunky-dory.

It's a lie.

Zakaria claims that We're Living in Scarily Peaceful Times":

Events of the past two years have made food an increasingly worrisome item in household budgets and in the budgets of nations. In early 2008, food prices to the American consumer were 25 percent greater than two years earlier. This reflected dramatic increases in farm beef prices, while farm corn prices were double and wheat prices triple those of early 2006. Clearly something new has happened to a food market which has historically fed Americans well and for a uniquely small proportion of their income.

A series of events was associated with these price adjustments. In 2005 the U.S. dollar began to depreciate and a major realignment of international currencies set underway. (1) [A series of crop failures and poor harvests around the world magnified the food problem]. Finally, Congress adopted legislation that drastically altered the framework of American agriculture....
- Foreign Affairs (2)