Congress has the time for this?
With Rangel and Waters loose in the House Halls and Di-Fi and Babs, the lying Dinge and the Dud Dodd, Sphincter Schumer trolling the Senate leach pit.

Federal Grand Jury Indicts Roger Clemens in Steroid Case

[snip]
Clemens faces charges of obstruction of Congress, making false statements and perjury. [snip]

Major league baseball players can be taken care of by the leagues.

Lets start the auto dà fé in Congress.
Voters! Start your fires!

Meanwhile, the idiot “Greens” in
Congress shove corn into our gas tanks

[snip]
…[]…Confronted with a severe drought, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, this week sowed panic in world commodity markets when he banned grain exports for the rest of the year. At a time when the global consumer economy is still in the doldrums, a surge in the cost of wheat, milk, meat, cocoa and other staples of the world’s daily diet is increasing the pressure on manufacturers and retailers to pass the rises on to cash-strapped consumers across the US, Europe and parts of Asia.

According to the British Retail Consortium, in-store food costs rose 2.5 per cent in July from a year earlier, up from a 1.7 per cent rise the month before. In the US, the deflation the Department of Agriculture was projecting as recently as July 25 for cereals and bakery products such as wheat will need to be put under review. It is forecasting inflation of 2–3 per cent this year for meat as well as sugar and sweets. For milk, cheese and eggs, which fell in price last year, it predicts 1.5–2.5 per cent increases.

Futures Markets Here are all the listings and the news.

Big producers are beginning to disclose mark-ups in some cases rather steeper than those. J.M. Smucker is, for instance, imposing an across-the-board rise of 9 per cent for its coffee sold to US supermarkets under brands including Folgers, Dunkin’ Donuts and Millstone. On Friday Kraft Foods followed with rises of more than 10 per cent in the US market on coffee brands including Maxwell House.
Will consumers countenance all these increases? “Household food budgets don’t go up,” says Paul Weitzel, managing director at Willard Bishop, a retail industry consulting firm in the US. Instead, “people change their shopping behaviour”. [snip]

The pricing increases will eventually be passed along to shoppers, predicts Susan Anderson at Citigroup, but it will not happen quickly. “There will be a six-month lag instead of a one- to two-month lag,” she says. If nothing else, that provides some reassurance for Christmas. (emphasis added)
Rising commodity prices in early 2008, led by oil, resulted in significant price boosts for a variety of food products, almost all of which were passed on to consumers two years ago.
But after the run-up peaked, the decline in input prices and the sharp economic downturn precipitated by the financial crisis led to stable and even deflationary pricing in the US and elsewhere. As a result, shoppers encountered something almost never seen in supermarkets and grocery stores: declining prices over an extended period of time.

But suppliers adjusted, leading to what we see now. Notably, flagging demand for beef in 2008, combined with high grain prices, led the large US cattle companies to reduce their herds over the past two years, which created an undersupply of beef and the consequent rise in price tags at supermarket meat counters. [snip]

Right at the time food costs rise, Obama figures to let the Bush tax cuts expire Jan 1 2011, giving the public colic.

In 2008, during the last big run-up in food prices, the price of pasta in the US jumped by more than 20 per cent. Nonetheless, unit sales crept up slightly, leading to a 22 per cent gain in the dollar value of pasta sales across most US supermarkets. “At the very bottom of the consumption chain there’s no place to hide,” Mr Rand says. “You end up with pasta or rice. People have very few alternative bulk products that are going to be cheaper than that. It doesn’t matter if the cost of spaghetti has gone to $1.19 from 99 cents. But if you take my beef from $6 to $9, that’s a different deal.” [snip]

So enjoy the ethanol in the gas even as corn prices drop for now.
That is only the vagaries of the weather moving prices lower. Some flooding, high winds or cold temperatures change prices fast.

Any translation has to contain some choice words about the economic direction like smelly, stinkeroo, Obamalike, horrible or deathly.

The Administration loses the chairwoman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers in early September. Bailing out, she is, despite the spin coming from the Ovful Office.

Christina Romer, Top Economic Adviser to Obama, to Step Down

[snip]
Romer, head of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, has been one of the administration’s most prominent voices on the economy, making frequent appearances on TV and at White House events to promote Obama’s policies. She also was reported to have butted heads with other members of Obama’s economic team, in particular Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council.

In December, the she sand Summers even seemed to contradict each other — in interviews conducted on the same day — on whether the recession had ended. [snip]

Lets see what the unemployment numbers look like, they’re due out today. And the numbers are:

Jobs Picture Worsens With 131,000 Losses; 9.5% Rate

[snip]
The unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.5 percent in July, just below market expectations for a rise to 9.6 percent. The steady jobless rate largely reflected a drop in the labor force as discouraged workers gave up the search for jobs.Job growth has taken a step back after fairly strong gains between February and April, putting in jeopardy the economy’s recovery from its worst downturn since the 1930s. [snip]

Last month, the dominant service sector added 38,000 jobs after June’s 34,000 gain. More disturbing, temporary help services, seen as a harbinger of future permanent hiring, fell 5,600 after increasing 11,200. Temporary employment gains had averaged 45,000 per month from October 2009 to May.State and local governments, struggling with huge budget deficits, purged more workers last month, combining with mass layoffs of temporary federal census workers to push government payrolls down by 202,000 compared to a 252,000 drop in June. [snip]

So much for that Bull**it of jobs created or saved. Talk is cheap; Obama has lots of that, all of which starts BLAME BUSH.
We’re just about two years into his desire to change 234 years of U.S. existence into Zimbabwe.

Following in the Messiah’s footsteps isn’t going to get the U.S. back to any HOPE of future growth or CHANGE in economic fortunes.
You need a new God to follow, one that doesn’t carry a hammer and sickle and promise FREE LUNCH.

Getting the “Fair Share”

 [snip]
A House ethics subcommittee says Waters, 71, improperly intervened in 2008 with federal regulators to help get bailout funds for a bank that her husband owned stock in and on whose board he once served, said NBC and other media reports. Waters also once held stock in the bank. [snip]

As a Financial Services Committee member, Waters often called Paulson. He agreed to arrange the requested meeting, the Times reported last year.

$250,000 in stock
Paulson did not know at the time that Waters’ husband, Sidney Williams, owned stock at least $250,000 worth of stock in and had served on the board of Boston-based OneUnited, whose chief executive turned the Treasury headquarters meeting into a special appeal for bailout assistance, the Times said.[snip]

The executive from OneUnited, one of the nation’s largest black-owned banks, asked for $50 million in federal aid, the Times reported.

OneUnited got $12.1 million in TARP money soon after a second meeting, The Washington Post reported Friday. [snip]

…[]…the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent watchdog agency, began an inquiry, the Times said. The office referred the matter to the ethics committee.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have complained that the OCE has unfairly and disproportionately targeted them, and many have signed onto a legislative effort to de-fang the office, Politico reported.

Wonder why they’d wanna do that?

Your faithful reporter and photog went to great lengths to get a photo of the Ethics Committee and the Infamous “Wheel of Justice” so hated by the Black Caucus.

This is their image of the group!

Of course EVERYBODY knows how this plays out. We have 4 Republicans sitting on this board crammed with honkitude and none of them will vote for a wrist slap.

All these years of serving the people of Harlem and L.A. and trying to get them their “fair share”, this is what happens. allegedly Rangel and Waters both moaned.

“He indicated there was some sloppiness” in his official papers, Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., told reporters, “but, you know, there’s no criminality here.”

House rules and credibility — not criminality — were the reasons cited by more than a half dozen House Democrats known to have called for Rangel’s resignation by late afternoon Friday. [snip]

“Too many politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, have fallen victim to the idea that they are ‘different’ than regular folks and nothing could be further from the truth,” Kirkpatrick said in a statement.”It is our job as members of Congress to hold each other accountable to a higher standard regardless of party,” she added. “If the serious charges against (Rangel) are accurate, he needs to resign.” [snip]

It is totally amazing how these hacks got religion so quickly. It is as if the Angel of Death, wielding the flaming sword, held up a calendar with the date of the Trump on it, showing NOV 2, 2010.

No testament takin’ preacher converted so many in such short a time.

Rampant lightheartedness and gaiety occurred in the House Chambers as members of both parties joined in bipartisanship voting to honor…

the likes of golfer Phil Mickelson, the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team, NASCAR driver Jimmy Johnson and the Penn State women’s volleyball team.  [snip]

Every week the House spends a couple of days churning out such non-controversial bills. Beyond honoring sports achievements, they name post offices, praise armed service members, mourn distinguished people who’ve died and recognize historic anniversaries. This year the House has come together to support national pollinator week, national dairy month and national train day. [snip]

Suppose the House comes together to memorialize:

• the first headline writer that DOESN’T include “toddler nearby” in any usage.

• “Phil the Plumber “, the first individual that DOESN’T display 5¾” of butt crack while working in front of of your teenage daughters.

• the first reporter who asks the question, “Is it a Hate Crime if the killer tells the victim he loves him as he kills him? Is the victim more or less dead?”

These and other somber questions need to be asked and answered, not the crap about some bozos jockstrap size or how many times they drove in a circle. Leave that to the luminaries at ESPN and other sport shows.
You know the ones, where the same 14 cretins, probably in the same room, borrow one another’s cell phone to call a 94 IQ show host.

In all fairness, I would like to give the readers of this blog reasons to look at and possibly vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterms. Here are 11 reasons, you probably can find more.

Hi, I’m here to reclaim the Kennedy seat from that upstart that stole it from Martha Croakly Cooakly Cookly the Bozette.
Elect me In Nov an know I’ll fit right in with the old methods and backroom deals. Just write in my NAME…

Actually, my family is willing to move to any New England State and represent our views as yours in DC.

Obama promised this from the moment he started campaigning; so did the prevaricatory pair leading Congress.
Transparency was to be the operative word in all thought and deed, so much for that blather.
Substitute faces as you desire, Pelosi or Reid work just as well in the Portrait of Dung.

Perhaps cards like the old Topps Baseball Cards is are in order; the Horse Pucky League, with a picture on the front, stats on the back works.

List the peccadilloes, assaults, DUI’s, ethics violations, diddling interns, you know minor infractions that the media can’t be bothered covering.To make the packaging Politically Correct, include sugar free gum.

Today’s kids need HEROES, where better to find them than the duly elected Democrats in Congress.

Being a DEMOCRAT CONGRESSMAN,
You get to do things like THIS!

Now if you were a GOP House Member, the MSM would be climbing ALL OVER this story.

Just in case the mentioned are educated in the public system.

No Illegals-No how-No way!

Who said Economics had to be DULL? What’s going on with the world’s finances is more fun than watching “24″.
Far more entertaining too, since your balls are in the Obama Osterizer.

Nouriel Roubini said the bubble would burst and it did. So what next?

[snip]
Just three years earlier, Roubini had been the object of derision in the economics community as he prophesied a US housing market crash, financial crisis and partial collapse of the banking sector. Today, as an adviser to governments and central bankers and much feted in the media, he’s well aware of the power of being right.

“In my line of business your reputation is based on being right,” he says. “The publicity is just noise. Certainly with a global crisis, the dismal scientists are having some prominence, even if most of the economics profession actually failed to predict it.”

The 51-year-old, widely known as Dr Doom, is in town to publicise his new book Crisis Economics, a crash course in the financial crisis and what can be done to avoid another.

The book does little to suggest he is uncomfortable with his nickname. Where Roubini is concerned, the great recession has some way to run.

“The crisis is not over; we are just at the next stage. This is where we move from a private to a public debt problem,” he says, his speech the mongrel drawl of a man who was born in Turkey to Iranian parents, raised in Israel and Italy and lives in New York. “We socialised part of the private losses by bailing out financial institutions and providing fiscal stimulus to avoid the great recession from turning into a depression. But rising public debt is never a free lunch, eventually you have to pay for it.”[snip]

All that socialist crap chanted in college during those wonderful ’70’s are now here. Boomers, those idiots that YOU elected, to bring Peace, Light and Love instead delivered this vicious economic socialist mess that is biting you in the ass, right through your 101(k) and IRA, just in time for you to retire.
As a kiss off, they’re giving you a return of ½% to 1% return on short term deposits.

They collapsed you housing values, taxed your jobs overseas and then replaced you with illegal immigrants driving down wages on the rest of the employed. Oh yeah, the unions bought into it because they get sign-ups who won’t bitch, complain or strike over sweetheart contracts.

One false move in Europe could set off global chain reaction

[snip]
But the knife-edge psychology currently governing global markets has put the future of the U.S. economic recovery in the hands of politicians in an assortment of European capitals. If one or more fail to make the expected progress on cutting budgets, restructuring economies or boosting growth, it could drain confidence in a broad and unsettling way. Credit markets worldwide could lock up and throw the global economy back into recession.

For the average American, that seemingly distant sequence of events could translate into another hit on the 401(k) plan, a lost factory shift if exports to Europe decline and another shock to the banking system that might make it harder to borrow.

“If what happened in Greece were to happen in a large country, it could fundamentally mark our times,” Angelos Pangratis, head of the European Union delegation to the United States, said Friday after a panel discussion on the crisis in Greece sponsored by the Greater Washington Board of Trade.

The PIGS are the problem. Spending money they didn’t have, couldn’t raise through taxes, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy ran up unfunded pensions, public sector wages and early retirement.

Now they can’t pay for the excesses. Bailouts from the other EU countries are grudgingly forthcoming with stringent guides attached. Riots followed.

[snip]
The most vulnerable European countries — Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland — may represent only about 4 percent of world economic activity, but “the debt crisis and its ripple effects are bad news for all corners of the world,” said Cornell University economist Eswar Prasad. [snip]
But the fallout from Europe could still be widely felt. U.S. trade officials, hoping the country can dramatically boost its exports, are dismayed at the steep drop in the value of the euro — which is around $1.25, down from more than $1.50 in November. The decline makes American goods more expensive compared with those produced in Europe. The slide in the common European currency could also change the way China and a host of Asian countries approach their currency policies, possibly making them less likely to agree with U.S. demands to raise the value of their money. If they raised it, Asian goods would become more expensive in world markets, making it easier for U.S. products to compete. [snip]

So what, Corporations are bad, evil abusers of the poor, the downtrodden, the children and the third world emerging nations, right!

Get ready for higher unemployment numbers and another surge in foreclosures. 

To insure this happens, Congress put together a banking bill that does for credit cards, what Freddie and Fannie did for housing.
How did that work out for America.

Congress is

 looking for

something about

as useful…as THIS!

Next year’s budget sinking in deep red ink

The chance that the majority Democrats will pass a budget this year is “fading,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said Tuesday.

He is pessimistic because House Democrats don’t know whether they want to pass a resolution that would officially acknowledge the certainty of big deficits. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and other Democrats have indicated that would be a tough vote in an election year.[snip]

“Rather than cut government spending, [Democrats] chose instead to cut and run — and to simply avoid the hard choices American families and small businesses must make every day,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee.

“This unprecedented failure to govern is especially alarming as spending, deficits and debt continue to spiral out of control.” [snip]

Lets see what the Speaker of the Whore House will do.

Whorehouse Harry Reid shown he up for unrestrained spending. He’s going to get trashed by the run-a-way deficit and join Specter on the sidelines.

Obama’s plan for health care for all seems to be working just fine.
Everyone will have a little health care; very little to none unless YOU can afford to take a Medical Vacation to some place than doesn’t have SOCIALIZED medicine, India comes to mind.
Obama didn’t lie about one thing; the costs will go down. There will be little left to pay for that has any worth.

Texas doctors opting out of Medicare at alarming rate

Texas doctors are opting out of Medicare at alarming rates, frustrated by reimbursement cuts they say make participation in government-funded care of seniors unaffordable.

Two years after a survey found nearly half of Texas doctors weren’t taking some new Medicare patients, new data shows 100 to 200 a year are now ending all involvement with the program. Before 2007, the number of doctors opting out averaged less than a handful a year.

“This new data shows the Medicare system is beginning to implode,” said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the Texas Medical Association. “If Congress doesn’t fix Medicare soon, there’ll be more and more doctors dropping out and Congress’ promise to provide medical care to seniors will be broken.” [snip]

Health insurers post losses, blame state rate caps

The state’s four biggest health insurers today posted first-quarter losses totaling more than $150 million, with three of the carriers blaming the bulk of their deficit on the Patrick administration’s decision to cap rate increases for individuals and small businesses. [snip]

On April 1, the Massachusetts Division of Insurance rejected the insurers’ proposed double-digit premium increases for small businesses and individuals in the so-called small group market, instead ordering the carriers to continue using premiums that took effect a year earlier.

The companies, which contend they will lose millions of dollars because of the rate caps, are challenging the decision in administrative hearings and through a lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court.

This certainly is CHANGE!

What you are seeing is the fiscal irresponsibility of Obama and his Administration. Congress is complicit, they voted for these budgets.
One has to believe hat after he saw the result of of the first year’s policy, now what transpires is the DELIBERATE WRECKING of the US economy.

US faces one of biggest budget crunches in world – IMF

Earlier this week, the Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, irked US authorities by pointing out that even the world’s economic superpower has a major fiscal problem -“even the United States, the world’s largest economy, has a very large fiscal deficit” were his words. They were rather vague, but by happy coincidence the International Monetary Fund has chosen to flesh out the issue today. Unfortunately this is a rather long post with a few chunky tables, but it is worth spending a bit of time with – the IMF analysis is fascinating. [snip]

(All charts are at the linked site)

Exhibit a is the fact that under the Obama administration’s current fiscal plans, the national debt in the US (on a gross basis) will climb to above 100pc of GDP by 2015 – a far steeper increase than almost any other country.

Compare it with the UK, which is often pinpointed as a Greece in the making. As you can see, gross debt increases sharply, but not by anything like the same degree. [snip]

But level of debt isn’t the only problem. Then there’s the fact that the US has a far shorter maturity of government debt than most other countries, meaning that even if it weren’t borrowing any extra cash it would have to issue a large chunk of new stuff each year as things are. The killer table to show you that is this one, which shows a country’s “gross financing needs” – in other words how much debt it has to issue in the coming years to keep itself functioning. [snip]

The short term maturation T-Bills occurred on Clinton’s watch, when he dropped the long term notes and took up the short term lower interest rates in order to make the debt look better during his first term. We are now paying for the fast rollover.

Everyone is going to pay for the stupidity of the Obama policies!

“It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.”– H. L. Mencken

There are only 545 individuals that have the answer to this problem, no 0ne else.

Charley  Reese has been a   journalist for 49 years.

545 PEOPLE –By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them..
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority.
They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits….. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red ..

If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it’s because they want them in IRAQ

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power..

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees…

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

This might be funny if it weren’t so darned true. Be sure to read all the way to the end:
Tax his land, Tax his bed, Tax the table, At which he’s fed.
Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes Are the rule. Tax his work,Tax his pay,
He works for peanuts Anyway!
Tax his cow, Tax his goat,
Tax his pants, Tax his coat. Tax his ties, Tax his shirt,
Tax his work, Tax his dirt. Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink,
Tax him if he Tries to think.. Tax his cigars, Tax his beers,
If he cries Tax his tears. Tax his car, Tax his gas,
Find other ways To tax his ass. Tax all he has Then let him know
That you won’t be done Till he has no dough. When he screams and hollers;
Then tax him some more,
Tax him till He’s good and sore. Then tax his coffin, Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in Which he’s laid…
Put these words Upon his tomb,
Taxes drove me to my doom…’
When he’s gone, Do not relax,
Its time to apply The inheritance tax.. Accounts Receivable Tax Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax, Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax, Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax, Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax, Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax, Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax Property Tax
Real Estate Tax Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax, Road Usage Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax, Sales Tax
School Tax, State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service FeeTax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, & our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What in the hell happened? Can you spell ‘politicians?’