Saturday, April 22, 2017
Friday, April 21, 2017
It's official: Trump disappoints us, tells AP he's not going after Dreamers
Trump's official policy?
He specifically campaigned on rescinding Obama's two immigration executive orders.
So he's flip-flopped. He's disappointed us.
Expect lots more of that.
Here, today:
President Donald Trump says young immigrants shielded from deportation - often referred to as "dreamers" - should "rest easy" about his immigration policies.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Trump says he is "not after the dreamers, we are after the criminals." He says "that is our policy."
President Barack Obama changed enforcement priorities to protect many young people brought to the country illegally as children from deportation.
Attorneys say 23-year-old Juan Manuel Montes was recently deported to Mexico despite having qualified for deferred deportation. Montes sued Tuesday for access to records on his deportation.
Trump says Montes' case is "a little different than the Dreamer case," though he did not specify why.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
CNBC's resident libertarian calls GOP's new Obamacare repeal bill cowardly and small-minded
From the story here by Jake Novak:
Of course the waiver option is all about shifting the political heat if people start losing coverage. By making the individual states apply for waivers, the Republican Congress thinks it can effectively blame the governors and state legislators if things don't work out in the states that get those waivers. Not only is that craven politics, it's delusional. Anyone who thinks the Republicans in Washington won't own every aspect of the results of this new law if it's enacted is totally clueless. ... In short, we need courage and smarts. And this new Republican plan is cowardly and small-minded.
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Drudge lies with a headline to encourage the Trumpsters who read him
There is no order to curb foreign workers, only an order to reevaluate the program. Actually Trump is slow-walking his promise to end the import of foreign workers who take away jobs being done by Americans.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Alt-right hero Julius Evola was essentially suicidal, at least until 1945
From the translator's introduction by Guido Stucco to Evola's The Yoga of Power here:
The first few years of Evola's life following the end of [WWI] were characterized by spiritual restlessness and by an intense search for an ideological self-identity. Evola began a personal quest for ultimate transcendence, which he believed could be found beyond the ethical and spiritual limitations of bourgeois prejudices. ... At this time his quest led him also to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs. His longing for the Absolute, for radically intense feelings, for what the Germans call mehr als leben, ("more than living") which was frustrated by the contingency of human experience, almost induced him, at the age of twenty-three, to commit suicide. ...
He did not hesitate to espouse an epistemological solipsism (though he rejected the term as "inadequate") whereby the individual stands alone in a world of maya, in which nature, things, and people are nothing but an illusion. ...
In 1945 he was in Vienna when, as a result of a Soviet air raid on the city, he was wounded in the spinal cord by a shell fragment. He later told a friend that instead of taking to an underground refuge, he had been purposefully walking the deserted streets of the Austrian capital. After spending a year and a half in a local hospital, Evola returned to Italy, destined to spend the rest of his life, a long twenty-nine years, in a wheelchair.
If DHS' John Kelly really cared about 4 tons of drugs coming in daily, he'd stop it
General Kelly here in the Boston Globe:
[Transnational criminal organizations] smuggle nearly four tons of heroin, cocaine, meth, and other illegal drugs across our border each day. In 2015, 52,404 people died from drug overdoses. It was the highest number of drug-related deaths our country has ever seen.
If our country really cared about it, we'd have ended opium production in Afghanistan yesterday. But it's been in our power to do for over 15 years. So obviously we don't do it because of the MONEY our corrupt country makes off the operation. And . . . it would be against LIBERTARIANISM, in which everyone believes more than saving Americans from the horrible consequences of drug addiction.
All we have to do is blow up the damn dams we built for those bastards after World War II.
17 MOABs and we're done. Over 90% of the world's opium production would end, just like that.
Trump adviser Jared Kushner's father was put in jail by Chris Christie
Byron York recounts the tale, here:
The short version is: In 2004, Jared Kushner's father Charles, a real estate magnate in New Jersey and New York, pleaded guilty to a tax fraud scheme in which he claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in phony deductions for office expenses at the partnerships he created to manage the apartment buildings he owned. Kushner, a major donor to the Democratic Party, also pleaded guilty to fraudulently making hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in the names of employees and associates who didn't know their names were being used. Finally, Kushner pleaded guilty to retaliating against a cooperating witness in the case — his sister. He did so by setting a trap in which he hired a prostitute to lure his sister's husband into a sexual encounter in a New Jersey hotel, where the action was secretly photographed and videotaped. Kushner sent the pictures and tape to his sister as revenge, apparently motivated by Kushner's belief that she and her husband were helping U.S. Attorney Christie and his prosecutors. ... [I]n a 2014 interview with the New York real estate publication The Real Deal, Jared called his father's treatment "obviously unjust" and said the experience had soured him on an earlier ambition to become a prosecutor. "If you're convicting murderers, it's one thing," Jared said. "It's often fairly clear. When you get into things like white-collar crime, there are often a lot of nuances. Seeing my father's situation, I felt what happened was obviously unjust in terms of the way they pursued him."
Monday, April 17, 2017
Trump White House appears to be backing away from Larry Kudlow/Steve Moore supply side tax plan from the campaign
Another bad sign for economic growth prospects.
From the story here:
"It's a little frustrating that they feel they have to write a new tax plan when they have a tax plan," said Steven Moore, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation who helped formulate tax policy for the Trump campaign.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Maxine Waters is a discredited has been, got a federal TARP bailout for husband's bank
From the story in March, here:
During the height of the 2008 fiscal crisis, Waters helped arrange a meeting between the Treasury Department and top executives of a bank where her husband was a shareholder. Using her post on the House Financial Committee as leverage, she called Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson personally, asking him to meet with minority-owned banks.
When Treasury followed through, there was only one financial institution present: OneUnited. Had that bank gone under, the New York Times reported, Waters' husband would've lost as much as $350,000. Luckily for the Waters family, OneUnited received a cool $12 million in bailout funds.
After three years of special investigation, the ethics committee eventually ruled that Waters didn't technically break any rules. But that ruling came after unearthing her more than questionable family business practices, like making her grandson, Mikael Moore, her chief of staff.
Friday, April 14, 2017
NeverTrumper Bret Stephens bolts The Wall Street Journal for happier digs at The New York Times
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Bret!
From the story here:
The Journal's editorial page editor, Paul Gigot, said in a memo he is thankful for Stephens' 16 years with the paper.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Mandela's legacy: Black South African government covers up racist tortures and murders of white farmers
Reported here:
In total, between 1998 and the end of 2016, 1848 people have been murdered in farm attacks — 1187 farmers, 490 family members, 147 farm employees, and 24 people who happened to be visiting the farm at the time. ...
But any form of justice is incredibly rare, and white farmers are increasingly questioning their future. The number of white farmers in South Africa has halved in a little over two decades to just 30,000. Thousands more farms are up for sale. ...
Since 2007, at the direction of the government, South African police have stopped releasing statistics about the race of the victims. Monitoring group Genocide Watch says the cover-up has been exacerbated by American and European governments, which have “remained silent about the problem, reinforcing the campaign of denial”. The rise in farm attacks has been blamed on increasingly anti-white hate speech, particularly from the ruling African National Congress.
In 2010, high-profile ANC member Julius Malema sang “Shoot the Farmer, Kill the Boer”, which Genocide Watch describes as “once a revolutionary song, but now an incitement to commit genocide”.
Malema was convicted for hate speech and the singing of the song was banned, but just seven months later president Jacob Zuma sang the song himself at an ANC event, in direct contempt of the judge’s ruling.
Malema was later kicked out the ANC, forming his own Marxist party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, which is now the third-largest party in parliament. Recently, Malema has been travelling the country urging black South Africans to take back land from “Dutch thugs”.
“People of South Africa, where you see a beautiful land, take it, it belongs to you,” Malema was quoted in The Telegraph as telling parliament.
Perhaps in response to populist pressure from Malema, Zuma earlier this month called for the confiscation of white-owned land without compensation. Zuma urged the “black parties” in the parliament to unite to form the two-thirds majority that would be needed to make the necessary change to the country’s constitution.
Last week, during a debate in parliament about the farm attacks, an ANC MP shouted “Bury them alive!” while MP Pieter Groenewald was speaking about the plight of white farmers.
“This is proof that the utterances of political leaders could lead to violence and murders and that the issue of farm murders is of little importance to the ANC,” AfriForum’s head of community safety, Ian Cameron, said in a statement afterwards. “Certain members of the ANC were chatting during the debate and not listening nor partaking at all.”
Mother Of All Bombs tested on the wrong target in Afghanistan, prolonging the 16-year war
They bombed caves. If they had meant to end the war, they would have bombed the Kajaki dam instead, ending electricity and opium production in Helmand Province instantly:
Conservative Tree House is kooky, calls China not joining Russia Syria veto in UN "historic" and a Trump achievement
Here.
No, it isn't historic, and it's not a Trump achievement.
There have been nine occasions where China has not joined Russia in the veto since 1992. China does what's good for China.
The only country getting realigned here is America under Trump, who keeps "learning" things and changing his stated positions.
Trump's in danger of giving away the store to China on currency, trade and the South China Sea in exchange for the promise of a denuclearized North Korea.
China thinks that might be a good deal, but it's a lousy deal, because the Chinese are the biggest liars on the face of the earth, the biggest thieves, and the biggest mass murderers in the history of mankind.
North Korea is their little pit bull keeping South Korea, Japan and the United States off balance.
Wake up and smell the coffee, guys.
Trump flips on Ex-Im Bank
Reported here:
His budget chief Mick Mulvaney said on CNBC (transcript via Reason) Wednesday that Trump was now pro-Ex-Im, and the president himself professed his love for Boeing's bank to the Wall Street Journal:
The president said he planned to fill two vacancies on the bank's board, which has been effectively paralyzed with three open seats on its five-member board.
"It turns out that, first of all, lots of small companies are really helped, the vendor companies," Mr. Trump said. "But also, maybe more important, other countries give [assistance]. When other countries give it we lose a tremendous amount of business." ...
"Instinctively, you would say, 'Isn't that a ridiculous thing,'" Mr. Trump said of the Ex-Im Bank. "But actually, it's a very good thing. And it actually makes money, it could make a lot of money."
"It turns out that, first of all, lots of small companies are really helped, the vendor companies," Mr. Trump said. "But also, maybe more important, other countries give [assistance]. When other countries give it we lose a tremendous amount of business." ...
"Instinctively, you would say, 'Isn't that a ridiculous thing,'" Mr. Trump said of the Ex-Im Bank. "But actually, it's a very good thing. And it actually makes money, it could make a lot of money."
Flashback Trump August 2015: Ex-Im Bank is unnecessary, I don't like it, It's not free enterprise, I'd be against it
Quoted in Bloomberg, here:
"I don't like it because I don't think it's necessary," the real estate mogul said. "It's a one-way street also. It's sort of a featherbedding for politicians and others, and a few companies. And these are companies that can do very well without it. So I don't like it. I think it's a lot of excess baggage. I think it's unnecessary. And when you think about free enterprise it's really not free enterprise. I'd be against it."
And you thought everything Obama said came with an expiration date: Trump in March 2016 NATO is obsolete, Trump in April 2017 not so much
Here in March 2016:
TRUMP: I think NATO is obsolete. NATO was done at a time you had the Soviet Union, which was obviously larger -- much larger than Russia is today. I'm not saying Russia is not a threat. ... What I'm saying is NATO is obsolete. NATO is -- is obsolete and it's extremely expensive for the United States, disproportionately so. And we should readjust NATO. ... You know, there's nothing wrong with saying that a concept was good, but now it's obsolete or now it's outmoded. Now, it can be trimmed up and it can be, uh, it can be reconfigured and you can call it NATO, but it's going to be changed. I mean this thing was -- was done many decades ago. And there's nothing wrong with saying it's obsolete. But it is obsolete.
Here the same in January 2017:
Trump used the interview to restate his doubts about NATO. "I said a long time ago that NATO had problems," he said in the interview. "Number one it was obsolete, because it was designed many, many years ago. "Number two the countries weren't paying what they're supposed to be paying," adding that this was unfair to the United States.
But now in April, here:
"The Secretary General and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism. I complained about that and now they fight terrorism. I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete," Trump said Wednesday.
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Trump the Great Duodetrigintapus cuts off another of his 28 legs
Trump reverses himself and now won't designate China a currency manipulator.
Story here.
Here's the original 28-leg Gettysburg Address:
DONALD J. TRUMP CONTRACT WITH THE AMERICAN VOTER
What follows is my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again. It is a contract between myself and the American voter – and begins with restoring honesty, accountability and change to Washington.
Therefore, on the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:
● FIRST, propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress;
● SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health);
● THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated;
● FOURTH, a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;
● FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;
● SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.
On the same day, I will begin taking the following 7 actions to protect American workers:
FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205
SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
THIRD, I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator
FOURTH, I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately
FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job- producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.
SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward
SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure
Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:
FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama
SECOND, begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States
THIRD, cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities
FOURTH, begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the
country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back
FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.
Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:
1. Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate.
2. End The Offshoring Act Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.
3. American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.
4. School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to gives parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.
5. Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.
6. Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.
7. End Illegal Immigration Act Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.
8. Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.
9. Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values
10. Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.
On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government.

This is my pledge to you.
And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a government of, by and for the people.
Here's the original 28-leg Gettysburg Address:
DONALD J. TRUMP CONTRACT WITH THE AMERICAN VOTER
What follows is my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again. It is a contract between myself and the American voter – and begins with restoring honesty, accountability and change to Washington.
Therefore, on the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:
● FIRST, propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress;
● SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health);
● THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated;
● FOURTH, a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;
● FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;
● SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.
On the same day, I will begin taking the following 7 actions to protect American workers:
FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205
SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
THIRD, I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator
FOURTH, I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately
FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job- producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.
SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward
SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure
Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:
FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama
SECOND, begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States
THIRD, cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities
FOURTH, begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the
country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back
FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.
Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:
1. Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate.
2. End The Offshoring Act Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.
3. American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.
4. School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to gives parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.
5. Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.
6. Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.
7. End Illegal Immigration Act Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.
8. Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.
9. Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values
10. Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.
On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government.

This is my pledge to you.
And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a government of, by and for the people.
Anonymous sources tell WaPo that FBI had FISA warrant last summer to spy on Trump adviser
Trump has maintained all along that Obama had his wires tapped.
I knew there was something I didn't like about R. R. Reno
Once a radical, always a radical.
He admits to nostalgia for his former radicalism, here:
Jacobin, founded in 2010, is a Marxist quarterly that has gotten notice as the voice of youngish radicals. I took a subscription last year, wanting to know the thinking of the anti-establishment left. As a college student in the early 1980s, I was for a brief period the campus organizer of CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. I’ll leave it to the historians to determine whether CISPES was a front organization under Soviet control, but I can report that my participation in meetings put me in touch with hard-core communists. So I enjoy a certain nostalgic pleasure when I read the occasional essay that speaks of “objective conditions” and “a working-class vanguard.”
Pompeo seat in Kansas remains Republican in special election
The Kansas City Star reports here:
[The Republican] Estes trailed Thompson early in the night, but began to pull ahead around 9 p.m. In the end, Estes prevailed with 53 percent to Thompson’s 45 percent. Libertarian candidate Chris Rockhold drew about 2 percent of the vote. ... Pompeo, a Republican who won by 31 percentage points in November, gave up his seat in the 4th Congressional District in January to serve as Trump’s director of the CIA.
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
Rush Limbaugh expresses excellent theory about Trump's posture toward North Korea
Rush opens the hour saying Trump is deliberately acting in an unpredictable fashion to counter North Korean unpredictability.
This is absolutely correct, even if Rush doesn't know much about the North Koreans, and even if Trump doesn't.
Spontaneous unpredictable outbursts of ferocity are central to North Korean self-identity. Trump is using their own value against them.
Beautiful, baby.
Researchers doubted US intelligence conclusions about 2013 "Syrian" gas attack, say rebels could have done it
McClatchy reported here in early 2014:
“I honestly have no idea what happened,” Postol said. “My view when I started this process was that it couldn’t be anything but the Syrian government behind the attack. But now I’m not sure of anything. The administration narrative was not even close to reality. Our intelligence cannot possibly be correct.”
Lloyd, who has spent the past half-year studying the weapons and capabilities in the Syrian conflict, disputed the assumption that the rebels are less capable of making rockets than the Syrian military.
“The Syrian rebels most definitely have the ability to make these weapons,” he said. “I think they might have more ability than the Syrian government.”
Both said they were not making a case that the rebels were behind the attack, just that a case for military action was made without even a basic understanding of what might have happened.
Monday, April 10, 2017
Hey Trump, where's the Big Mac for Xi Jinping?
Here's Trump with O'Reilly in 2015 saying he wouldn't throw a dinner for China's leaders but give them McDonald's hamburgers instead.
The false question remains "Why did Trump win?"
Two examples from today.
Liz Peek of FOX reassured Steve Gruber this morning on his radio program in Michigan that Trump won in 2016 primarily because the voters were most concerned to ensure we had a Supreme Court seat filled by a Scalia clone.
And then Josh Brown assures his readers in the line up at Real Clear Markets that the most important reason was class warfare: a tax cut for the middle class and a big tax increase on rich speculators.
It's been five months since the election and we still can't agree about the political state of the country. Hint: libertarians don't agree about very much.
One could go on. Ann Coulter would tell you it was the promise of The Wall and an end to indiscriminate invasion by illegal aliens. Independent small business owners and self-employed people would tell you it was the promise of repeal of Obamacare. Veterans . . . veterans' affairs. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
These various opinions tell us more about the values of the individual coalitions Trump cobbled together to win, not why he won.
Meanwhile the narrow character of Trump's victory in key states, the result of former Democrat voters boycotting Hillary by the millions, goes underestimated by the winners . . . and the losers.
That's fairly typical, even for otherwise prudent presidents.
George Herbert Walker Bush thought victory in Kuwait made him golden, promptly raised taxes after we read his lips, and was shown the door.
The same will happen to Trump if he doesn't deliver on his program.
And because his program is a Duodetrigintapus, the question is really "How many of my twenty-eight legs can I get away with chopping off and still have enough left to strangle my opponent with in 2020"?
He's already cut off three. Repeal of Obamacare has failed. DACA has not been reversed (what, did they run out of pens in the White House?), and suddenly we have to burn $100 million worth of cruise missiles because someone used a politically incorrect weapon.
What's next, an assault weapon ban?
There's still plenty of time for Trump to prove that he isn't some suicidal sea monster.
But at the rate he's going he'll be a legless jellyfish by Christmas.
But at the rate he's going he'll be a legless jellyfish by Christmas.
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Trump's Council of Economic Advisors to be headed by Kevin Hassett, a pro-immigration, free-trading globalist
FTAlphaville (registration required) summarizes all his problems here, with links.
The libertarians are thrilled.
Looks like Donald Trump is proving to be the Manchurian Candidate Hassett thought Obama was.
Friday, April 7, 2017
Ann Coulter promoted Michael Savage's show on her Twitter feed today
Because he was ranting against Trump's attack on Syria.
I was listening anyway. It was a good presentation of our side of the story vs. Trump.
Good on her. Good on him.
Utterly ridiculous story speculates Pompeii victims were gay
Would you embrace your male friend on the ground as you were both gasping for air while suddenly being overcome and buried by a pyroclastic flow? In your house? In a bar?
Just ask the survivors of the Twin Towers what men and women did for each other in those dire circumstances.
This story is pure clickbait.
One-two punch: GDP forecast for 1Q2017 tanks to 0.6% today after crappy jobs and vehicle sales numbers
According to the Atlanta Fed here.
The Obama economy is still in big trouble under Trump.
Congress is off for two weeks. Maybe things will improve a little.
Trump's attack on Syria has not prevented the enemy from using the airfield
So reports the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, according to CNBC here.
Gorsuch confirmed to Supreme Court 54-45
The roll call vote is here.
3 Democrats joined the Republicans in confirming despite the changing of the filibuster rule.
1 Republican did not vote.
ADP had private payrolls up 263,000 earlier this week, but we only get 98,000 from the BLS today
When the expected BLS increase to total nonfarm was 180,000.
What's up with that?!
Long story short: Forget ADP, and employment gains have slowed by 15% in the last year.
ADP is designed to try to predict what the BLS is going to say, and is known to fail at this. It is questioned why ADP even bothers. I agree.
A government measure from the Household Survey, the sum of usually full-time and usually part-time, not seasonally adjusted, is up only 1.89 million (157,500 per month) year over year in March 2017.
Total nonfarm, on the other hand, from the Establishment Survey, is up 2.135 million, not seasonally adjusted (178,000 per month) year over year.
That last number, 178,000 per month, is what the BLS also says is the current 3-month average in March 2017.
Compare that to March 2016 when the 3-month average was 209,000.
There's the truth.
The soft number of 98,000 in the headline today contributed to the climb-down in the 3-month average this month. It will be revised next month, probably up because it's so low. But it's the revisions down for the previous two months totaling 38,000 which are the clue to look farther back.
The absolute number is not important because we can't be certain about it. It is only an estimate anyway, not an actual count. But we can be certain that the long-term behavior of the estimates shows an employment slow down of about 15% year over year.
It was well underway before Trump even got elected.
You can see that in full-time employment gains. Measured in March year over year, full-time gains peaked in March 2015 at almost 3 million additions. Gains have steadily fallen since, to 2.5 million in March 2016 and just 2 million now in March 2017.
And the bottom line there is we've added about only 4.7 million full-time jobs since March 2008 on net.
After NINE years.
The country remains mired in shrunken conditions from which it has not escaped.
In a real recovery, the 10 million full-time jobs lost in 2009 and 2010 would have been fully replaced by 2013 at the latest. It took until 2015, and the momentum immediately started to recede.
Trump's little display last night burned up almost $100 million in cruise missile costs
The terrorists can bankrupt the US with every atrocity at this rate: $1.17 million per victim.
Drudge as Trump propagandist: Switches to "total employed" from "95 million not in labor force"
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| Drudge is excited about 5.6 million extra jobs . . . after 10 years |
Trump ... goooooooood.
Obama ... baaaaaaaaaad.
The Deep State: Eisenhower knew it as the military-industrial complex
The military leadership is shot through with liberal neocons bent on perpetual war to keep the warriors busy.
What interest does its intelligence network have in telling the truth to a civilian commander in chief about who did what with which to whom in Syria?
They all lied about WMD in Iraq, as surely as Obama & Co. lied to us about Obamacare.
Trump's just their latest patsy to keep the money flowing to the underlying businesses.
And even more "just words" from Trump: Stay out of Syria! Rebels are Islamists, not allies!
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| 6 September 2013 |
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| 4 September 2013 |
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| 12 September 2014 |
Just more words: Trump promised no involvement in the Middle East like Bush promised no nation-building
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| 29 August 2013 |
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| 31 August 2013 |
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| 2 September 2013 |
Thursday, April 6, 2017
Looks like Trump's tweets on Syria in 2013 were "just words": Everything he's said now is up for grabs
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| June 2013 |
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| August 2013 |
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| September 2013 |
Michael Savage just said "emacerated"
"Macerated" is a word, but not "emacerated".
Michael Savage obviously didn't get his PhD in English, but how do you get a PhD and make mistakes like that?
He also makes flubs like "you and I" when he means "you and me".
The way to Obamacare repeal is through repeal of the filibuster
Harry Reid's fateful end of the filibuster in 2013 for lower court and executive branch nominees looks set to be ended also for the higher court.
Once accomplished, nothing in principle stands in the way of removing the filibuster rule for legislation.
And that means Obamacare can be repealed with a simple majority of Republicans.
From the story here:
And now, with political polarization at an extreme, the Senate is on the verge of killing off the Supreme Court filibuster, the one remaining vestige of bipartisanship on presidential appointments. For now the filibuster barrier on legislation will remain, though many fear it could be the next to go.
Those who lament this development should look to themselves.
Popular election of Senators from 1913 has made the Senate little more than a Super House, where the filibuster ended in 1842. The continuance of the filibuster in the Senate is thus an anachronism and a farce in an age of rule by 535 demagogues.
If anyone wishes to imbue the Senate with the supposed august character of its past, start by rescinding the popular election of its membership, thus making the Senate once again the creature of the states the constitution meant it to be.
For such a Senate the filibuster might once again become appropriate, but not for this one.
Barry Manilow: It Looks Like He Faked It
There once was a Jew named Pincus
who thought all along he'd hoodwinked us
He made the girls swoon as Manilow
but lived with a guy on the down-low
He's out now the queer, in his wrinkles.
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Monday, April 3, 2017
Opioid epidemic is far more likely an effect of this depression economy than one of its causes
Jeffrey Snider, here:
What the cash flow and profit series tell us is that Economists once again have it backward. The opioid epidemic is far more likely an effect of this depression economy than one of its causes. If businesses are forced to utilize so much less labor, it is because there is no cash nor expectation for growth in profit by which to put more of it to productive use. ...
The problem is the erosion of the national basis for income, the jobs that the Trump administration has correctly focused upon in at least its economic rhetoric. The means to correct the deficiency so far proposed, however, will, in all likelihood, do little or nothing toward alleviating it. For as much as the Federal Reserve in 2017 will claim that this is now a purely fiscal problem, it is instead still a monetary one just as it has been all along.
AP Obama details Obama policies already reversed by Trump
1. Climate change
2. Internet privacy
3. Abortion/Family Planning
4. Keystone XL Pipeline
5. Dakota Access Pipeline
6. Fuel efficiency standards
7. TPP
8. Abortion/Mexico City Policy
9. Fiduciary Rule
Story here.
And right now the boob Rush Limbaugh is ranting against homeownership and its tax deduction
Rush says the mortgage industry lobbied to get the mortgage interest deduction, not realizing it's been there since the Income Tax became law in 1913.
It's like a conspiracy, this coordinated attack on homeownership today.
Real Clear Markets doesn't hide its libertarian bias, runs three anti-homeownership articles today
The American Dream That's Not Backed Up by History APRIL 1, 2017 10:00 AM EDT By Stephen Mihm
Is the American Dream Killing the American People? By Robert Samuelson April 03, 2017
Ilargi: Our Economies Run On Housing Bubbles Posted on April 1, 2017 by Yves Smith By Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor of Automatic Earth
That last one is a doozy, from Occupy Wall Street friendly Naked Capitalism, showing to what depths libertarianism will stoop to advance its ideology.
University of Georgia historian minimizes the magnitude of foreclosures during the Great Depression, missing their significance for the value of homeownership today
Stephen Mihm, at Bloomberg here:
While home ownership became increasingly popular in the early twentieth century, the U.S. was still a majority-renter nation in 1930, though by this time homeowners numbered 48 percent of the total population. But the Great Depression knocked that figure back down to 43 percent, roughly on par with late nineteenth century levels.
Things changed dramatically in the 1940s, when home ownership levels began moving toward unprecedented highs, hitting 66 percent by 1980. Economists are still arguing over why that happened, but the most compelling explanations are pretty banal and do little to support the sentimental blather associated with home ownership.
Does this guy even know that the nonfarm foreclosure rate nearly quadrupled between 1926 and 1933?
Through 1933 there were over 1 million completed foreclosures, about 1% of US population of the time. Compare that to the current crisis. We've had 8.5 million completed foreclosures since 2004, about 2.5% of population.
Homeownership as a cultural value in the post-war was so high because so many people lost their homes before it.
And it still is today and will continue to be, despite what some people say with an axe to grind from the safety of their sinecures.
Robert Kuttner gets out there pretending there isn't already a shadow government
If this were a parliamentary democracy, there would be a leader of the opposition, and a whole “front bench” of opposition spokespeople, issue by issue ― a kind of Shadow Cabinet. ... Even better would be if a leading Democrat put herself forward now, as the presidential candidate for 2020. That way, there would be head-to-head comparisons and challenges, as well as almost equal coverage.
Sunday, April 2, 2017
Hey Trump, we're still waiting for you to repeal Obamacare "immediately"
Trump tweeted this about one month after Obama vetoed HR 3762.
Saturday, April 1, 2017
Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for March 2017
Mean average temperature was 35.0 degrees F in March 2017 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The mean for March is 34.1.
The lowest minimum temperature was 12.0. The mean for March is 7.
The highest maximum temperature was 71. The mean for March is 66.
Precipitation was 3.27 inches. The mean for March is 2.46.
March snowfall was 4.7 inches. The mean for March is 9.1.
Heating degree days came to 921. The mean for March is 953. The total through March from July 2016 comes to 4975 vs. mean to date of 5849.
The heating season to date has been about 15% warmer than normal.
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