Hooah: 2nd Fleet, deactivated in 2011, to resume operations to protect East Coast and North Atlantic

Read all about it, here.

The article from WaPo is confused about the US Fleet. The 7th Fleet is Japan-based. The Italy-based Fleet is the 6th, not the 7th.

"Navy officials had previously recommended reactivating the fleet as part of broader force structure reviews following last year's deadly row of collisions among ships at the Japan-based 7th Fleet. In a separate statement, Richardson invoked Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' national defense strategy as key guidance to reestablish the fleet, which will extend halfway across the Atlantic until it meets the area of responsibility for Italy-based 7th Fleet."

The Limbaugh Theorem again, in a headline: Republicans run like they're not in charge of anything

Rush will never admit that this is the same thing that Obama did, but it is.

It's especially true of Trump, who as president could run an operation to secure the southern border (without congressional support, approval or even funding) just like Eisenhower, but won't. Instead he pretends there's some nefarious impediment keeping him from doing his job, which he isn't going to have after 2020 if he doesn't get down to business.

Trump has no jobs achievement, let alone an historic one

The idea that Trump has an historic jobs achievement is based on the increasingly meaningless unemployment rate, which notoriously doesn't count many people who are not working. The idea that "essentially every American who wants a job could find one" is rubbish. For the anecdotal evidence, I suggest you ask any of the millions of unemployed and underemployed non-management people over the age of 50, most of whom got their walking papers in the Great Recession because they made too much money in the opinion of management. If you are looking for the hidden, nefarious, recalcitrant forces of deflation in the American economy, look there.   

The federal government actually tracks everyone who wants a job but still doesn't have one. They presently number 5.1 million, well above the average low for the data series in 2000 at 4.4 million. But even this number fails to capture the real scope of current labor slack.

If we had a real jobs recovery going on, we'd have employment at pre-Great Recession levels. We don't. Total employed as a percentage of the population in April 2018 is at not quite 60.4%. Before the recession it averaged 63.2% over the previous twelve years. That latter rate would yield 162.6 million working in April 2018 instead of the 155.3 million we actually have.

It's that simple. We have the people. What we're missing is 7.3 million of them working.

Them's the facts, no matter what the cheerleaders for Trump keep shouting.

Robin Williams unknowingly suffered from diffuse Lewy body dementia, the second most common form after Alzheimer’s

From the story here:

Three months later, the autopsy results came in. His brain had left its own suicide note.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for April 2018

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for April 2018

Max temp 74, Mean Max temp 79

Min temp 16, Mean Min temp 22

Av temp 40.1, Mean Av temp 46.5

Precip 2.85, Mean precip 3.30

Snowfall 6.0, Mean snowfall 2.4

Heating Degree Days 740, Mean HDD 553

Using HDD, the cold season to date has been just 1% warmer than the mean. Season to date HDD were 6339 vs. season to date mean of 6403.

Under Trump the FBI is still corrupt, won't investigate personal messages of pro-Hillary agents Lisa Page and her lover Peter Strzok

John Boltneck Kerry, private citizen, has been conducting foreign policy secretly with Iran

A commenter to the story here has it about right:

The liberal media was quick to label possible foreign contact by the Trump campaign as a Logan Act violation. Kerry pursuing his own foreign policy out of office ... no problem. Hypocrite, thy name is liberal democrat.

Maybe dropouts from the labor force were a cause of the Great Recession rather than a result

The high rate of dropping out of the labor force we've become accustomed to since the Great Recession actually predates it by a decade, suggesting that dropping out may be a cause of the Great Recession rather than a result of it. Continued slow growth of GDP since the Great Recession can also be explained by the absence of these inputs.

The crisis in growth of personal income since 2007 shows why it feels like a depression

The 13.9% growth of personal income between 2007 and 2017 is the worst since the Great Depression and is 60% off the average growth rate of 35%.

Somebody should elect somebody to do something about this!

Jeffrey Snider: Fix the suffering in the labor force or next time you might actually get socialism

Here:

The American labor force is suffering like it hasn’t since the 1930’s, but nobody seems willing to challenge Economists’ easily disproved claims.

Into that vacuum had swept Mr. Trump himself, but also Mr. Sanders. The mere election of the former didn’t immediately fix the problem; rather, things have gotten worse since the campaign ended (to be clear, it had nothing to do with Trump . . .). May Day is still only trending toward becoming an official holiday.

Bill Cosby's lasting contribution to America: Finally SOMEONE gets child rapist Roman Polanski booted from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

There was NO WAY the black guy was going to get expelled while the white guy got to remain.

Way to go Brownie!

Story here.

Failure of nerve: America has basically ceded control of the South China Sea to China since the 1950s

China has been playing a long game while America has dithered year after year with changeable, irresolute leadership. This is one important reason China laughs at America's political system. It knows it can get away with this stuff as long as it waits us out. Right now it is howling with laughter as everyone is consumed with Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels while it installs offensive missiles with impunity. We are a joke! And one day this joke may mean many dead Americans and the loss of freedom for countless others.   

From the story here:

While the installation of missile platforms are [sic] new to the Spratlys, China has already deployed similar systems in the nearby Paracel Islands. Satellite images of Woody Island, Beijing's military headquarters in the South China Sea, show deployments of Y-8 transport aircraft as well as J-10 and J-11 fighter jets. China first took possession of Woody Island in 1955 and has since outfitted it with ports, aircraft hangars, communication facilities, helipads and a runway. [Gregory] Poling notes that this particular outpost serves as a blueprint for China's future developments on Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef and Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands.

Laugh of the Day: If paying off a hooker means Trump has to leave office, Washington DC will be empty by tomorrow

A caller just now to the Rush Limbaugh show.

Roger Kimball calls Robert Mueller a fanatic, wants him shut down NOW

Here.

In a 2014 poll, 9.7% admitted to coming to work after smoking marijuana, which would have been 14.2 million Americans high at work at the time

Civilian employment averaged 146.3 million in 2014.

The story is here.

I'm sure Rex Tillerson is thrilled that the Boy Scouts is now just the Scouts

A Marist Poll from 2017 puts marijuana use monthly at almost 35 million US adults

The poll is here.

Apparently the 7.6 million missing jobs I keep writing about would be filled but for the fact that the unemployed are all smoking marijuana

From the story here:

[E]mployers ... are quietly taking what once would have been a radical step: They're dropping marijuana from the drug tests they require of prospective employees. Marijuana testing - a fixture at large American employers for at least 30 years - excludes too many potential workers, experts say, at a time when filling jobs is more challenging than it's been in nearly two decades.

The socialist backlash is coming

Rasmussen says 46% already favor government guaranteed jobs.

Hillary admits 41% of Democrats already are socialists.

All it will take for socialism to finally succeed is the onset of the depression the Feds keep intervening to prevent. One can intervene only so many times after which that doesn't work anymore. The problem is the interventions distort the course of capitalism so much that its natural mean-reverting ways will have to be by definition quite severe next time. Enter outright socialism because the young have been brainwashed against capitalism and will clamor for something other than capitalism or the Fed interventionism (aka state capitalism) which hasn't worked.

There will be blood.

China installs missiles in Spratly Islands, Admiral Harry Harris says China eroding the free and open international order

China has no business annexing this territory, and the international court of The Hague has so ruled already in July 2016.

Here:

China has installed anti-ship cruise missiles and surface-to-air missile systems on three of its fortified outposts in the South China Sea, sources tell CNBC. ... The Spratlys, to which six countries lay claim, are located approximately two-thirds of the way east from southern Vietnam to the southern Philippines.

May is the most wonderful time . . . of the year . . .

. . . to sell stocks if you've capitalized on the spectacular 9-year run since March 2009.

Getting in when stock valuations are cheap is key. So is getting out when those valuations soar as now. On the scale used in the chart, valuation right now is about 13.2, similar to the year 2000 when everything fell apart. At the January 2018 high valuation averaged 14.3.

Trump's impotence at the border is breeding not contempt exactly, but indifference

The lie of the day: "Mueller’s team continues to operate almost entirely leak-free"

Garrett M. Graff, "journalist", formerly of Politico, formerly of the Howard Dean presidential campaign, in Wired here.

What he really is is a Mueller toady:

"Mueller always knows more than we think".

"Mueller is building a bulletproof case".

"Mueller likely already knows how this story ends ... and it seems clear that Mueller might actually be relatively close to wrapping up the investigation".

Ilan Wurman calls for a return to interpretive departmentalism, siding with President Jackson and Justice Scalia

Here:

Thomas Jefferson, for example, pardoned individuals convicted under the Sedition Act because he believed that act to be unconstitutional notwithstanding contrary pronouncements by the courts, and Abraham Lincoln urged Congress to reenact the Missouri Compromise although it had been struck down as unconstitutional by the Court in Dred Scott. And Andrew Jackson vetoed the Second Bank of the United States, even though it had been approved by the Court.

“If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of this act,” Jackson wrote, “it ought not to control the coordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others.”

Real Clear Politics is making sure Jon Tester is getting broad, expansive coverage

Sonia Sotomayor has seen better days

Sotomayor has gained a lot of weight since her nomination in 2009 (right). She fell in her home in April (hmmm) and is scheduled for shoulder surgery tomorrow.

Blue Origin launched and returned successfully today in its eighth test flight

The rocket's capsule reached nearly 66 miles up and safely parachuted to a soft landing in the west Texas desert.

The rocket also safely returned to a landing pad. The rocket is not a heavy launch vehicle like Elon Musk's, but it returns to earth in similar fashion to be reused. Space tourism is just around the corner.

Excellent video of the whole thing, here.

The Weekly Standard's girly man way of calling Pat Buchanan a fascist without really calling him one

Here's the html:

https://www.weeklystandard.com/charles-j-sykes/patrick-buchanans-strange-new-respect-for-the-ayatollah

Here's the actual headline:

Patrick Buchanan’s Strange New Respect for the Ayatollah

Here's the index of articles the way the girly men only wish they could title it, but don't have the balls to:

Was the last North Korean nuclear weapon detonation yield at Mantapsan underestimated by over 100%?

According to a Wikipedia entry here, the following formula is used to calculate the radius of the crater created by an underground nuclear blast:

r = 55 * ${\displaystyle \sqrt[3]{y}}$

If y was 100 kilotons as widely reported, for example here, the radius r of the crater should have been in the neighborhood of 255ft. with the entire underground void thus having a diameter of something like 510ft.

Yet the researchers referenced in this article state that the diameter of the void left under Mantapsan was 656ft.

That presupposes an r-value of 328 and thus a y-value of 212 kilotons, not 100, meaning the North Koreans detonated a weapon with a yield 112% higher than widely reported.

Senator Jon Tester of Montana looks increasingly well fed in his government job

What economic boom? 1Q2018 real GDP at 2.3% disappoints again

Let's see: Kim Jong Fat Boy made his first foreign visit, a secret one, to China at the end of March, and one month later suddenly he's offering denuclearization to South Korea

Xi Jinping Pong read His Rotundity the riot act, that's all.

There's a contingent of fellow travelers in South Korea who want peace at any price, just as there are in the West. Xi instructed Kim to play them for the fools that they are, just as Xi is playing Trump and the US.

Do you hear the sound of that fiddle?

The communists of China and North Korea are in it for the long haul, a long, slow game toward victory in their shared mutual fight to achieve socialist ideals.

Just as Xi Jinping lied about not militarizing the reefs China has illegally occupied, they're lying about this too.

The real objective is to get the US out of South Korea, and ultimately out of the region, and Kim is the instrument for accomplishing part of this broader aim.

Actually, Obama should just give his to Trump

N. Korean Mantapsan collapsed after 5th underground nuke test turned the mountain into fragile fragments

From the story here:

The test turned the mountain into fragile fragments, the researchers found. ... The mountain’s surface had shown no visible damage after four underground nuclear tests before 2017. But the 100-kilotonne bomb that went off on September 3 vaporised surrounding rocks with unprecedented heat and opened a space that was up to 200 metres (656 feet) in diameter, according to a statement posted on the Wen team’s website on Monday. 

New study in Journal of Climate says future warming to be 30-45% lower than projected by IPCC models

Uh huh.

Reported here.

Mark Steyn wins in court in the matter of CRTV vs. Steyn

CRTV has to pay Steyn over $4 million, according to the court, a stunning rebuke.

Mark Levin's network's days look numbered.

Steyn's account of it all is here, and here:

They picked a fight with me - and two judges have now ruled that they lost, comprehensively.

The story of the dirty rotten DNC, the dirty rotten Hillary and the dirty rotten Federal Election Commission

Here.

Don't miss it.

IPCC puts global warming at +1.53 degrees F 1880-2012, over 3.8 times what it was in Grand Rapids, Michigan

The average temperature trend in Grand Rapids, Michigan shows warming of about only 0.4 degrees F over the 120-year record from 1898 through 2017, according to NOAA online weather data for the station. The relatively small increase combined with the recency of the highs for the data series, however, makes one wonder about possible interference from developing heat island effects at the station, which is located near the increasingly busy Ford International Airport.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change figure of 1.53 degrees F is referenced here.

The data for Grand Rapids is shown below.

Gasoline prices are up about 30% since the Trump election

The SPLC Laugh of the Day

Liberalism is still trying to convince itself that Trump voters' economic anxieties were secondary

Here in "People Voted for Trump Because They Were Anxious, Not Poor" at The Atlantic.

The failure of jobs to recover under Obama to their trajectory before Obama means nothing to these people.

Mark Levin arrives at the truth: The US Senate has no purpose

He's saying so right now in the monologue, that since the 17th Amendment was passed the Senate has stopped functioning for the purpose for which the constitution had designed it.

It is indeed useless.

 

Popular election of senators made the US Senate a "Super House", which was a kind of a power grab away from the US House where popular power was distributed among many. 

 

Now popular power is concentrated among few.

 

The Senate still acts as a barrier to the House's energy, but it no longer reflects the direct will of the state legislatures which once appointed them.

R. Lee Ermey packs it in a little earlier than he had planned, I'm sure

Dang.

Find out how noisy is your address in the United States

The interactive map is here. Simply type in your complete street and city address and the tool will take you straight to your location. Government doing something useful for a change.

New York City's 311 gets 50,000 calls a day, the number one complaint being noise

From the story here in the Janesville WI GazetteXtra:

In a city whose cacophony can reach 95 decibels in midtown Manhattan — way above the federal government’s recommended average of no more than 70 decibels — the commotion over all that racket involves irate residents, anti-noise advocates, bars, helicopter sightseeing companies, landscapers and construction companies, as well as City Hall. The city’s 311 non-emergency call service gets 50,000 calls a day, and the No. 1 complaint is noise.

Pew study says $1.4 trillion in state pension promises currently can't be paid, a new record

From the story here:

The annual report from the Pew Charitable Trusts finds that public worker pension funds with heavy state government involvement owed retirees and current workers $4 trillion as of 2016. They had about $2.6 trillion in assets, creating a gap of about one-third, or a record $1.4 trillion.

White privilege, otherwise known as the 1990s phenomenon of everyone classifying Bill Clinton's misdeeds as peccadillos

Bill Clinton, America's first black president.

Reuters/Yahoo News can't bring itself to say China's Xi Jinping is a dictator who's enemy is freedom of speech

Tut tut, looks like enemy propaganda.

Here in "China's Xi says internet control key to stability":

Chinese regulators have been driving a sweeping crackdown on media content, which has been gaining force since last year, spreading a chill among content makers and distributors.

No shit, Sherlock.

Mark Levin is elated that the DNC has sued the Trump campaign

The DNC idiots have thereby unwittingly opened the door to discovery, "the compulsory disclosure, by a party to an action, of relevant documents referred to by the other party".

Laugh of the Day: A T.O.S. is similar to a P.O.S., only larger, smellier and potentially more dangerous to human health

Our Chinese enemy, lyin' Xi Jinping

Bill Gertz, here:

China has deployed electronic attack systems and other military facilities on disputed islands in the South China Sea and is now capable of controlling the strategic waterway, according to the admiral slated to be the next Pacific Command chief. ...

"In the South China Sea, the PLA has constructed a variety of radar, electronic attack, and defense capabilities on the disputed Spratly Islands, to include: Cuarteron Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, Gaven Reef, Hughes Reef, Johnson Reef, Mischief Reef and Subi Reef," Davidson said. ...

The militarization contradicts a promise from Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping not to militarize the South China Sea that is used as a waterway transit for an estimated $5.3 trillion in goods annually.

"These actions stand in direct contrast to the assertion that President Xi made in 2015 in the Rose Garden when he commented that Beijing had no intent to militarize the South China Sea," Davidson said.

"Today these forward operating bases appear complete. The only thing lacking are the deployed forces."

The occupied islands will permit China to extend its influence thousands of miles southward and project power deep into the Oceania.

"The PLA will be able to use these bases to challenge U.S. presence in the region, and any forces deployed to the islands would easily overwhelm the military forces of any other South China Sea-claimants," Davidson said. "In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States."

Don't piss gasoline down my back and tell me it's rainin', Senator

What labor shortage? We have 1 million more people 20 to 24 years old than we did in 1979, but 400,000 fewer counted in the labor force and 20,000 fewer actually working

What labor shortage? We have 800,000 more people 25 to 54 years old than we did 10 years ago, 830,000 fewer counted in the labor force, and 45,000 fewer actually working

What labor shortage? We have MORE teens in 2018 than in 1978, but 3.5 million fewer are counted in the labor force and 2.7 million fewer WORK

Well, at least the Minneapolis Fed President doubts the labor shortage narrative

Too bad he doesn't have a vote right now.

25th anniversary of FBI crimes at WACO

Story here.

Total unemployment looks headed for a new cyclical low in 2018 similar to the year 2000

The year 2000 was also noteworthy for peak S&P 500, in August on a monthly average basis. The same may obtain for 2018. The market's average level in January already may have established the top for this cycle.

Maybe gasoline wouldn't cost as much if we didn't export 8% of our consumption

In 2017 our consumption of gasoline came to 3.40 billion barrels, but that year we exported 0.273 billion barrels, or 8% of that consumption, a new record. Consumption actually fell in 2017 from 2016 when consumption hit 3.41 billion barrels.

The news today says prices are climbing because of increased demand and tighter supplies. But as prices have risen in the last year, miles-traveled are down sharply year over year in January. Growth of miles-traveled had barely caught up with pre-recession levels in 2016 and 2017 and is now on the verge of recession-like conditions to start 2018.

We'll see if any of this continues, but one thing's for sure. Paying $3.00+/gallon this summer isn't what we voted for when we voted for Donald Trump.

Hogg jumps shark, now calls for boycott of Blackrock and Vanguard over guns

Story here (photo here).

Rotza ruck with that, kid.

TrimTabs: 1Q2018 pace of corporate stock buybacks and deals outstrips pace of wage increases by 85%

For the five years previous to the Trump corporate tax cuts, buybacks and deals outstripped wage increases $4.9 trillion to $2.3 trillion. The pace increased in the first quarter to a projected five-year level of $6.1 trillion to $2.6 trillion, meaning the pace of stock buybacks and deals is up 24% but only 13% for wage increases. The difference between those two rates of increase is nearly 85%.

The CNBC story, "Tax cut riches have gone to execs and investors over workers by nearly 3-to-1 margin", is here. The headline exaggerates the 1Q2018 ratio of buybacks of $305 billion to wage increases of $131 billion, which is actually 2.3:1.

Liberal math, but still. The Trump tax cuts are going to top managers and stockholders overwhelmingly compared with the masses of ordinary wage earners.

This explains the resilience of the stock market indices near their record highs. The tax cut cash is flowing into stocks, boosting and supporting prices.

Piers Morgan: James Comey's a snivelling, egotistical worm, an incompetent, inept, self-aggrandising gossip-mongering drama queen, not to mention a treacherous, useless, money-grabbing weasel

Here.

Gee Piers, why don't you tell us how you really feel?

Congress may end up getting rid of Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein if Trump won't

The window for that, however, closes if Republicans lose the House in November. Reps. Jordan and Nunes ought to consider that the Department of Justice will continue to slow-walk this just enough to get them there.

From the story here:

Although the DOJ cooperated with the lawmakers Wednesday, the department has still failed to fully comply with congressional subpoenas for thousands of documents. Thus, Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed U.S. Attorney John Lausch of the Northern District of Illinois to speed up efforts to deliver documents lawmakers have been seeking for months. But if the process drags out too much longer, [Rep.] Jordan said there would be severe consequences for Rosenstein, Wray and Sessions.

"My attitude is just like [Nunes']. If things don't change dramatically — and I'm talking days, not weeks or months — if they don't change dramatically, then impeachment and contempt and resignations should all be on the table," Jordan warned. "Because we're tired of it, and more importantly the American people are tired of it."

Two US guided-missile destroyers never fired a shot, Syria attacked instead from three other directions

Bloomberg reports here in "Warship Ruse and New Stealth Missiles: How the U.S. and Allies Attacked Syria":

While both vessels carry as many as 90 Tomahawk missiles -- the main weapon used in the Friday evening strike on Syria -- neither ship in the end fired a shot. Instead, according to a person familiar with White House war planning, they were part of a plan to distract Russia and its Syrian ally from an assault Assad’s government could do little to defend itself against.

The Laugh of the Day: Trump 2013 says Obama must get Congressional approval b4 attacking Syria

Miloš Forman has passed away at 86

The Czech director of Amadeus (1984, won 8 Academy Awards) and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975, won 5 Academy Awards) had made his American home in Connecticut. 

The LA Times has the obit, here.

SECDEF Mattis has called the joint missile strike on Syria a "single shot", not an opening salvo in a war

Reported here:

Mattis said the strike was a “single shot” aimed to deter the Syrian regime from using chemical weapons. Whether the United States and its allies will pursue further action in Syria would “depend on Mr. Assad should he decided to use more chemical weapons in the future," the secretary said. 

Critics will no doubt say the April 2017 missile attack was a one-off, too. How many one-offs does it take before we're at war?

US, France and Great Britain attack Syrian chemical facilities after 6th Russian veto at the UN on Tuesday

From the veto story here:

Washington (CNN) -- Russia vetoed a US draft resolution at the UN Security Council Tuesday that would have established an independent investigation into the suspected use of chemical weapons in Syria. ... In November, Russia blocked the renewal of the independent panel investigating chemical weapons in Syria, and British Ambassador Karen Pierce reminded the council that Tuesday's vote marked Russia's sixth veto related to chemical weapons in Syria. Seven nations -- including the US -- voted against a Russian resolution that would have set up an investigation overseen by the Security Council. According to Haley, that draft was designed to give Russia a chance to approve the investigators who were chosen for the task and allow the Security Council to assess the findings of the investigation before any report was released. A second Russian resolution that only supported the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons fact-finding mission in Syria also failed to pass. The organization is made up of an international team of investigators but it cannot on its own determine who was responsible for the attack.

If we really had full employment in America, we wouldn't be missing 7.6 million working

The difference between 63.2% working before 2009 and 60.2% working in March 2018 is 7.6 million.

China has 350,000 students in the US, many of them spying and reporting to 100 "Confucius Institutes" at US universities

Bill Gertz reports here.

Former British Ambassador to Syria says first responders to gas attacks on which the West relies are themselves Islamic fanatics who beheaded their enemies

Watch here.

He says the video evidence is unverified and probably staged and that the West should get inspectors in there.

It's April 12th but snow remains in the forecast for Grand Rapids, Michigan

John Boehner joins board of marijuana company

These people don't care about anything except cashin' in.

Here.

Dershowitz meets with Trump, accuses Mueller of laundering info he's not allowed to pursue to SDNY

Reported here.