Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for May 2018

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for May 2018

Max temp 94, Mean Max temp 86

Min temp 40, Mean Min temp 32

Av temp 64.8, Mean Av temp 57.9

Precip 5.64, Mean precip 3.46

Snowfall 0, Mean snowfall .2

Heating Degree Days 105, Mean HDD 252

Cooling Degree Days 108, Mean CDD 39

The cooling season has started off like a rocket, 240% warmer than mean to date based on CDD. With one month left to go in the heating season, the heating season as a result has now been 3.1% warmer than mean to date based on HDD.  

One man's threat is another man's treat

Weekend help.

Good Lord, Trump is sounding just like that fool David Cameron, now FORMER UK Prime Minister

Cameron, here, in 2014.

More evidence of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Lee Smith says the Democrat narrative that Mifsud was working for the Russians doesn't pass the smell test

Here:

In an official report, Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence asserted that “in their approach to Papadopoulos, the Russians used common tradecraft and employed a cut-out,” a “Kremlin-linked…Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud.” ...

Conversely, if [the FBI] did know Mifsud and thought he was a Russian agent, why did the bureau continue to send agents to teach at Link, with which he had been affiliated for nearly a decade by the time of the Papadopoulos affair?

Both the bureau and the CIA were constant presences at the school; surely they’d run across Mifsud before.

Many others that the FBI worked with knew him — from high-level British intelligence officials to members of the Italian cabinet. If Mifsud was a Kremlin-linked cut-out, why didn’t the FBI warn the U.S.’s European partners, or even U.S. government agencies, about the man who was at the center of Russiagate? ...

So why did the FBI not arrest Mifsud? The State Department declined to comment when RCI emailed to ask why it did not prevent its officials from appearing at an event with a “Kremlin-linked” figure who was key to Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election.

If Mifsud was a Russian spy, it’s unclear why after Papadopoulos’ July 27, 2017 arrest that no U.S. intelligence officials warned their European partners that they were hosting a foreign agent on their territory. ...

When asked if any action was taken to extradite Mifsud or even interview him further in Europe, the office of the special counsel declined to comment on an ongoing investigation.

The office also declined to answer why Mifsud has not been charged. Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies for their involvement in a pro-Russian social media campaign during the 2016 campaign cycle. But the “Kremlin-linked” individual that is alleged to have passed the Trump team information about Russia’s interference in the election is at liberty.

Andy McCarthy is thinking about Joseph Mifsud, too

But not about his connections to Hillary, or how he might have been acting in concert with her campaign to subvert Trump's.

Someone really ought to find out where Joseph Mifsud is hiding.

Here.

Joseph Mifsud, whose meeting with Papadopoulos was the pretext for the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of Trump, admitted he was "With Her"

Here in November 2017:

Joseph Mifsud is the Maltese professor who, according to the rumors and anticipations of the Russiagate investigation, has approached George Papadopoulos, an aide of Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, to help him to contact Russian authorities in the Kremlin, even for organizing a meeting between Trump and Putin. Mr. Mifsud is said to have given to the aide “dirty information” on Mrs. Clinton collected by the Russian. ...

“I am a member of the European Council on Foreign relations”, he adds, “and you know which is the only foundation I am member of? The Clinton Foundation. Between you and me, my thinking is left-leaning. But I predicted Trump’s victory as well as Brexit. Everyone of us wants peace. If the governments don’t talk each other, we citizens must keep talking”.

China is so full of crap, says US freedom of navigation patrols constitute "militarization" of South China Sea

Here:

Senior Col. Zhao Xiaozhou, of the People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Sciences, suggested in a question to Mr. Mattis that the U.S. Navy’s maneuvers near the islands could also be called militarization.

Like the US, China is free to conduct freedom of navigation patrols same as the US. That isn't good enough for China. It lays claim, illegally, to the whole area, and seeks to prohibit freedom of navigation in the area to everyone else. Building islands out of reefs and occupying them illegally and then militarizing them is proof enough of that.

Military confrontation is inevitable.

Investor's Business Daily drinks the unemployment koolaid

Mish drinks the unemployment koolaid

Just phonin' it in these days.

CNBC drinks the unemployment koolaid

You probably think the economy's great because, well, the stock market

It's a struggling swimmer, treading water.

Hey Rush Limbaugh, 12.4 million black people eating but not working!

Well whoop-de-do: Trump has "cut" federal employment by all of 0.6% since November 2016

It's statistically irrelevant, but Trump's cheering section is sounding it nonetheless.

Meanwhile the big-talkin' man had promised to cut the federal workforce by 20%.

Only 558,900 more federal workers to go there fella.

Like that'll happen, either.

Trump knows his own unemployment rate is fake, but touts it anyway. Sad.

Not-in-labor-force hit a new all-time high in May of almost 96 million.

President Trump used to think 223,000 jobs a month wasn't nearly good enough

Actually, to close the employment gap between today and pre-Great Recession America, we'd need 370,000 jobs a month for the next 50 months straight, four years.

Like that's going to happen.

If we had employment at the pre-recession percentage of population, we'd have 7.3 million more working in May 2018 than we do have

162.7 million employed at 63.2% instead of the 155.4 million actual at 60.4% in May 2018

Like unemployment generally, black unemployment is so low because near record numbers of them aren't in the labor force

And presto! Down comes the unemployment rate when you stop counting them.

It's a numbers racket for blacks no different than for everyone else.

"Not working but still eating" soars to new all-time high of 95.9 million in May 2018, but don't expect Rush Limbaugh to talk about it

Not with a Republican in the White House, no sir.

Employers are still pretty stingy to the average Joe compared to 10 and 20 years ago

Samantha Bee knows something about being feckless, you know

She's from Canada, after all.

What economic boom? Show me!

Mueller's worthless investigation is costing us millions, masking gargantuan increases for DOJ

Mueller Runs Up $16 Million Tab in Trump-Russia Investigation

"Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election has cost more than $16 million during its first year, according to the Justice Department."

This is small beer compared with what's really going on.

Trump's budget estimate for the entire Dept. of Justice for fiscal 2017 came to just $18 billion, but has swelled to $30 billion for both fiscal years 2018 and 2019, one of the biggest increases for any department. 67%!

What the hell are they spending the money on? 

Black people calling black people monkeys

Here.

Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end . . .

Small children love him, why not you?

Here.

Verbal rapist Keith Olbermann is consistent with Disney's values but Roseanne isn't

One chimp-out for thee but none for me

Italian bond yields at auction yesterday were way up but still well below 2011 "crisis" levels

The cost of the war in Afghanistan since 2001 is $1.1 trillion, but The Wall would be a waste of money

Roseanne should have said she was hacked, you know, like Joy Reid

Valerie Jarrett inherited her looks from her dad

Valerie Jarrett

James E. Bowman

ABC should put Roseanne on The View next

She could reprise Ted Danson and see how Whoopi likes it now.

Laugh of the Day: Hollywood Reporter closes Disqus comments on Roseanne tweet story without showing even one

"This discussion has been closed".

What discussion?! (in my best Roseanne voice)

Cowards. You know everyone's laughing at Roseanne. Well, everyone with a sense of humor anyway.

Story here.

With every new story about JFK we hate him all the more, and his enablers and worshippers

From the story here:

“If the world had any idea how much of his time was focused not on NATO or Algeria or Vietnam, but on a hot date from Madame Claude, the perception of history would have been dubious, to say the least,” Stadiem writes.

Italy, the hysteria du jour

"Dow is set to drop 200 points at the open as worries about Italy roil world markets"

The Italian bond market, from the perspective of yields over the last ten years, is just shrugging. Yield on the short end is still negative:

6-month

1-year

10-year

30-year

Laugh of the Day: Chinese communism with curvy butt characteristics

South China Morning Post, here.

We don't want 'em either

Story here.

The story behind "I Drive Your Truck"

Here.

Everyday is Memorial Day for Stephen Newman, 67

Editorial: 'Every day is Memorial Day': A lifetime of grief for a soldier's son

This guy's kidding about Amazon, right?

From the story here at CNBC:

Most people who cook and who don't leave the house often can probably get by pretty well using only Amazon services. You get can clothes, food and entertainment all from a single company, which is pretty wild. Who else offers that?

This guy obviously never heard of Meijer, a big box store where you can get your eyeglasses, prescriptions, haircut, banking, groceries, books, entertainment, electronics, hardware, automotive, pet supplies, flowers and on and on. And they deliver. There are others, and were.

Like Prange's.

Prange's was a department store in my hometown back in the 1960s. It had everything, from toys, sporting goods and groceries to shoes, clothing and furniture, and it delivered. My mom used it all the time. And for fun we went there, on the bus. It had a lunch counter where you could sit down and eat, and an express counter for fast food like foot long hot dogs, and right across from that a wonderful bakery, too.

What goes around comes around. 

Trump has cut federal employment by a miniscule 0.3% November 2016 through April 2018

9000 jobs, a fart in a windstorm.

Federal employment peaked in 1990 at 3.2 million and hasn't averaged below 2.7 million since the mid-1960s.

As with ending abortion, cutting federal spending is only aspirational for Republicans in the same way that ending poverty and securing equal pay are only aspirational for Democrats.

Actually delivering on these promises would mean having to come up with new ones, which is too much like work.

James Woods: Scum pardons scum

A Democrat is troubled by the FBI's excuses for Hillary's crimes

Saritha Prabhu in "I’m A Democrat, And The Left’s Russia Gaslighting Scares Me More Than Trump Does":

But I sense a bigger problem on the Democratic side, both among ordinary Democrats and prominent left-leaning pundits. In the Trump era, many seem unable to grasp irony and facts as it applies to their own side. For instance, when they talk about Trump violating the rule of law or obstructing justice, don’t they realize that some of us are thinking: Yes, but where were you when the FBI didn’t apply the rule of law to Hillary Clinton, and why didn’t you object when Hillary obstructed justice by deleting emails under subpoena? Shouldn’t the rule of law apply to everyone?

Despite what The New York Times now says, "Russia-Gate" has always been about the Steele dossier

So says Lee Smith for The Federalist in "How The Code Name ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ Undermines The FBI’s Russia Story":

After an October news report showed his dossier was funded by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, facts that further challenged the credibility of Steele’s research, the FBI investigation’s origin story shifted.

Meanwhile the trend toward lower minimum temperatures and lower maximum temperatures remains pronounced in Grand Rapids, Michigan: 3 degrees F lower over the last 120 years

Trend for average temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan, indicates warming of about +0.5 degrees F over the last 120 years

That's it.

The not-much-of-a-muchness of it suggests that the growth of heat island effects could easily account for the observed results.

How the failed North Korean summit is just like Election 2016

The North Koreans simply failed to show up, as did Hillary's voters.

But as with the election, everyone will go on interminably with other attempts at explanation.

The idiots at Politico call the Hermit Kingdom "hermetic" after North Koreans fail to show up in Singapore

Hermits are recluses, the followers of Hermes something else again. Apparently the editor never learned the difference at Carleton College, or is himself a hermit, employing himself elsewhere.

Here:

The scuttling of the summit, which had been scheduled for June 12 in Singapore, is a blow to U.S. efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, as well as Trump’s desire to land a legacy-making deal with the hermetic nation. ...

A senior White House official said the [North Korean] statement was simply the latest in a “trail of broken promises“ that led Trump to abandon the talks. Last week, North Korean officials failed to show up in Singapore for a series of meetings to lay the groundwork for the presidential summit, the official said, declaring: “They simply stood us up.“

In recent days, the North Koreans have also been unresponsive to U.S. attempts to reach them. “We simply couldn’t get them to pick up the phone,“ the official said. In addition, the North Korean government did not keep its promise to invite experts to observe what it has said was the closure of one of its nuclear test sites, casting doubt on what really happened, the official said.

GE's Obama champion Jeff Immelt took its bonds from AAA to one notch above junk, just like its products

From the story here, which never once mentions the problem of declining product quality:

It’s a bad day for a CEO when he announces he’s retiring and the stock goes up. That was Jeff Immelt’s day on June 12, 2017. ... Its bonds, rated triple-A when Immelt became chief, are now rated five tiers lower at A2 and trade at prices more consistent with a Baa rating, one notch above junk.

Did Immelt run GE into the ground?

Look no further than its light bulb business. While GE-branded lightbulbs shifted to compact-fluorescent technology and then to LED with big promises of longevity which never panned out (trust me, I have BAGS FULL of expensive, failed examples of each), it somehow stopped knowing how to make incandescent lightbulbs which worked, too.

I discovered this with its appliance bulbs. A couple of years ago I had to replace an oven bulb after a few years of service from the original one. None of the GE replacement bulbs lasted more than a day. When I went online I discovered the problem wasn't mine alone. Customers all over the country were having the same problem.

I've had a similar experience with another GE appliance component: gas oven igniters. The OEM part lasted just six years. The OEM replacement? Less than two.

Additionally, GE's long-term care insurance business appears to be tracking the same history. It sold off some of that business not long after 911, and what business it has kept in that line has been in the (bad) news lately as well. GE over-promised on some plans it issued and undercharged for them, not realizing that claims would exceed expectations, making the plans unprofitable. I'm sure that's unsettling to policy holders who trusted GE. How long before the long-term care plans of older customers stop working altogether?

And is it just a coincidence that the Fukushima nuclear reactors were of GE design?

Yeah, sure. Just a coincidence.

Hooah: US disinvites Chicoms from Hawaii naval exercises because of South China sea militarization

From the story here:

“The United States is committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific. China’s continued militarization of disputed features in the South China Sea only serve to raise tensions and destabilize the region. As an initial response to China’s continued militarization of the South China Sea we have disinvited the PLA Navy from the 2018 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) Exercise. China’s behavior is inconsistent with the principles and purposes of the RIMPAC exercise,” Logan said.

“We have strong evidence that China has deployed anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, and electronic jammers to contested features in the Spratly Islands region of the South China Sea. China’s landing of bomber aircraft at Woody Island has also raised tensions,” he continued.

“We believe these recent deployments and the continued militarization of these features is a violation of the promise that President Xi made to the United States and the World not to militarize the Spratly Islands.”

This is so gay: Real men don't even do this for their girlfriends

Andrew McCarthy wonders why the FBI didn't give the Trump campaign a "defensive briefing" in early spring 2016

Instead, Comey waited until early January 2017 to do this, on instructions from Clapper.

Here:

There are many different ways the Obama administration could have reacted to the news that Page and Manafort had joined the Trump campaign. It could have given the campaign a defensive briefing. It could have continued interviewing Page, with whom the FBI had longstanding lines of communication. It could have interviewed Manafort. It could have conducted a formal interview with George Papadopoulos rather than approaching him with a spy who asked him loaded questions about Russia’s possession of Democratic-party emails.

Instead of doing some or all of those things, the Obama administration chose to look at the Trump campaign as a likely co-conspirator of Russia — either because Obama officials inflated the flimsy evidence, or because they thought it could be an effective political attack on the opposition party’s likely candidate.

From the “late spring” on, every report of Trump-Russia ties, no matter how unlikely and uncorroborated, was presumed to be proof of a traitorous arrangement. And every detail that could be spun into Trump-campaign awareness of Russian hacking, no matter how tenuous, was viewed in the worst possible light.

Rush is right: Comey admitted his dossier meeting with Trump was an "assignment"

Rush thinks Comey got this assignment from Clapper.

Notice that Comey admits he was acting at the behest of "all the intelligence chiefs". That would include Brennan at CIA, and presumably the heads of NSA, DIA and NGIA.

Also notice how Comey characterizes this "defensive briefing" of Trump as part of the FBI's "counterintelligence" operation. He's admitting a counterintelligence operation of a presidential campaign and transition was in existence, at the behest of Obama's government, and that the briefing was part of this.

The adversarial character of all this is hardly appreciated by your average observer. 

From the transcript, here, Meet the Press, 4/29/18:

CHUCK TODD:

When you told him the contents of the Steele Dossier, did you get the impression it was the first time he'd ever heard those allegations?

JAMES COMEY:

Yes. And I didn't give him the briefing on the whole Steele Dossier. My assignment was to brief him on a small part of it that was salacious and personal. And my sense was-- I didn't get a sense that he knew about those.

CHUCK TODD:

I want to re-ask a question that Reince Priebus asked you, and you said in your memo, why include that salacious part? If it was something that you thought was, you know, not that necessary to the investigation? Or did you think it was important that he knew?

JAMES COMEY:

We thought it was important that he knew. And I say, "We," meaning all the intelligence chiefs that put together the intelligence community assessment. We thought it was important that he know, because we knew, and we don't want to be holding that back from the new president. And also, the F.B.I.'s role is counterintelligence. And so we do a defensive briefing, whether or not something's true, just to let the person who might be the target of a leverage effort, of an effort by an adversary to gain advantage over him know that we have this information.

Chicoms admit human nature is evil, justifying imposition of tyrannical "social credit system" modeled on FICO

Apparently the model is the US FICO credit scoring system, except a low score on the Chinese version really emphasizes the socialism, meaning the State won't just stop you from getting a loan to buy a car or house, it will prohibit you from simply traveling, as a form of punishment. Socialism, you see, aims to be all-encompassing, a secular form of Puritanism.

From the propaganda source itself, globaltimes dot cn, here:

In 2014, China released an outline for building a government-led national social credit system, pledging to establish a set of laws and regulations regarding social credit, a credit reference system that covers the whole of society and a related reward and punishment system by 2020. Whether people have ridden the train without tickets, violated traffic laws, conducted heroic acts or performed exemplary acts are rated and the score plays a part in their life, determining whether he or she can buy a plane ticket, secure a loan etc.

In today's Chinese society, trustworthiness is not highly honored. That's why we see corruption, expired vaccines, commercial fraud, tax dodging and academic cheating from time to time. Take the arson case in Hangzhou last year. A nanny started a fire that killed a mother and her three children: She was in huge debt and starving for more money from her wealthy employer. It was a tragedy caused by the lack of a credit ranking system.

Brookings: Trump's record on GDP and investment is "middling"

Correctamundo.

Here.

Slate takes The Atlantic to task for not taking the 1% seriously enough

Here in "Actually, the 1 Percent Are Still The Problem".

Actually, the Reagan 1986 tax reform was the problem, but Jordan Weissmann never mentions it.

This despite his wonderful graph of the top 10% over time showing the 1% take-off after the reform. When it becomes easier for the already rich to take high incomes the ordinary way, like everyone else, because of low top marginal rates, less money ends up getting plowed back into productive purposes like it used to before 1986.

We keep believing the myth that "the rich are different than you and me", but they're not. They're as indolent, undisciplined and blinkered as any middle class family leveraged to the hilt which believes it deserves a house a little larger than it can afford, two car payments, the weekly fine dinner out and the expensive annual winter vacation.

The 1% aren't the problem. You will have them always with you, by definition. The problem is human nature, and government's failure to correct for it.

Say what you will about "Christian" belief, previously it at least curbed the 1%'s enthusiasm, with the stick of high marginal income tax rates and the carrot of low long term capital gains taxes.

The American Spectator singles out Michigan for its $16 billion in corporate welfare, but the cronyism trend is up 39% just in the top 10 states since 2015

The story is here, and is more than correct to state:

Unfortunately, crony capitalism is something both parties are willing to get behind. Part of the problem is that voters often approve of these subsidies when the phrase “bringing jobs to the state” is uttered.

We're more like China than we'd like to admit, where state-owned enterprise is the rule. We simply practice state-capitalism-lite.

The data is tracked comprehensively here, updated it appears through 2015. The last time I reported on this in 2015 the top ten crony states alone were up to $96 billion in corporate welfare handouts. Three years later the top 10's cronyism has grown to $133 billion, an increase of nearly 39%.

Free market capitalism this is not.

You ask me why I refuse to fly?

Here's why:

A jobs recovery to the trend line suggests we have a jobs gap of about 5 million in April 2018

The chart shows the trend line for the percent of the population employed in Aprils since 1948. Recovery to this trend line in April 2018 would mean about 62.3% employed instead of 60.3%, implying a jobs gap of about 5.1 million.

Miles to go before he sleeps, and promises to keep . . ..

Seventeen months since his election, Trump ranks fourth since 1948 for putting people back to work

The passionate are mislead

All the art of rhetorick, besides order and perspicuity, only moves the passions, and thereby misleads the judgment.

-- John Locke (1632-1704)

Hired for his "passion for literacy", Caledonia, Michigan high school principal uses "me" when he means "I"

The outgoing interim principal was quoted here about the new hire in 2015:

"Brady [Lake] has created a reputation for being a strong instruction [sic] leader that challenges students and staff alike to reach their full potential. He has a passion for literacy and has worked very hard to implement new instructional [!] models that benefit students," Kingsbury said.

The Sun and News for Saturday, May 19, 2018, however, quotes Lake recently thusly:

"I do not want the board, or anybody, to think that me as an administrator am not 100 percent behind Dr. Martin."

They like to say that they pursue excellence in the school district, it's just that they haven't quite caught up to it yet. 

China intends to go to war to defend its claim to the South China Sea, ready to base its version of B-52 in Spratly Islands

It's like the Japs in WWII all over again.

China air force releases statement, reported here:

“A division of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) recently organised multiple bombers such as the H-6K to conduct take-off and landing training on islands and reefs in the South China Sea in order to improve our ability to ‘reach all territory, conduct strikes at any time and strike in all directions’,” it said in the statement issued on Friday.

It said the pilot of the H-6K bomber conducted assault training on a designated sea target and then carried out take-offs and landings at an airport in the area, describing the exercise as preparation for “the West Pacific and the battle for the South China Sea”.