Friday, July 20, 2018
Thursday, July 19, 2018
You know it's all hysteria about Russia when even the editor of lefty mag The Nation calls it out
The lunatics are attacking Glenn Greenwald, of all people.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, here:
Malcolm Nance, a very ubiquitous commentator on MSNBC on intelligence and other issues, said Glenn [Greenwald] was—I’m going to read it, because it’s so outrageous—”an agent of Trump & Moscow … deep in the Kremlin’s pocket.” This is—we’ve seen this in our history before. And I think it is—it’s dangerous when you have a suffocating consensus instead of a full, robust debate. ... to call someone a traitor because they have a point of you don’t agree with, we’re in a dangerous territory.
The cult of Xi erupts over remarks by little Larry Kudlow
Kudlow:
“I don’t think President Xi at the moment has any intention of following through on the discussion we made and I think the president is so dissatisfied with China on these so-called talks that he is keeping the pressure on — and I support that.”
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying:
“That the relevant United States official unexpectedly distorted the facts and made bogus accusations is shocking and beyond imagination. The United States' flip-flopping and promise-breaking is recognized globally."
More here.
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Lefty mag The Nation: Not a hack at all, but a leak
Flashback to August 9, 2017:
This official intelligence assessment has since led to what some call “Russiagate,” with charges and investigations of alleged collusion with the Kremlin, and, in turn, to what is now a major American domestic political crisis and an increasingly perilous state of US-Russia relations. To this day, however, the intelligence agencies that released this assessment have failed to provide the American people with any actual evidence substantiating their claims about how the DNC material was obtained or by whom. Astonishingly and often overlooked, the authors of the declassified ICA themselves admit that their “judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.” ...
Despite all the media coverage taking the veracity of the ICA assessment for granted, even now we have only the uncorroborated assertion of intelligence officials to go on. Indeed, this was noticed by The New York Times’s Scott Shane, who wrote the day the report appeared: “What is missing from the public report is…hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack…. Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’”
Primary reason we should believe Russians hacked DNC servers is because US intelligence services say so, not because of evidence
Slate, May 9, 2017, here:
[T]he primary rationale readers are given for why they should believe that the Russian government meddled in the U.S. election is because the FBI, CIA, and NSA believe that to be the case. We are given very little actual detail about what happened or how the incidents were traced to Russia specifically, while we are treated to numerous statements along the lines of: “We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election” or “We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”
Of course, there are many reasons the Intelligence Community might have decided not to reveal any actual evidence for these claims. But in the absence of that evidence, whether or not you believe their conclusions rests entirely on your confidence in the judgment and investigative abilities of the FBI, CIA, and NSA. And if the evidence that they’ve used to level major accusations at a foreign government comes not from agencies of the U.S. government or direct law enforcement investigations, but rather from private sector firms like CrowdStrike, then the “high confidence” of the government counts for very little. ...
So if the FBI didn’t ask for access the DNC’s servers out of laziness or negligence, it certainly should have. And if the DNC denied them that access for fear of being embarrassed by what they might find, or because they had more faith in CrowdStrike than the FBI, then it served only to undermine confidence in the ultimate results of the investigation and give the impression of having something shameful to hide. Neither the DNC nor the FBI should have been satisfied with an investigation that did not involve the FBI conducting a first-hand look at the compromised systems. And all of us should be concerned about the seeming acceptance of both parties to let a private company singlehandedly carry out an investigation with such significant political consequences.
US intelligence wrong about nerve agent use in Syria in April, says Fact Finding Mission of Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
And yet we're supposed to believe US intelligence is always right, for example, about WMD in Iraq and most recently about Russian hacking of DNC servers.
'A Western NGO received patients suffering from a variety of symptoms, including constricted pupils, coughing, vomiting, and abnormally slow breathing. Some public videos referred to “nerve gas” or an “organophosphate,” which would be consistent with the victims’ accounts of constricted pupils. Social media and the press estimated varying numbers of casualties, including 19 fatalities and 37 injuries',
Crock of shit that is.
From the OPCW press release twelve days ago, here:
'OPCW designated labs conducted analysis of prioritised samples. The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties. Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.'
Rand Paul on John Brennan: He's unhinged, deranged, an insult to our government
Quoted here:
PAUL: “John Brennan started out his adulthood by voting for the communist party presidential candidate. He is now ending his career by showing himself to be the most biased, bigoted, over the top, hyperbolic, sort of unhinged director of the CIA we have ever had. And really it is an insult to our government to have a former head of the CIA to calling the president treasonous just because he doesn’t like him. But I realized that Brennan — I filibustered Brennan, I tried to keep Brennan from ever being the leader of the CIA. But realized that Brennan and Clapper are known for wanting to expand the authority of the intelligence agencies to grab up everyone’s information, including Americans. So I don’t have a lot of respect for these people even before they decided to go on hating the president. I dislike these people because they wanted to grab up so much power and use it against the American people. ... Some people are deranged with Trump and that’s why I think they’re crazy.”
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
It's the 22nd anniversary of the TWA Flight 800 explosion off Long Island
Jack Cashill's got a new book about the tragedy which killed all 230 aboard.
Read about it here.
Haven't been in the sky since.
Putin at summit presser: Bring your investigation to Russia and we'll bring ours to America . . .
. . . to investigate the misdeeds of Bill Browder, Jewish grandson of Earl Browder, CPUSA leader from 1930-1945.
Bill Browder renounced his US citizenship in 1998 to avoid taxes and is a British national and major Putin opponent and target.
The Swamp is in complete sympathy with Bill Browder on the subject of Russia. Don't expect the financial transactions of his associates in support of Hillary Clinton to come to light readily.
All we've got so far is this:
But federal records show that Browder's New York financial partners, Ziff Brothers Investments, donated only $1.75 million in the 2016 campaign, spreading it among candidates for many offices in both parties and favoring Republicans in congressional races. The watchdog site opensecrets.org shows it giving only $17,700 for Clinton's election.
From the transcript of the summit presser, here:
Putin:
We have an existing agreement between the United States of America and the Russian Federation, an existing treaty that dates back to 1999. The mutual assistance on criminal cases. This treaty is in full effect. It works quite efficiently. On average, we initiate about 100, 150 criminal cases upon request from foreign states.
For instance, the last year, there was one extradition case upon the request sent by the United States. This treaty has specific legal procedures we can offer. The appropriate commission headed by Special Attorney Mueller, he can use this treaty as a solid foundation and send a formal, official request to us so that we could interrogate, hold questioning of these individuals who he believes are privy to some crimes. Our enforcement are perfectly able to do this questioning and send the appropriate materials to the United States. Moreover, we can meet you halfway. We can make another step. We can actually permit representatives of the United States, including the members of this very commission headed by Mr. Mueller, we can let them into the country. They can be present at questioning. ...
Then we would expect that the Americans would reciprocate. They would question officials, including the officers of law enforcement and intelligence services of the United States whom we believe have something to do with illegal actions on the territory of Russia. And we have to request the presence of our law enforcement.
For instance, we can bring up Mr. Browder in this particular case. Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over $1.5 billion in Russia. They never paid any taxes. Neither in Russia nor in the United States. Yet, the money escapes the country. They were transferred to the United States. They sent huge amount of money, $400 million as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Well, that’s their personal case. It might have been legal, the contribution itself. But the way the money was earned was illegal. We have solid reason to believe that some intelligence officers, guided these transactions. So we have an interest of questioning them. That could be a first step. We can extend also it. Options abound. They all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.
Rosenstein's liberal buzzkill: No crime committed by an American, no vote count changed, no election result affected
From the transcript here:
There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result.
Sen. Ron Wyden: The company that makes half of America's voting machines refuses to answer basic cyber security questions
Here:
Wyden says he’s still waiting for ES&S to respond to the outstanding questions he sent the company in March.
“ES&S needs to stop stonewalling and provide a full, honest accounting of equipment that could be vulnerable to remote attacks,” he told Motherboard. “When a corporation that makes half of America’s voting machines refuses to answer the most basic cyber security questions, you have to ask what it is hiding.”
A booming economy depends on cheaper inputs: To get 1990s-style growth we need gasoline at $1.53 instead of $2.70
The 1999 price of gasoline in H1 averaged $1.038. Adjusted for inflation that would be $1.53 in 2017.
Monday, July 16, 2018
Strzok testimony confirms partisan channel for accusations against Trump was through Ohr at DOJ, whose Russia expert wife worked for Fusion GPS, Democrat bankrollers of the dossier
From the story here:
The first-time disclosure is significant because it confirms an unusual and continuing channel for collusion accusations that started outside the government with anti-Trump people and reached Mr. Ohr at the Justice Department and then the FBI. Around that time, Mr. Ohr was communicating with dossier writer Christopher Steele. Mr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, a Russia researcher, worked for Mr. Steele’s paymaster, investigative firm Fusion GPS, which was trying to damage Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Mr. Ohr met with Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson after the November 2016 election. ...
Republicans now know that the dossier trail started with Mr. Steele, Mr. Ohr, Fusion GPS and Mr. Simpson and a journalist. Mr. Corn has denied he worked with the FBI. ...
“Bruce Ohr, the fourth-ranking official at the Department of Justice, his wife works for Fusion GPS in the summer. He gets information and passed it to the FBI. That becomes the basis to spy on the Trump campaign, plain and simple,” Mr. Jordan said. “This is the first time to my knowledge the FBI has admitted that . . .."
Sunday, July 15, 2018
Hacked DNC servers, never examined by FBI, have now conveniently disappeared, so Mueller's charges against the ham sandwiches are doubly meaningless
From the story here:
The one thing [the indicted Russians] are alleged to have done that is serious is hacking the servers of the Democratic National Committee. That’s a serious charge. It’s also completely unprovable, which makes it a brilliant political move by Mueller.
It’s a serious charge. But if any of the people charged with doing it were to show up in court, which is highly unlikely, their lawyers would demand to see the DNC’s servers so they could have their experts examine them. Mueller says Russians hacked them, but the servers have magically disappeared. So how can anyone be certain who hacked them, or if they were even really hacked at all?
Since none of those charged are going to show up in court, there will be no challenge to the allegation, no demand to see the evidence, and no legal embarrassment for Mueller when the charges are dropped because the key piece of evidence not only can’t be provided to the defense, it wasn’t even examined by the prosecutor. He appears to have simply taken the word of the Democratic Party about what happened.
Saturday, July 14, 2018
Babe, 1995's piggy prophet to the alt-right
Baa-ram-ewe!
Baa-ram-ewe!
To your breed,
your fleece,
your clan be true!
Sheep be true!
Baa-ram-ewe!
Friday, July 13, 2018
Mark Fuhrman's use of the n-word damaged the prosecution's credibility in the OJ case, but Democrats expect us to believe in Strzok's credibility even though he hates Trump's guts
A point made by a black caller to The Chris Plante Show in the last half hour.
Ann Coulter: The point isn't being made enough that the Russia investigation began because of Peter Strzok
Here.
It was the hubris and political animus of a single high-level FBI functionary, Peter Strzok, which sought to stymie the political will of the American people who elected Trump by presenting a phony dossier as credible evidence to a FISA court in order to surveil a presidential candidate.
The whole thing is reminiscent of nothing so much as the Lois Lerner affair, when one person in The Swamp used her position to curtail the free-speech rights of The Tea Party during the 2010 revolt against Obamacare and government bailouts of all and sundry except the taxpayers.
For 80% of workers, inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings are down 0.22% from a year ago in June 2018
If it were a real jobs boom, we'd see rising real earnings pressure. We don't. The measure has been comparatively flat for two and a half years.
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Political reality in Michigan summer 2018
The left is still here, waiting to be roused.
Barack Obama 2008: 2,872,579
Barack Obama 2012: 2,564,569
Donald Trump 2016: 2,279,543
Hillary Clinton 2016: 2,268,839
While Hillary's deficit to Trump was just 10,704 votes, to Obama it was between 295,730 and 603,740 votes.
Somebody here in Michigan really disliked Hillary.
Who could it be?
Bernie Sanders 2016 Democrat primary: 598,943
Hillary Clinton 2016 Democrat primary: 581,775
Donald Trump 2016 Republican primary: 483,753
all other Republicans 2016 primary: 842,836
Trump admitted in December 2016 in remarks in Grand Rapids that "a bunch of people didn't show up" in November, which is the real reason he won here. Obviously a mix of Bernie supporters/black people couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hillary in the general.
But they didn't just go away.
But they didn't just go away.
Trump approval in Michigan in June 2018 is at 44%, disapproval at 52%. He was at 48/40 in January 2017. That growth of disapproval combined with erosion of approval looks problematic for Michigan Republicans in November.
Michigan's employment level, though much improved, still hasn't recovered to pre-Great Recession levels, and is flat to slightly declining in early 2018. GDP on the other hand is better than the pre-Great Recession period, but is flat in the mid-threes. These things argue for continued Republican governance, but cheerleaders for a Trump boom will encounter a disconnect with the actual experience of people. They are advised to cool it.
Michigan's employment level, though much improved, still hasn't recovered to pre-Great Recession levels, and is flat to slightly declining in early 2018. GDP on the other hand is better than the pre-Great Recession period, but is flat in the mid-threes. These things argue for continued Republican governance, but cheerleaders for a Trump boom will encounter a disconnect with the actual experience of people. They are advised to cool it.
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Looks like NeverTrumpers went fishing with multiple dossiers at the FBI until NeverTrumper Peter Strzok bit
Hey, we got a live one here!
John Solomon reports in "Did FBI get bamboozled by multiple versions of Trump dossier?":
Now, memos the FBI is turning over to Congress show the bureau possessed at least three versions of the dossier and its mostly unverified allegations of collusion.
Each arrived from a different messenger: McCain, Mother Jones reporter David Corn, Fusion GPS founder (and Steele boss) Glenn Simpson. ...
[T]he generally same information kept walking through the FBI’s door for months — recycled each time by a new character with ties to Hillary Clinton or hatred for Trump — until someone decided they had to act.
That someone was Strzok, whose own anti-Trump bias was laid bare by his personal text messages.
Child separations are a feature, not a bug: Illegals are abandoning their children to the US so they get green cards and become anchors
From the story here quoting Matthew Albence of ICE:
"I will say that for the vast majority of the individuals [who leave their children]… it is because they completed the smuggling act. Their goal when they paid their smuggler, the criminal organizations, these cartels, $5,000 or $6,000 to smuggle themselves into the country, their goal was to get their child here. They’ve accomplished that goal. So if they return on their own [to their home country], they are willing to do so and leave the child here because that was the intended goal of their illegal entry in the first place." ...
DHS officials also cannot force parents who are released from detention in the United States to pick up their claimed children from the shelters operated by the Department of Health and Human Services, said Albence. “If individuals choose not to do that, there is nothing we can do to force them to claim their child,” he said during a telephone interview arranged by DHS.
Foreign children and youths who are left in the United States by their parents are allowed to file for green cards on the grounds that their parents abandoned them. The migrant children are also eligible for various welfare and aid programs, and are allowed to attend taxpayer-funded schools and universities. Once adopted by the United States, then legalized and naturalized, the new Americans will be allowed to bring in their foreign parents and siblings via unreformed chain-migration laws.
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Laura Ingraham lies, says the voters knew Kavanaugh was on Trump's list when they elected him
Just now on the radio show.
Kavanaugh was added to the list in late 2017, according to rumor at the behest of Justice Kennedy himself, who had been angling to retire:
Two others — Brett Kavanaugh, another former Kennedy clerk now on the powerful D.C. Circuit, and Amy Coney Barrett, a University of Notre Dame law professor nominated by Trump last year to the Chicago-based 7th Circuit — were added to the list last November.
Rick "Tin Ear" Santorum: Trump's base will be "turned off" by Brett Kavanaugh
Quoted here.
No one in the base who watched Kavanaugh's remarks was turned off in the least.
In fact, Kavanaugh impressed as a person with a common, ordinary touch, who is deeply committed to his family and to the law. And he endeared himself to his listeners because the emotion welling-up underneath his remarks went far to prove his sincerity.
Methinks Santorum, exasperated that he didn't get more support from Catholics in 2012, is a little jealous of his fellow Catholic, whose credentials and experience already stand out from those currently serving on the Supreme Court, not to mention from Santorum's.
Monday, July 9, 2018
Chinese Communist hypocrite Xi Jinping has jailed political opponents Sun Zhengcai and 1.3 million others
Gordon Chang, here:
At the 19th Communist Party National Congress held last October, however, Xi broke convention by preventing the designation of a successor. No one who might follow him was named to the Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of Chinese power. Also, ahead of the 19th Congress Xi targeted an up-and-coming figure, Sun Zhengcai from Chongqing, by having him investigated for “serious discipline violations,” party code for corruption. Sun has been given a life sentence in circumstances indicating his crime was political—in other words, being in a faction not controlled by Xi Jinping. ...
Xi is upping the consequences for those coming out on the short end of political struggles. In what he has styled a new “anti-corruption” campaign but which looks more like an old-fashioned political purge, Xi has jailed more than 1.3 million officials. He has removed the venal, but it’s noteworthy that almost none of them were his supporters. They were, for the most part, either political opponents or potential rivals, like Sun from Chongqing. Moreover, Xi has betrayed the real nature of the campaign by jailing anti-corruption campaigners and leaving alone his own family members, some of whom, under the most suspicious of circumstances, have become extraordinarily wealthy since he was identified as Hu’s successor.
The headline writer at The Hill gets it wrong, but the article author gets it right
People returning to labor force in droves — a key step for the economy, says the headline, but the article says no such thing.
The story author makes many astute points, which the headline writer obviously doesn't understand.
The labor force is growing, but gradually, as is the percentage of the population actually working. We ought to have north of 62% working as was true before the Great Recession instead of 60% now, but the direction is up, if gradual.
This means we are NOT at full employment. People who dropped out are dropping back in, looking for work, and finding it, gradually.
This is dispelling the myth that the decline in the labor force was structural, and permanent. It isn't.
This also explains why wages aren't rising dramatically. Employers still have bodies to choose from as people who formerly sat on the sidelines get back in the game. Employers still do not have to pay dramatically higher wages to keep the employees they have. They still have employees to choose from.
In a nutshell, it's not a boom, but it is overall a return to the right direction.
Fewer than 600 acres of opium production in Afghanistan keep the Taliban insurgency alive
There should be a relatively simple solution to that, but Politico has a story here about what we've been doing instead.
The United States is not a serious country.
Bill Kristol doesn't much like Kavanaugh for Supreme Court, so Trump ought to nominate him
After all, Bill Kristol knows whereof he speaks.
Sunday, July 8, 2018
Theresa May's Brexit Secretary resigns, a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister's no-Brexit Brexit
Donald Trump take note. You promised a wall, an immediate end to DACA, an end to Obamacare, an end to our senseless wars, jobs jobs jobs.
We're still waiting.
Laugh of the Day 3.0: The thing is, this Google employee PROVIDED the picture
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| This little piggy stayed home |
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| This little piggy went to Google |
Laugh of the Day 2.0: Liberal blogger breaks the rules, reveals source to FBI because it advanced her politics
Liberals always view rules as impediments to their political ends, and break them at will.
Wheeler, who has written blog posts about national security for almost 15 years, is clear that she wasn't motivated to talk to the FBI because she is out to get Trump. She certainly doesn't like him, but she is also not at all a Hillary Clinton fan. But what motivated her recent revelation that she went to the FBI has plenty to do with politics: She is disgusted by the way House Republicans are, in her view, weaponizing their oversight responsibilities and making it all too likely that FBI informants will have their names revealed - and their safety threatened. "It infuriates me," she wrote, to observe the "months-long charade by the House GOP to demand more and more details about those who have shared information with the government . . . all in an attempt to discredit the Mueller investigation."
Marcy Wheeler (a.k.a. "emptywheel") is an American independent journalist specializing in national security and civil liberties. Wheeler publishes on her own site, Emptywheel, established in July 2011. She makes occasional contributions to the commentary and analysis section of The Guardian, progressive news site Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and Michigan Liberal. Between early December 2007 and July 2011 Wheeler published primarily on Jane Hamsher's FireDogLake (FDL) and prior to that on The Next Hurrah. ... She campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean in 2004, and is a former vice chairwoman of the Washtenaw County Democratic Party.
Just great, Thomas Hardiman worked for Ayuda, funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundation, and Trump's got him on his Supreme Court list
An administration is all about personnel, and 19 months in Trump still doesn't know what the hell he's doing.
For some reason Thomas Hardiman can't bring himself to call them illegal aliens but he's a leading contender for Supreme Court
On a Bush list, maybe, but why on a Trump list?
This is insane.
The Detroit News is pushing Kethledge for Supreme Court, the guy who reversed a deportation order of a criminal alien
The Detroit News, here, suffering as it does from a mental disorder known as libertarianism.
Kethledge is being pushed by the Republican Establishment as easier to confirm, in other words by the open borders crowd. For a reason.
The nitwits out there are getting into the weeds of "aggravated" in order to explain this away, some ignorantly equating "aggravated" in the law with "violent", which is hardly controlling. All sorts of things which aren't inherently violent are defined as aggravated by the law, including things which are obviously violent. For example, illicit trafficking in controlled substances and firearms are aggravated, as are money laundering, receipt of stolen property, disclosing classified information (Hillary), fraud (Obama), forgery, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Kethledge ignored the meaning of aggravated in the law in the case described, which suggests he might well dismiss the law in other circumstances when it is attractive to do so, for whatever reason.
There are better candidates than Kethledge who would enforce immigration law instead of try to find an excuse to get around it, which is also what Obama tried to do with the DACA executive order.
Friday, July 6, 2018
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for June 2018
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for June 2018
Max temp 94, Mean Max temp 94
Min temp 48, Mean Min temp 43
Av temp 69.9, Mean Av temp 67.7
Precip 2.50, Mean precip 3.54
Snowfall 0, Mean snowfall T, Season final 77.7, Mean Season 66.7
Heating Degree Days 12, Mean HDD 54, Season final 6456, Mean Season 6705
Cooling Degree Days 168, Mean CDD 139, Season to date 276, Mean Season to date 184
The heating season has finished 3.7% warmer than the mean using HDD as a measure. It ranked 32nd warmest since 1904.
The cooling season to date as measured by CDD has moderated to 50% warmer than the mean after a hot early start to the summer season.
Gasoline on the Fourth of July 2018 averaged $2.87/gallon nationally
But a year ago gasoline averaged $2.25/gallon nationally.
What happened to $2.50/gal gas, Mr. President?
Thursday, July 5, 2018
In 2011 a judge told us to forgo something is acting, in 2018 a judge insists refusing to help is not the same as impeding
Judge Kessler in 2011, here, a liberal Clinton appointee, in re Obamacare.
Judge Mendez in 2018, here, a liberal Bush 43 appointee, in re immigration enforcement.
Liberals always rule to advance liberal objectives, even if it means that not acting is acting once upon a time but later on in a different situation it is not.
The manifest politicization of the judiciary ought to mean that they all must resign when the guy who appointed them finishes his term. It would be a more honest acknowledgement of the truth that the law is an ass, and that elections have consequences.
Why it feels like a jobs boom when it isn't
Initial claims for unemployment in the first half of 2018, as of today, are running at an annual rate of 11.8 million.
In the first half of 2017 the annual rate had been 12.7 million.
The difference is an extra 17,307 people NOT losing their jobs every week compared with a year ago.
The employment to population ratio is still way down at 60.4%, last exampled in late 1985. We did a lot better than that for a long time, before the freakout in the second half of 2008.
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
America is for ourselves and for our posterity, not for the whole world
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Monday, July 2, 2018
WaPo: Obama's Timmy TurboTax Geithner has a new life as a predatory lender
From the story here:
Mass-mailing checks to strangers might seem like risky business, but Mariner Finance occupies a fertile niche in the U.S. economy. The company enables some of the nation’s wealthiest investors and investment funds to make money offering high-interest loans to cash-strapped Americans.
Mariner Finance is owned and managed by a $11.2 billion private equity fund controlled by Warburg Pincus, a storied New York firm. The president of Warburg Pincus is Timothy F. Geithner, who, as treasury secretary in the Obama administration, condemned predatory lenders. The firm’s co-chief executives, Charles R. Kaye and Joseph P. Landy, are established figures in New York’s financial world. The minimum investment in the fund is $20 million.
Dozens of other investment firms bought Mariner bonds last year, allowing the company to raise an additional $550 million. That allowed the lender to make more loans to people like Huggins [at 33 percent].
Whoops, looks like the story of 412 healthcare fraudsters is yesterday's news: The newest action is even bigger!
From the DOJ here:
Last July the Department of Justice announced a record-breaking enforcement action against health care fraud. We coordinated the efforts of more than 1,000 state and federal law enforcement agents to charge more than 400 defendants—including 56 doctors—with more than $1.3 billion in fraud.
Today I am announcing that we are breaking records again.
The Department of Justice, in conjunction with the Department of Health and Human Services, is announcing the largest health care fraud takedown operation in American history.
This year we are charging 601 people, including 76 doctors, 23 pharmacists, 19 nurses, and other medical personnel with more than $2 billion in medical fraud.
Largest healthcare fraud action in DOJ history nets 412 individuals, many with funny names
"For the Strike Force locations, in the Southern District of Florida, a total of 77 defendants were charged with offenses relating to their participation in various fraud schemes involving over $141 million in false billings for services including home health care, mental health services and pharmacy fraud. In one case, the owner and operator of a purported addiction treatment center and home for recovering addicts and one other individual were charged in a scheme involving the submission of over $58 million in fraudulent medical insurance claims for purported drug treatment services. The allegations include actively recruiting addicted patients to move to South Florida so that the co-conspirators could bill insurance companies for fraudulent treatment and testing, in return for which, the co-conspirators offered kickbacks to patients in the form of gift cards, free airline travel, trips to casinos and strip clubs, and drugs."
Slasher of refugee children in Boise is inconveniently black
Don't expect to hear too much about this one since it doesn't fit the anti-white narrative.
Story here.
Sunday, July 1, 2018
FDR: Public employee unions shouldn't exist at all because they can paralyze government and its operation
Here, August 16, 1937:
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."
Nothing sank NeverTrump lower in the estimation of the voters than its "blithe indifference to the Clintons' gangsterism"
"Trump’s base was fighting a war; these guys were sipping tea."
The article insists much of NeverTrump is Jewish, agnostic and libertarian, which is true, while failing to mention its many Christian, especially Catholic, representatives, the very same crowd which mercilessly destroyed conservative Presbyterian minister Todd Akin of Missouri. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The narrowness of Trump's 2016 victory continues unexamined in the cold light of reason. Though badly outnumbered, Protestant America proved it isn't dead yet. Trump's partisans naturally would rather talk about why their winner won than why the loser lost. But Hillary lost primarily because 5 million former Obama voters failed to show up, a fact Trump himself acknowledged in the immediate aftermath. They were as disgusted with her as the rest of us were. Had just some of them shown up in the right places, we'd be in year ten of the biggest political disaster this country has faced since FDR.
Trump proves the dictum that one man can change history when all the rest cannot. And for this they hate him. He might as well be Martin Luther.
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Laugh of the Day: Good Lord, Jeeves, that QAnon thingy where people think a top government agent is speaking to them through 4chan has made it to one of my own family
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| Aunt Agatha, sir? Say it isn't so. |
Story here.
"Wisdom in discourse with her loses discountenanc'd, and like folly shews." -- John Milton
"Wisdom in discourse with her loses discountenanc'd, and like folly shews." -- John Milton
Trump has 2,000 (illegal alien) separated kids, Obama had 20,000 American kids separated in 2016
Reported here:
As Peter Kirsanow, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, points out, a report from the Department of Health and Human Services shows that more than 20,000 children were placed in foster care in 2016 because of “Parent Incarceration.”
None of those protesting against the Trump administration seem concerned that 10 times more American children than the 2,000 alien children cited in the Associated Press report were separated from their parents in 2016 because of violations of the law by their parents.
As Kirsanow says, it is “regrettable” children are separated from their parents. But “people who cross the border illegally have committed a crime, and one of the consequences of being arrested and detained is, unfortunately, that their children cannot stay with them.”
Child separations are the fault of Bill Clinton and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
As explained here:
In 1997, the Clinton administration entered into a settlement agreement in Flores v. Reno, a lawsuit filed in federal court in California by pro-illegal immigration advocacy groups challenging the detention of juvenile aliens taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The Clinton administration agreed to settle this litigation despite the fact the Supreme Court had upheld the Immigration and Naturalization Service regulation that provided for the release of minors only to their parents, close relatives, or legal guardians.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the Flores agreement allows the agency to detain unaccompanied minors for only “20 days before releasing them to the Department of Health and Human Services which places the minors in foster or shelter situations until they locate a sponsor.”
But in a controversial decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the most liberal in the country, has interpreted the settlement agreement to apply to “both minors who are accompanied and unaccompanied by their parents.”
In other words,it is the 9th Circuit’s misinterpretation of the Clinton administration’s settlement agreement that doesn’t allow juvenile aliens to stay with their parents who have been detained for unlawful entry into the country.
Of course, if those parents would simply agree to return to their home countries, they would be immediately reunited with their children. So those who come here illegally are themselves to blame for their children being assigned to foster care or to another family member or sponsor who may be in the country.
The executive order signed by President Donald Trump directs the attorney general to file a request with the federal court in the Flores case to modify the settlement agreement to allow the government “to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.”
Of course, the administration’s critics know about this settlement and know it limits the ability of the administration to keep alien families together.
Chicago Tribune: Voters can fairly conclude Illinois Governor Rauner defeated alliance between unions and Democrats
Here:
Voters can fairly conclude that, with Wednesday’s Supreme Court verdict, Rauner defeated the long invincible alliance of public employee unions and Illinois Democrats. Voters may well give Rauner new respect as the Republican who dared to fight the twin Goliaths of Illinois politics and governance. He really did risk his political future when he picked this fight early in 2015. ... “Government union bargaining and government union political activity are inextricably linked,” he said one month after being sworn in early in 2015. “As a result, an employee who is forced to pay unfair share dues is being forced to fund political activity with which they disagree. That is a clear violation of First Amendment rights and something that, as governor, I am duty-bound to correct.”
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