Federal employment is down 7,000 since Trump's election 22 months ago, he promised cuts of tens of thousands

Trump's Budget Could Cut 200,000 Federal Jobs:

President Donald Trump’s budget proposal, released early Thursday, could lead to between 100,000 and 200,000 cuts to federal civilian jobs, Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, told Fortune.

Serena Williams: She aint got no alibi, she UGLY

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6146903/Im-not-cheater-Serena-Williams-argues-umpire-U-S-Open-womens-final.html

Dear Ann Coulter: "The Left" is already a collective noun, to speak of its "collective mind" is redundant

It's well past time that we declared "collective" a cant word, which is what it has become on the right.

My latest utility bill: "We are pleased to pass along the savings from federal tax reform"

$4.99-

What oh what will I do with this unexpected windfall?

The percentage of the population working plunged under Obama: If it's a boom under Trump why isn't it recovering?

From 1984 through 2008 the average percentage of the population working had been 62.6%. In August it was only 60.3%. The difference between the two is 6 million jobs.

If this a boom, an economy "on fire", where the hell are they?

We have not recovered from the disaster under Obama, not by a long shot.

Sorry Charlie: Jeff Cox of CNBC wildly exaggerates wages under Trump, "the last missing piece of the economic recovery"

Here in "Trump has set economic growth on fire":

Friday brought another round of good news: Nonfarm payrolls rose by a better-than-expected 201,000 and wages, the last missing piece of the economic recovery, increased by 2.9 percent year over year to the highest level since April 2009. That made it the best gain since the recession ended in June 2009. ... Indeed, the economy does seem to be on fire, and it's fairly easy to draw a straight line from Trump's policies to the current trends.

The wage series used by Cox for all workers differs little in August 2018 from the series for the 80% of workers who are production and nonsupervisory, except that the latter goes back much farther than 2006, giving a truer picture of where we are at. And where we are at is slightly better off than under Obama, but that's about it. It's still not as good as under George W. Bush, for crying out loud. And it's certainly not "on fire".

This is not an economic boom for most working people.

China's richest man, Jack Ma, suddenly retires at age 54

The story here makes it sound like he wanted to retire to pursue a life of philanthropy and education.

Sure he did. Rather later than sooner.

"For Chinese tycoons to step aside in their 50s is rare; they usually remain at the top of their organizations for many years."

Mark Meadows is a libertarian open borders fanatic posing as a Trump supporter when he's really supporting his GOPe

From the story here:

Chairman Mark Meadows of North Carolina has argued that entering into a spending battle that could shutter the government in October would be unwise without a cohesive plan, appearing to side with GOP leaders who fear a shutdown before midterms would upend their House majority. ... “I don’t see a deliberate plan on how we secure our border happening by the end of September, and so having that debate over the next three months is probably more prudent than trying to have it in the next week and a half,” Meadows said.

The disease says Trump's a symptom

Obama says Trump is 'a symptom, not a cause'

Rush Limbaugh's "eating but not working" hits an all time high 96.29 million in August

Rush is eating but not working this week, too.

Ebola spreads, kills one in urban center in Congo, WHO official very worried for the world

“When you have an Ebola case confirmed in a city with one million people, no one should be sleeping well tonight around the world.” ... Saturday marked a month since the start of the latest outbreak, with 122 cases of Ebola reported so far. Of the cases, the WHO said nearly 70 percent of patients died despite health officials rolling out treatment drugs.

Story here, and here.

Farmers and Republicans are thick as thieves with illegal aliens and sanctuary cities

It ain't just San Fran Freako, folks.

ICE Raids Dairy Farm Where Illegal Alien Accused of Killing Mollie Tibbetts Worked:

Illegal alien Cristhian Bahena-Rivera, a 24-year-old from Mexico, has been charged with first-degree murder in Tibbetts’ death after police say he admitted to confronting and chasing down the young woman. The illegal alien lived in a region of Iowa that was surrounded by sanctuary cities, as Breitbart News noted, and an initial autopsy report revealed that Bahena-Rivera allegedly stabbed Tibbetts to death. ...

That dairy farm where Bahena-Rivera worked, Yarrabee Farms, owns the property and trailer where the illegal alien had been living and which, allegedly, many Mexican nationals frequented, as Breitbart News reported.

Eric Lang, one of the chief executives of Yarrabee Farms, is the brother of Craig Lang, who was the president of the Iowa Farm Bureau. The Farm Bureau has chapters all over the United States, with the goal of increasing the number of low-skilled foreign workers, specifically those on H-2A visas, who are allowed to enter the country every year.

As Breitbart News reported, Eric Lang is also married to Nicole Schlinger, who runs the GOP fundraising firm Campaign Headquarters in Brooklyn, Iowa.

Boris been bad, playing the cad

Boris Johnson 'splits from long-suffering wife after she accused him of cheating' 

Democrats were always John McCain's kind of people

McCain’s former chief of staff says he’s considering Senate bid as a Democrat:

John McCain’s former chief of staff said Wednesday that he is considering running for the Senate as a Democrat as he grapples with President Trump’s policies and the late Arizona senator’s death.

Grant Woods, who is also a former Arizona attorney general, said in an interview that he has spoken to several Democratic senators about the idea, including Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.).

Woods supported Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president and said he has been troubled by Trump in recent years. McCain’s death has led him to consider “whether I need to step up at this point in time,” he said.

The New Yorker ignores how wildfires contribute gargantuan quantities of emissions compared with power plants

A Summer of Megafires and Trump’s Non-Rules on Climate Change:

Compared with the Clean Power Plan, [the EPA's new Affordable Clean Energy rules] could, over the next few decades, allow hundreds of millions of tons of additional carbon emissions.

Hundreds of millions of tons over decades, eh?

How about gigatons from wildfires in just one year?

Forest fires may produce as much CO2 as half of all fossil fuels burned:

In 1997, a fire consumed 8,000 square kilometers of mostly peatland in Borneo. Researchers estimated 0.2 Gt of carbon were released in this one area that year, and that carbon emissions from fires across Indonesia in 1997 emitted between 0.8 and 2.5 Gt — or “13 to 40%” of the size of global human fossil fuel emissions. ... 

Other researchers, der Werf et al 2004, looked at fires around the world during the El Nino year and estimated that 2.1 Gt of carbon was released — which explained 66% ± 24% of the extra CO2 emitted globally that year. Bowman et al estimate fires produced emissions around 50% of the size of human emissions. ...

California, Nevada and Colorado could impact climate far more deeply, cheaply and effectively RIGHT NOW by preventing and containing the wildfires which are making moot the comparatively puny plans of the EPA.

Average temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2018 through August has been about 38% warmer than the mean

Months in 2018 ranked for highest average monthly temperature in 127 years (since 1892):

Jan: 54th

Feb: 21st

Mar: 56th

Apr: 123rd (4th lowest average temperature on record for April)

May: 4th highest average temperature on record for May

Jun: 29th

Jul: 21st

Aug: 11th

Average for 2018 to date: about 40th (mean is about 64th; six years numbered 62-67 populate the mean annual average temperature record of 48.2).

So overall to date conditions have been about 38% warmer than the mean in Grand Rapids (2400/64), which is the same result obtained from analysis of the Cooling Degree Day data.

If only Glenn Greenwald could recognize that Democrats are engaging in an overt coup to undo what the voters ratified and mandated

Trump evidently has a John McCain mole in his administration

The mole writes an anonymous op-ed here.

The op-ed simply rehashes all the complaints of NeverTrump.

She's oh so precious boys and girls, keeping the Never Ending Funeral going.

If only the American people had elected John McCain!

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

South Africa racks up two quarters in a row of negative GDP growth under land-grabber Cyril Ramaphosa, new president since February

Ramaphosa's domestic policy is centered around "land reform", i.e. seizing land without compensation. Apparently production is already suffering because farmers are convinced there's no point to going on any longer.

South Africa farm seizure: Terrified white farmers plot escape as crackdown looms:

A RECORD number of white South African farmers have put their land up for sale amid fears the ruling party is considering confiscating properties bigger than 25,000 acres.

By SIMON OSBORNE

PUBLISHED: 07:03, Mon, Aug 20, 2018

UPDATED: 07:26, Mon, Aug 20, 2018

Omri van Zyl, head of the Agri SA union, which represents mainly white commercial farmers, said: “The mood among our members is very solemn. They are confused about the lack of any apparent strategy from the government and many are panicking. So many farms are up for sale, more than we’ve ever had, but no one is buying.” ... Agri SA said about 20 per cent of South Africa’s farms produce 80 per cent of the food that feeds millions of people in southern Africa, and many of those properties would be affected by a 25,000-acre cap.

Yahoo/AFP story features Jean-Claude Trichet trying to rewrite financial crisis history and rescue his reputation

In the story here, Trichet portrays himself as seeing everything coming in August 2007 and acting accordingly through the end of his tenure as head of the ECB in 2011.

Unfortunately for Trichet, who saw nothing coming, the record of his interest rate hikes in the summer of 2008 (!) in the teeth of the crisis and repeated in the spring of 2011 cannot be erased!

Of course, he doesn't mention those.

Mario Draghi immediately reversed Trichet's course, nine days after assuming the leadership of the ECB. 

Come now, Ann, you know that to John McCain "bipartisanship" simply meant Republicans criticizing Republicans

Josh Brown thinks you're an Unreachable if you think staging a week long funeral to bash the president is in bad taste

Here, where he amusingly warns about joining a tribe, a tribe! without even realizing it:

Ask yourself whether or not you [yes, YOU] might be an Unreachable in some regard. Are there some beliefs you’ve taken on because they’re of use to you in some social setting or circumstance – beliefs that may not be completely grounded in fact? Are you, in your own way, an Unreachable in the eyes of someone else? Have you affiliated with a tribe of your own, whether out of convenience or for professional purposes, without even having realized it?

The word 'worker' has been surrounded by a halo since 1848

"The working class does not exist in the economic structure of a single nation. ... What have miners, sailors, tailors' apprentices, metalworkers, waiters, bank officials, ploughmen, and scavengers in common with one another?"

-- Oswald Spengler

Like just about everyone else on the left, Joel Kotkin continues to twist himself in pretzels to avoid calling our system what it already is

State capitalism.

It is the socialism of the right, despite what names people may give it. The fascist model in which business and government cooperate now more, now less was not defeated in World War II. The superior American version simply defeated the German one, and eventually also the left's inherently weaker version in Russia.

It has triumphed globally, brought to the fore in America by the libertarian resurgence under Ronald Reagan, imitated by the jealous Euro project, and notably exported to China, where it was eagerly embraced as no threat to Marxism. To the genuine Marxist, remember, free-trade is welcome because it hastens the global revolution. Belt and Road participants, take note.

The experiential groundwork for global state capitalism was laid long ago by the King and Bank of England in their joint enterprise known as the Thirteen Colonies. Everyone imitates this now in principle if not always in particulars. But everywhere it flourishes it is facilitated by the same thing, the central banking systems which coordinate their activities through rules administered under Basel III. The contemporary exemplars of state capitalism fancy that they are substantively a world away from Hitler's Germany, because, well, the Jews. We don't kill Jews, insist these experts at mass abortion and Uyghur mass re-education. 

It's the historical resonances which bother the left in using the phrase, but the underlying facts aren't different in substance. Materialism today means not having to say you're sorry for treating people like depreciated or unappreciated assets. Older workers in the West are routinely tossed aside for being too costly. Potential younger competitors are hamstrung by a culture of costly credentialing prerequisites. When such people become worthless enough, it isn't unlikely that in some places they could stop being considered people altogether (typically where atheism reigns) so that they could be slaughtered wholesale with the same relative efficiency already applied to the unborn. The tech already exists to do this. The only question is when will the people exist who are possessed of enough nerve.   

Here's Kotkin on this so-called "new, innovative approach" which looks like nothing so much as the old Soviet Union, with its hostility centered on the middle class, its dreary blocks of drab apartment buildings, the dim pall of surveillance and conformity lurking everywhere, complete with its own privileged new class in service to the party .01 percent:

Oligarchal socialism allows for the current, ever-growing concentration of wealth and power in a few hands — notably tech and financial moguls — while seeking ways to ameliorate the reality of growing poverty, slowing social mobility and indebtedness. This will be achieved not by breaking up or targeting the oligarchs, which they would fight to the bitter end, but through the massive increase in state taxpayer support. ... [T]he tech oligarchy — the people who run the five most capitalized firms on Wall Street — have [sic] a far less egalitarian vision. ... [T]hey see government spending as a means of keeping the populist pitchforks away. ... Handouts, including housing subsidies, could guarantee for the next generation a future not of owned houses, but rented small, modest apartments. ...  They appeal to progressives by advocating politically correct views . . .. Faced with limited future prospects, more millennials already prefer socialism to capitalism and generally renounce constitutionally sanctioned free speech . . .. [I]ncreased income guarantees, nationalized health care, housing subsidies, rent control and free education could also help firms maintain a gig-oriented [slave] economy since these employers do not provide the basic benefits often offered by more traditional “evil” corporations . . ..  [T]he oligarchy, representing basically the top .01 percent of the population, are primarily interested not in lower taxes but in protecting their market shares and capital. ... The losers here will be our once-protean middle class. Unlike the owners of corporations in the past, oligarchs have no interest in their workers become homeowners or moving up the class ladder. Their agenda instead is forever-denser, super-expensive rental housing for their primarily young, and often short-term, employees. ... The tech moguls get to remain wealthy beyond the most extreme dreams of avarice, while their allies in progressive circles and the media, which they increasingly own, continue to hector everyone else about giving up their own aspirations. All the middle and upwardly mobile working class gets is the right to pay ever more taxes, while they watch many of their children devolve into serfs, dependent on alms and subsidies for their survival.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for August 2018

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for August 2018

Max temp 91, Mean Max temp 92

Min temp 52, Mean Min temp 47

Av temp 73.5, Mean Av temp 70.2

Av temp to date 51.5, Mean Av temp to date 49.6 (actual is elevated 3.8%)

Precip 6.61, Mean precip 3.07

Total precip to date 28.11, Mean total precip to date 22.77 (actual ahead by 23%)

Cooling Degree Days 271, Mean CDD 189, Season to date 848, Mean Season to date 614

The cooling season to date as measured by CDD is now 38% warmer than the mean, up just a little from last month.

To stay cool, I've averaged 1074 kWh a month in June, July and August running the air conditioning versus 701 a month on average in the previous eight months, 53% more but for only three months. Every kWh above 600 in the summer months is billed at a rate almost 35% higher than for the first 600, but it really doesn't amount to much of a penalty. In August, for example, the kWh above 600 cost me a penalty surcharge of less than $15.00.

Overall, the price of staying cool in my case (74 degrees F) means operating anyway in the higher rate category. Even without running the AC I'm in it because I average 701 a month, 101 a month more than the arbitrary 600 ceiling. I'd pay the higher rate like it or not simply by running floor fans and ceiling fans. Running the toaster in summer makes breakfast slightly more expensive. This summer the extra 1119 kWh I've used above my non-summer average, due mostly to running the AC, have run me a relatively low additional $142.49 total, or $47.50 a month, all paid at the penalty rate.

A small price to pay to sleep well and remain fully functional, productive and healthy under somewhat less than ideal conditions in the summer of 2018.  

As long as South Africa legalizes theft of farm land owned by whites, the IMF and the UK's Theresa May are all for it

Reuters reports here.

South Africa was ruled by Britain for a hundred years between 1806 and 1910. White Europeans swelled population through immigration, peaking above 5 million in the mid 1990s. They carved civilization out of a savage environment, for which they get no thanks now because savagery is all the fashion again.

Legalized theft takes different forms in different places at different times, for example through government exercise of eminent domain, or through imposition of an income tax.

In South Africa the plan is to take without compensation, but perhaps with murder thrown in for good measure if Julius Malema gets his way. 

Historian Bradley Birzer of Hillsdale College appears not to know much about Western history

In "Immigration and Citizenship: Ancient Lessons for the American People", E. Christian Kopff marshals at least six arguments from history which show that Birzer's belief that “the best of our ancestors believed in the free movement of peoples” is a canard.

You should read it, here. 

China's Belt and Road initiative involves some partners in debt distress

China's 'Silk Road' project runs into debt jam:

China's massive and expanding "Belt and Road" trade infrastructure project is running into speed bumps as some countries begin to grumble about being buried under Chinese debt. First announced in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the initiative also known as the "new Silk Road" envisions the construction of railways, roads and ports across the globe, with Beijing providing billions of dollars in loans to many countries.

Bill Clinton legitimizes Disco Louie at Aretha Franklin funeral

The CNN fake news Laugh of the Day

Tucker Carlson says there's nothing free about this market, falls short of calling it an expression of global fascism

But who knows, maybe his forthcoming book connects the dots between the multinational corporations and their revolving door governments, and the central banking system which mediates the operation.

Here:

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: 

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is worth about $150 billion. That’s enough to make him the richest man in the world, by far, and possibly the richest person in human history. It’s certainly enough to pay his employees well. But he doesn’t. A huge number of Amazon workers are so poorly paid, they qualify for federal welfare benefits. According to data from the nonprofit group New Food Economy, nearly one in three Amazon employees in Arizona, for example, was on food stamps last year. Jeff Bezos isn’t paying his workers enough to eat, so you made up the difference with your tax dollars. Next time you see Bezos, make sure he says thank you.

Same with the Waltons. The Walton family founded Walmart. Collectively they’re worth about $175 billion. That’s more than the entire gross domestic product of Qatar, the oil-rich Gulf state. The Waltons could certainly afford to be generous with their workers. Instead, they count on you to take up the slack. In 2013, taxpayers sent more than $6 billion to Walmart’s workers, for food stamps, Medicaid, and housing assistance.

And if you think that’s shocking, meet Travis Kalanick. He’s the youthful founder of Uber. His personal fortune is close to $5 billion. His drivers, by contrast, often make less than minimum wage. One recent study showed that many Uber drivers lose money working for the company. That’s not a sustainable business model. The only reason it continues is because of your generosity. Because you’re paying the welfare benefits for Uber’s impoverished drivers, child billionaires like Travis get to keep buying bigger houses and more airplanes. He’s someone else who definitely owes you a thank you note.

If you can think of a less fair system than that, send us an email. We’d love to hear it. It’s indefensible. Yet almost nobody ever complains about it. How come? Conservatives, like us, support the free market, and for good reason. Free markets work. But there’s nothing free about this market. A lot of these companies operate as monopolies. They hate markets. They use government regulation to crush competition. There’s nothing conservative about that, just as there’s nothing conservative about most big corporations. Just the opposite. They’re the backbone of the left. Pick a leftwing cause that you think is hurting the country. Check the donor list, and you’ll find the name of some corporation. Often many corporations. Corporate America enables the progressive lunacy you see every night on this show. They’re funding the revolution now in progress.

That’s why liberals say nothing as oligarchs amass billions by soaking the middle class. Because they’ve been paid off. For example, you probably assumed the people who founded Walmart were conservative. Most of their customers certainly are. Yet the bulk of the Walton family backed Hillary Clinton in the last election. They gave the Democratic Party more than $700,000 during the 2016 cycle. Almost every billionaire in Silicon Valley did the same. In return, they got immunity from criticism, and you got to keep paying their employees. Not a bad deal for them.

There is one person in Washington who’s offended by this arrangement, and we’re sorry to say he’s wrong on pretty much everything else. But this is a weird moment, so you take allies where you can find them. Bernie Sanders, of all people, is trying to get your money back from Jeff Bezos. This is especially amazing since Bezos is on Bernie’s side on most things. They’re both leftwing activists. But on this question, Bernie’s right. He’s planning legislation that would force big corporations to return the taxpayer-funded welfare benefits you’ve paid to their workers. It’s not a perfect solution, and it probably won’t pass. No matter what they claim in public, liberals in Congress would never support something like that. Their loyalty isn’t to you. It’s to Uber and Jeff Bezos. But at the very least it might awaken a sleepy population to the new reality of activist corporate America. And that’s a good thing.

America has changed enormously in the last 20 years. A lot of people you thought were your allies are in fact working against your interests. They have contempt for you and your family, your customs and your faith. Included in this group, I’m sorry to say, are a lot of big corporations. They have no use for you or the country you grew up in. Stand in their way, and they’ll crush you. It’s all shocking enough that I recently wrote a book about it. It’s called “Ship of Fools,” and it explains what happened and who did it. The book is out in a month, the first week of October, but you can preorder a copy now, and I hope you will.

Andrew Yarrow: Over 20 million men are not employed, five times the official 4 million

Excerpted from his book Man Out, here:

We’re left with the reality that the percentage of men not employed today is about three times what it was during the Truman and Eisenhower eras: well over 20 million men. Not the four million officially deemed to be unemployed.

The unemployment level for men averaged 4.18 million in 2016 and 3.73 million in 2017.

Noah Smith embraces the Trump narrative: "There’s no doubt that the U.S. economy is in a boom"

Here for Bloomberg.

After examining several indicators, which, however, are not unequivocal for their interpretation despite saying "no doubt", Noah Smith comes down on the side of improved sentiment as the cause of the current "boom".

On that we agree. There's a boom in sentiment.

The problem is, too many people are importing that improved sentiment into their reading of the data, and into their choice of the data.

For example, Smith focuses on job openings to unemployed, which is a tiny measure (6.66 million in June) of what's really going on in the labor market. But the broadest measures of unemployment still show 15.9 million unemployed, underemployed, and no longer counted in the labor force. There is still huge slack in the labor market, which is one reason why wages for the vast majority of workers are not rising like they would in a real economic boom (2.7% y/y in July vs. in the 4s in 2006/7).

Similarly Smith discusses the percent of population employed aged 25-54, but clearly misses that it's most definitely not "back to 2006 levels" as he claims (H1 2018 is at 79.2%, still below the 2006 average of 79.8% and also below the average of either half of 2006). The broadest measure of the percent employed, on the other hand, still shows a huge gap between now and the pre-Great Recession average when over 6 million more were employed than are at present (60.5% now vs. 62.9% then, on average).

The case is similar with domestic investment.

Smith chooses to highlight "Shares of gross domestic product: Gross private domestic investment: Fixed investment: Nonresidential (A008RE1Q156NBEA)" to show that "investment as a percentage of the economy is at about the level of the mid-2000s boom". But the current level in H1 2018 at 13.7% is also identical to H2 2014. Was that indicative of a boom? Did we blink and miss it? How about in H1 2008 when it was again at 13.7%? Was that indicative of a boom? If so, why did the economy then promptly crash in H2 2008?

A broader measure of domestic investment, however, "Shares of gross domestic product: Gross private domestic investment (A006RE1Q156NBEA)", shows us well off the 2006 peak and even the more recent 2015 level. Whatever we call what we have right now, the current 17.7% is still far below the 19.8% level of H1 2006, which itself failed to equal the boom level of the year 2000 (19.9%).

With all that cash unleashed by the tax reforms and sloshing around in the economy, one would think things would look a lot better than this, which simply shows that most of that money indeed went elsewhere.

GDP has been temporarily goosed by the tax reforms in concert with a fresh gusher of federal deficit spending. But those are one-offs. They will not, and cannot, be repeated over and over again in short succession.

We know what comes next.

We're missing 6.2 million jobs in July 2018 because only 60.5% are working

Democrats want you to know House candidate Abigail Spanberger was just monkeying around teaching at an Islamic school in DC

Democratic House candidate Abigail Spanberger suffers the kind of election year smear John McCain would recognize [thanks to a Postal Service error divulging the information]:

The Republican firm says it got the form by mistake from the Postal Service, where Spanberger once worked as a postal inspector. The Postal Service on Thursday apologized for its "human error."

That doesn't explain how a mistake of that magnitude occurred so rapidly. Spanberger requested her own personnel records months ago and hasn't received them. ...

Outraged Democrats, fearing other candidates remain at risk, have demanded a federal investigation. Without elaboration, the Postal Service says "a small number of additional requests for information from personnel files were improperly processed."

Ah, you can't get your own mail but somebody else can! The incompetent big government wanted by most Democrats, and too many Republicans, just keeps on giving.

Hm, the famous Chuck Berry wrote and recorded his fifth single "Too Much Monkey Business" in 1956

"Too Much Monkey Business" is a song written and recorded by Chuck Berry, released by Chess Records in September 1956 as his fifth single. It was also released as the third track on his first solo LP, After School Session, in May 1957; and as an EP. The single reached number four on Billboard magazine's Most Played In Juke Boxes chart, number 11 on the Most Played by Jockeys chart and number seven on the Top Sellers in Stores chart in 1956. -- Wikipedia

Listen to it here.

It's not an economic beum, you fools

At the end of 2017 we still had 14 million more on food stamps than at the pre-Great Recession average

16.5% of the U.S. population was on food stamps on average in 2017, versus 11% on average from 1973-2008.

In 2017 over 42 million received food help from the program, but only 28 million would have had the average receiving help returned to 11%.

In the first five months of 2018 the percentage receiving help has fallen to 15.4% on average, implying a smaller gap of about 11.6 million.

The trend is in the right direction, but we are hardly back to normal.

Hey Hey They're The Monkeys: Democrats say they monkey around

In death John McCain remains the jerk he was in life: Sarah Palin, his running mate in 2008, excluded from his funeral

Reported here.

Hopeless Arizonans choose another immigration squish, A-10 pilot Martha McSally, to run for resigning Flake's US Senate seat

Republican McSally (AZ-2), who could be a man masquerading as a woman for all we know and appears to have been flying solo since the annulment of her marriage in 1999, faces openly bisexual Democrat Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-9) for the Senate seat in November.

As in many other states, independents may vote in Republican Party primaries in Arizona.

Steep, sustained increases in new STD infections in the last five years, not seen for twenty

Reported here:

[N]early 2.3 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were diagnosed in the U.S. in 2017, surpassing the record set in 2016 by more than 200,000, CDC scientists reported Tuesday. ... CDC researchers found that gonorrhea diagnoses increased by 67 percent — from 333,004 to 555,608 — in just five years. ... Syphilis diagnoses, which rose by 76 percent, from 17,357 to 30,644, were mostly in men. ... The chlamydia rate held relatively steady with more than 1.7 million cases diagnosed in 2017, just a few percentage points above where it was in 2013.

Why does it take a Lanny Davis to teach Glenn Greenwald that GoFundMe is ground zero for gg...grifters?

Honest liberal Glenn Greenwald reminds the world about the media's chronic, systematic, reckless reporting of fake news

Including about CNN's latest lies about what Cohen's got on Trump, here in The Intercept:

When reporting on that story, I detailed just some of the similarly significant and false stories major outlets have published on this story over the last eighteen months, notably always in the same direction, pushing the same narrative interests:

• Russia hacked into the U.S. electric grid to deprive Americans of heat during winter (Wash Post)
• An anonymous group (PropOrNot) documented how major U.S. political sites are Kremlin agents (Wash Post)
• WikiLeaks has a long, documented relationship with Putin (Guardian)
• A secret server between Trump and a Russian bank has been discovered (Slate)
• RT hacked C-SPAN and caused disruption in its broadcast (Fortune)
• Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app (Crowdstrike)
• Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states (multiple news outlets, echoing Homeland Security)
• Links have been found between Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci and a Russian investment fund under investigation (CNN)

Whatever words one wishes to use to defend the U.S. media’s conduct here, “rare” and “isolated” are not among those that can be credibly invoked. Far more accurate are “chronic,” “systematic” and “reckless.”

Agent admits FBI leaks info to get it into the news, reports about which are then used by FBI to get FISA warrants

The practice is similar to the FBI's common practice of identifying potential "terrorists" whom FBI agents then suborn to commit criminal acts by posing as terrorists themselves.

From the story here:

A top FBI special agent admitted to House committees last week that bureau officials were known to leak information to the press and then use the resulting articles to help obtain surveillance warrants. 

Special Agent Jonathan Moffa, who worked with controversial former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, testified last Friday behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee. 

A source with knowledge of his testimony confirmed to Fox News that Moffa said FBI personnel would use media reports based on information they leaked to justify applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.

Japan's Shinzo Eeyore-Abe meets with China's Xi Jinpingpoo

Innocent Japanese school girls were legitimate targets of the American atomic bombs

Technological advancement means that now neither you nor the freak show have to travel to see each other

The Muppets' version of Luther's Von den Juden und ihren Lügen (January 1543)

Glenn Greenwald was not happy with The Intercept for its incompetent exposure of Reality Winner

Easy for him to say. She's the one paying the price for trusting The Intercept. Oh well, just another victim of a drone attack, or something.

Maybe the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, should ask for his money back.

From a profile of Greenwald, here:

Greenwald went on to describe his frustration with an Intercept story, published last summer, that was based on an N.S.A. report leaked by Reality Winner, an N.S.A. contractor. The article described an attempt by Russian military intelligence to introduce malware into the computers of U.S. election officials in 2016. In Greenwald’s view, the story was overblown: the N.S.A. analysis included no underlying evidence. Before publication, Greenwald vetoed a suggestion that Snowden be invited to examine the leaked material. “I said, ‘I think it’s not a very good idea to send a top-secret N.S.A. document that purports to describe Russia to Russia.’ ” He laughed. “Not even I would look very kindly on that, if I were in the Trump Justice Department.” He was also dismayed, as many people were, that the Intercept had not properly disguised the document before showing it to the government for verification, making it easy for Winner to be identified as its leaker; she was arrested shortly after publication. The Intercept apologized, and supported her legal defense. The site “fucked up,” Greenwald said. He added that, if he didn’t work there, he might be wondering aloud why nobody was fired. (On August 23rd, Winner was sentenced to five years in prison.)

Remembering when Mario Draghi really, truly got it (sort of)

"Five years ago today, Mario Draghi saved the euro", by Eshe Nelson, July 26, 2017:

But with a simple, seemingly off-the-cuff phrase, Draghi fundamentally changed the course of events: “whatever it takes.”

At a speech in London on July 26, 2012, the ECB president gave an account of the euro-zone economy. Bond yields of weak euro-member governments were soaring, and traders doubted that national, euro- or EU-level institutions could get their act together in time to avert disaster. Draghi sought to convince international investors that the region’s economy wasn’t as bad as it seemed. He then made the momentous remark:

“Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough.” ... the promise was enough to calm investors and bring down bond yields across the euro zone.

Martin Wolf for The Financial Times likes business historian Adam Tooze's important new book CRASHED: HOW A DECADE OF FINANCIAL CRISES CHANGED THE WORLD

See Martin Wolf, What really went wrong in the 2008 financial crisis?

Tooze has been making the rounds at places like Bloomberg (and especially here) and CNBC promoting the theses of the new book, and was notably interviewed yesterday on Bob Brinker's radio program "Money Talk" (the dismissive summary of the interview provided here is notably blind to Tooze's importance, weakly observing how Tooze maintains that "money has no tangible underpinning", which is about all that grabs the attention of libertarian fundamentalists).

Those more popular presentations give only a tantalizing hint of the narrative power this trained historian brings to the story of the 2008 panic.

To see that in action there is an important lecture available here which Tooze gave at the American Academy in Berlin earlier this year, on March 13th.

"Conservatives" will doubtlessly recoil at Tooze's characterizations of the role played by them during the financial crisis. That those conservatives are really the GOP's libertarians is a distinction the significance of which seems lost on Tooze.

That said, the value of Tooze's perspective goes far beyond the subject of the warring factions of libertarian fundamentalism and neoliberalism, however important those are for understanding our times.

For one thing, Tooze is almost unique in describing in such vivid detail the dominating role now played by the "dollar" in the global economy (American analyst Jeffrey Snider being the notable but obscure exception). It takes an historian. This is, of course, the eurodollar, the proper understanding of which permits Tooze to show how the financial crisis in the United States centered in the mortgage market was globalized via international banking through London and Frankfurt independently of the wishes of the state actors. It also reveals to him that the most important global economic relationship has not been the US with China but the US with London.

Same as it ever was. The king and his colonies still rule the world, with a little help from the Bank of England.

For another, Tooze's work shows the degree to which the global economy has been captured by the bankers in providing these eurodollars, who acted unilaterally behind the scenes, first in the US (Ben Bernanke) and regrettably only later in Europe (Mario "whatever it takes" Draghi), to provide liquidity swaps in the trillions of dollars during the financial crisis while politicians argued about how states should deploy mere billions.

One inescapable conclusion ten years after the financial crisis is that citizens of states are in larger measure no longer masters of their own destinies, and haven't been for a very long time. They are today really ruled by technocrats in charge of central banks who work now more, now less in concert with their host governments to manage economic flows. The danger of this global state capitalism is that it might one day slip back into the outright fascism it so closely resembles.

To the millions of unemployed who were not bailed out in the crisis and who lost their homes and their hope in the United States and in the PIIGS, or to the hundreds of thousands of Muslims now in Chinese reeducation camps, it already has.

The crisis for neoliberalism does not come from capitalist fundamentalism. It comes from its growing list of victims.

Ebola kills 72 in new outbreak in Congo, fears of spreading to Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan

Reported here.

Barack Obama's tyrannical overreach is directly responsible for the Trump presidency

And you can add in Congressional incompetence and cowardice in crafting immigration legislation.

The people have their champion, and all the incompetents and cowards can do is continue to act in character.

To hell with you all!

Obama announced DAPA on November 20, 2014.

Trump launched his campaign for president just seven months later, on June 15, 2015, making illegal immigration the heart and soul of his candidacy.

Seven months.

In February 2015, the Migration Policy Institute estimated that about 3.7 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States are potentially eligible for DAPA, around 766,000 in just five counties: Los Angeles and Orange in California, Harris and Dallas in Texas, and Cook in Illinois.

The President’s program, when combined with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, would have delayed deportation of slightly less than half of the 11 million illegal aliens in the United States. 

Hooah Orange Country Register: The hard truth is Turkey should be kicked out of NATO

Here:

[T]he U.S. should, quietly, plan out both Turkey’s exclusion from NATO and the destabilizing consequences to follow. Enacting the plan is so fateful a move that it must be done with as much care and forethought as possible. It should also, if and when it happens, be a turnkey operation.

John McCain is dead, the so-called conservative politician who relied on independents and liberals to win

From the 2004 story here about the South Carolina primary in 2000 against George W. Bush:

McCain’s overall strategy relied heavily on the state’s 400,000 veterans and military retirees’ siding with the war hero, and on his appealing, as he had in New Hampshire, to independents and liberals. He thought a high turnout in the open primary would favor him.

The turnout on Saturday, February 19, was huge—573,000 voters, more than double the previous high in a primary—but Bush still won by 11 points, 53 to 42. (Alan Keyes got a little less than 5 percent.) The veterans’ vote split evenly; Bush was buoyed by a two-to-one margin among Christian conservatives, a third of total voters. McCain outpolled him only in the more liberal coastal counties. Remarkably, a majority of voters saw Bush as the one who had run the more positive campaign, despite the attacks from pro-Bush groups.

Reality Winner wins 63-month sentence with reality for espionage

Reality Winner sentenced for leaking top secret U.S. report:

(Reuters) - A federal judge sentenced former U.S. intelligence contractor Reality Winner on Thursday to more than five years in prison after she admitted leaking to a media outlet [The Intercept] a top secret report on Russian interference in U.S. elections, her attorney said. ...

The NSA document she gave the news outlet contained technical details on what it said were Russian attempts to hack election officials in the United States and a voting-machine company before the November 2016 presidential election, two U.S. officials with knowledge of the case have said. ...

Betsy Reed, editor in chief of The Intercept, said in a statement that Winner should be honored, and that her sentencing and other prosecutions of whistleblowers were attacks on freedom of speech and of the press.

“Instead of being recognized as a conscience-driven whistleblower whose disclosure helped protect U.S. elections, Winner was prosecuted with vicious resolve by the Justice Department under the Espionage Act,” Reed said. 

The Intercept laughably maintains that publishing Winner's leaked document long after Election 2016 in June 2017 helped alert US states to Russian interference in the 2016 election when, as The Intercept itself admits, Russian hacking attempts of US elections have been and are "still front-page news almost two years later":

The federal government kept several states allegedly targeted by hackers in the dark about the specifics of these attacks until The Intercept published its story.

In fact, the day after The Intercept’s story came out, the Election Assistance Commission — the federal agency in charge of assisting state election officials — wrote an urgent bulletin to states, calling the report “credible” and urging state officials to read it. The EAC then provided advice on how to take action. (The commission, unbelievably, tweeted the hashtag #RealityWinner to promote its bulletin on social media).

Christina Warren of Microsoft mistaken for a white person

Most Americans see the difference between out-and-out lies and Trump's self-evident hyperbole

Yeah, but mostly only in flyover country where there is still a connection with reality. Contemporary liberalism is untethered to reality and is incapable of such distinctions. That's why liberalism is rightly seen to be coterminous with the "creative" class on the coasts and in the academy, the spinners of yarns and fictions and fantastic tales.

Trump would gain more traction in the current contretemps if he made more fun of them.

"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon".

Lee Edwards, here.

Bradley Smith, former head of the Federal Election Commission, doesn't think Trump's payments were campaign expenditures

Here in WaPo, amusingly turning the matter back on Mueller at the end:

However, regardless of what Cohen agreed to in a plea bargain, hush-money payments to mistresses are not really campaign expenditures. It is true that “contribution” and “expenditure” are defined in the Federal Election Campaign Act as anything “for the purpose of influencing any election,” and it may have been intended and hoped that paying hush money would serve that end. The problem is that almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to “influence an election,” from buying a good watch to make sure he gets to places on time, to getting a massage so that he feels fit for the campaign trail, to buying a new suit so that he looks good on a debate stage. Yet having campaign donors pay for personal luxuries — such as expensive watches, massages and Brooks Brothers suits — seems more like bribery than funding campaign speech.

That’s why another part of the statute defines “personal use” as any expenditure “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.” These may not be paid with campaign funds, even though the candidate might benefit from the expenditure. Not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate. ...

Cohen is not the normal defendant, and prosecutors almost certainly squeezed him to plead guilty on these charges, in part, for the purpose of building a case for possible criminal or impeachment charges against the president, or even, daresay, “influencing the reelection” of Trump.

Michael Savage is as lazy as Rush Limbaugh, shoots off his mouth about Obama without reading Obama's full speech in South Africa

Far from stirring up race hatred, Obama was attacking it.

We covered it here. WaPo had the full transcript of Obama's remarks in July. Too bad Savage is too lazy to read it.

Another irresponsible person with a microphone.

Paul Manafort found guilty and Michael Cohen pleads guilty on same day Ann Coulter releases Resistance is Futile

I seem to remember In Trump We Trust was released in August 2016, just as Trump started backtracking on illegal immigration in Arizona.

Do Coulter book releases make the sky fall?

Today's reasons for hating Republicans (I don't need any to hate Democrats)

1) 52% of Republicans support Medicare for all.

2) 41% of Republicans support free college tuition.

Story here.

CNBC thinks rising number of murders of whites and of farm seizures in South Africa is a fringe talking point, not news

Trump is hyping a fringe talking point about South African government 'seizing land from white farmers':

'At the start of August, Ramaphosa announced plans by the ruling African National Congress to change the constitution to allow the expropriation of land without compensation. ...

'The notion that white farmers are persecuted in South Africa largely stems from a fringe group called AfriForum. Some far-right commentators and pundits have picked up on the idea, suggesting that there could be a "genocide" of white people in the country.' 

Separately, the Australian press puts the number of whites murdered on farms in the last 15 months at 70.

The relatively small number is not important to liberals, any more than is the murder of Mollie Tibbetts in Iowa by an illegal alien, because they claim others who put the number at 400 are exaggerating.

Yeah I know, the Holocaust wasn't 6 million, either. 

Elizabeth Tin Ear Crockagawea smoke pipe, say murder of Mollie Tibbetts by illegal alien not heap big problem

Keep it up, Lizzie.

Quoted here:

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): My, I’m so sorry for the family here and I know this is hard and not only for the family but for the people in her community, the people throughout Iowa. But one of the things we have to remember is we need an immigration system that is effective, that focuses on where real problems are.