Woman, still alleged by The Washington Post and Ford to be present at an assault by Kavanaugh, denies being at party or knowing Kavanaugh

That makes four such denials: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, Patrick J. Smyth and now Leland Keyser.

Here:

"Simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford," said Howard Walsh, who said he has been "engaged in the limited capacity" of corresponding with the committee on behalf of Keyser.

Walsh's email was in response to a missive from one of the lawyers for the GOP majority staff, which stated: "I understand that you have been identified as an individual who was in attendance at a party that occurred circa 1982 described in a recent Washington Post article." 

Ford stated in her letter to Feinstein back in July that there were only five at the assault including herself:

"The assault occurred in a suburban Maryland area home at a gathering that included me and four others." 

But the original September 16th Washington Post article does not mention another female present, only boys:

The [therapist's] notes say four boys were involved, a discrepancy Ford says was an error on the therapist’s part. Ford said there were four boys at the party but only two in the room. 

The Washington Post, however, and Ford, still acknowledge TODAY the presence of a female, Leland Keyser, which would make the party of five SIX:

As negotiations continued, Leland Keyser, a woman Ford told The Washington Post was present at the party where she alleges Kavanaugh assaulted her, came forward to say she “does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present,” according to an email her lawyer sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee, obtained by The Post. In a brief interview at her home in Silver Spring, Keyser said that she did not recall the party, but that she was close friends with Ford and that she believes Ford’s allegation. Before her name became public, Ford told The Post she did not think Keyser would remember the party because nothing remarkable had happened there, as far as Keyser was aware. Ford has said she did not tell anyone about the alleged assault until 2012.

So how many were there? Ford can't really say, or won't say.

This whole thing smells to high heaven of nothing so much as a political operation, which is proved by the fact of Feinstein's scurrilous behavior in withholding what she knew from the Senate committee since July 30th. Any woman who was really concerned about another woman's sexual assault wouldn't do this. And Ford wouldn't put up with it if she were really concerned about it.  

Sexual assault isn't something that can be litigated in the newspapers, let alone in the Judiciary Committee of the US Senate.

Since the statue of limitations has not expired in Montgomery County Maryland, Ford should take her allegations there and file her complaint. If she had anything but politically motivated lawyers that's what they would have told her to do, too.

The Senate should categorically refuse to be the venue for this circus.

And Christine Blasey Ford should put up, or shut up. 

Mickey Kaus for Trump senior political adviser

More gas lighting from CNBC on Kavanaugh, averring Kavanaugh is surrounded by harassers

The GOP aide wasn't "for Brett Kavanaugh". The GOP aide wasn't even an "aide for the nomination" since Trump nominated Kavanaugh. No, the aide was the spokesman for Grassley's committee. Kavanaugh had no say whatsoever in who works for Grassley and who doesn't.

Total cheap shot. Total bs. Totally corrupt manipulation of language.

No wonder CNBC closed comments on its articles long ago. They're all like this.

Author of RESISTANCE IS FUTILE is resisting!

Susan Collins was expecting Monday

John Cornyn ain't buyin' it

Ford, Dems, media manipulate the public, say she agrees to meet (next Thursday when the deal was Monday)

Grassley's Twitter feed has nothing about this.

Ford says she agrees to meet next Thursday, that's all, and wants to continue the "negotiations" this afternoon.

Total bull!

When Grassley says No they'll attack him again.

Christine Blasey Ford, accuser of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, agrees to Senate testimony about sexual assault claim

Democrats are experts at gas lighting.

Dan Henninger: The Democrats summon Hurricane Christine

Here:

Surely someone pointed out that based on what was disclosed, this accusation could not be substantiated. To which the Democrats responded: So what? Its political value is that it cannot be disproved. They saw that six weeks before a crucial midterm election, the unresolvable case of Christine Blasey Ford would sit like a stalled hurricane over the entire Republican Party, drowning its candidates in a force they could not stop. ... Republicans in the Senate shouldn’t allow it, and voters in November should not affirm it.

The un-American Christine Ford insists Brett Kavanaugh be denied his rights

CNN this morning here:

Ford also requested that at no point during any potential hearing would she be in the same room as Kavanaugh.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

For Ford's "rape" attorney, rape is incidental to advancing the political aims of the resistance to Trump: Katz present at the birth

Debra Katz: We are going to resist

Gullible Gregg Jarrett of FOX News takes the NYT's bait

Gregg Jarrett: Rod Rosenstein's coup attempt to depose Trump should not go unpunished:

Rosenstein should be fired immediately. Proposing to secretly record the president is, at the very least, a violation of regulations that govern a security clearance. 

Oh yeah, that'll be helpful on November 6th. Let's fire the guy that fired Comey and make ourselves look completely insane.

There's plenty of time to fire Rod Rosenstein starting on November 7th.

Jarrett should listen to Mark Levin's argument. It was Comey ally Andrew McCabe who pressured Rosenstein to appoint the special counsel in the wake of the firing of James Comey. Rosenstein placated him by appointing Comey ally Robert Mueller. The Comey allies are behind this leak, seeking to weaken Trump.

Rosenstein is the monkey in the middle. The leak against him in the Times is a sign that he is no longer useful to the Trump opposition. It's also a sign that the Trump opposition is getting very desperate in the wake of Trump's declassification order, the results of which are going to take at least another week.

Perhaps Rosenstein will look better now to his future in the Trump administration. He was once useful to Trump by firing crooked Comey. He could be helpful again now that he's been chastised by his former "colleagues".

Wake up Chuck, Christine will never testify because she has nothing to add

McCabe memos appear to have been leaked to NYT saying Rosenstein wanted to entrap Trump by wearing a wire

From the story Rosenstein Suggested He Secretly Record Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment:

Mr. McCabe, who was later fired from the F.B.I., declined to comment. His memos have been turned over to the special counsel investigating whether Trump associates conspired with Russia’s election interference, Robert S. Mueller III, according to a lawyer for Mr. McCabe. “A set of those memos remained at the F.B.I. at the time of his departure in late January 2018,” the lawyer, Michael R. Bromwich, said of his client. “He has no knowledge of how any member of the media obtained those memos.” ...

One week after the firing [of Comey], Mr. Rosenstein met with Mr. McCabe and at least four other senior Justice Department officials, in part to explain his role in the situation.

During their discussion, Mr. Rosenstein expressed frustration at how Mr. Trump had conducted the search for a new F.B.I. director, saying the president was failing to take the candidate interviews seriously. A handful of politicians and law enforcement officials, including Mr. McCabe, were under consideration.

To Mr. Rosenstein, the hiring process was emblematic of broader dysfunction stemming from the White House. He said both the process and the administration itself were in disarray, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

Mr. Rosenstein then raised the idea of wearing a recording device or “wire,” as he put it, to secretly tape the president when he visited the White House. One participant asked whether Mr. Rosenstein was serious, and he replied animatedly that he was.

If not him, then Mr. McCabe or other F.B.I. officials interviewing with Mr. Trump for the job could perhaps wear a wire or otherwise record the president, Mr. Rosenstein offered. White House officials never checked his phone when he arrived for meetings there, Mr. Rosenstein added, implying it would be easy to secretly record Mr. Trump.

The suggestion itself was remarkable. While informants or undercover agents regularly use concealed listening devices to surreptitiously gather evidence for federal investigators, they are typically targeting drug kingpins and Mafia bosses in criminal investigations, not a president viewed as ineffectively conducting his duties.

In the end, the idea went nowhere, the officials said. But they called Mr. Rosenstein’s comments an example of how erratically he was behaving while he was taking part in the interviews for a replacement F.B.I. director, considering the appointment of a special counsel and otherwise running the day-to-day operations of the more than 100,000 people at the Justice Department.

Mr. Rosenstein’s suggestion about the 25th Amendment was similarly a sensitive topic. The amendment allows for the vice president and majority of cabinet officials to declare the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Merely conducting a straw poll, even if Mr. Kelly and Mr. Sessions were on board, would be risky if another administration official were to tell the president, who could fire everyone involved to end the effort.

Trump finally attacks the credibility of The Ford and Feinstein Farce, tells Ford to put up

Feinstein deliberately sat on the information since July and let the hearings conclude without introducing Ford's letter in evidence. Meanwhile Feinstein is under a cloud for letting a Chinese spy remain on her staff for two decades.

Trump, quoted here by AP:

“I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!”

“Judge Brett Kavanaugh is a fine man, with an impeccable reputation, who is under assault by radical left wing politicians who don’t want to know the answers, they just want to destroy and delay. Facts don’t matter. I go through this with them every single day in D.C.”

Senator John Cornyn is right: We've already had a hearing, and Ford & Democrats are hijacking the process

WaPo reports here:

Earlier Thursday, Senate Republicans had reiterated their resolve to press forward with a vote on Kavanaugh in the coming days if Ford chose not to testify before the 21-member Judiciary Committee.

“If she doesn’t want to participate and tell her story, there’s no reason for us to delay,” Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), the No. 2 Republican in the chamber, told CNN. “I think it all depends on what she decides to do. We’ve all made clear this is her chance.” ...

Cornyn said Thursday that he sees no reason to call additional witnesses since the committee had already held a full hearing on Trump’s nominee.

“We already had a hearing,” Cornyn said. “That’s what I call hijacking the regular committee process to accommodate political interests.”

The news just now said Senator Susan Collins is moderate and believes in abortion rights

In what world is murder moderation?

If Christine Ford is apolitical, why did she hire such a political lawyer?

It's far more likely that Christine Ford premeditated this entire episode with the help of her attorney for political reasons and that her protestations of wanting to remain anonymous were a cover for the desperation of this Hail Mary attempt at the end of the confirmation process. Knowing the slim margins Republicans enjoy in the Senate for confirmation of Supreme Court nominees, all it would have taken to derail them is sowing just enough doubt in the minds of a few to sway a vote or two at the last second. They almost succeeded in the gamble. Retiring Republican Jeff Flake went on the record right away saying he was no longer comfortable voting Yes on Kavanaugh. It almost worked.

From the story here:

Since 2004, [Debra] Katz has donated at least $26,000 to Democratic politicians including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Kerry. She also donated to groups such as MoveOn.org, the DNC Services Corp, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. 

Likewise, in March 2017 Katz declared via Facebook that, "These people are all miscreants. The term ‘basket of deplorables’ is far too generous a description for these people who are now Senior Trump advisors," after a report surfaced that Department of Homeland Security advisor Frank Wuco made anti-Islamic remarks which prompted his resignation. 

Rep. Anna Eshoo says Christine Ford doesn't have a political bone in her body, which is utterly ridiculous

Hasn't Ford involved politicians from the very beginning?

Here's Eshoo:

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., met July 20 for roughly 90 minutes with Ford, who lives in her Bay Area district and is a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University, after Ford contacted Eshoo's office about Kavanaugh.

"It was more than obvious to me that she bore the scars of what she had been subjected to," Eshoo said in an interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday. "She doesn't have a political bone in her body. And she obviously was really terrified about what could become of her and her family." ... 

Eshoo said her actions were dictated by Ford's desire for complete confidentiality about her allegations as she worked through whether and how to bring them to the attention of those vetting Kavanaugh and, potentially, the public. "I think it's difficult for people to understand if you haven't dealt with people that have been subjected to something like this," she said. "They keep it to themselves. They feel guilty. They bury it. They tell themselves to move on. And so there wasn't any kind of political process in her mind whatsoever."

The pair then took it to a higher political level in Senator Feinstein:

Ford's request for discretion was observed to the point, Eshoo said, that in her office only she and one other senior aide were fully aware of Ford's claims. When Eshoo and Ford mutually decided to take the matter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ford's letter laying out her account was hand-delivered to a Feinstein aide in Washington, Eshoo said: "In other words, you don't drop it off at the receptionist's desk."

Ford is hardly otherwise apolitical:

Christine Ford ... signed a letter with other health professionals demanding that President Donald Trump stop his controversial policy on family separations at the border . . . an exhibit in an ACLU lawsuit against the Trump administration. ...

The Washington Post reports that she is a “registered Democrat who has made small contributions to political organizations.” A review of federal campaign finance records shows donations earmarked for Bernie Sanders, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. ...

A 2017 article in the San Jose Mercury News says that Blasey was planning to attend a science march wearing a knitted brain hat that was supposed to resemble the pink p*ssy hats that many have used to protest Donald Trump and advocate for women’s rights. “It’s a science party!” the article quotes “biostatistician Christine Blasey, of Palo Alto” as saying. It says she would “wear an elaborately knitted cap of the human brain — yarn turned into a supersized cerebral cortex — inspired by the ‘pussy hats’ donned during the Women’s Marches.”

Latest victim of the Stalinists of #MeToo is the editor of the NY Review of Books

Ian Buruma Is Out At The New York Review Of Books After Justifying The Decision To Publish Jian Ghomeshi's Essay:

"All I know is that in a court of law he was acquitted, and there is no proof he committed a crime. The exact nature of his behavior — how much consent was involved — I have no idea, nor is it really my concern. My concern is what happens to somebody who has not been found guilty in any criminal sense but who perhaps deserves social opprobrium, but how long should that last, what form it should take, etc."

Christine Ford is Emma Sulkowicz, still carrying around a bed under her arm from 36 years ago

From the post here:

“We now have feminism that should be a movement of freedom and empowerment, but it has become an instrument of repression. I always identify very strongly with people like Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, or those figures from the last century who were very anti-bourgeoisie. That minister of justice of yours is just a bourgeois voice, it has nothing to do with the liberation of women. It is repression, shutting down the mind. But your mind must be completely free – expression must be completely free. Women should read great literary works. Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock, for example, Dostoevsky, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, to understand something about men. Instead of: “We need to reform men.” Stop it. Feminists discourse of sex and gender has become hopelessly careless and naive, okay, it is a self-cannibalizing ideology without reference to important research on human nature and other cultures.

“There are a lot of neurotic women who have clung to that feminist discourse, take Emma Sulkowicz, a 21-year-old student at Columbia University who spent nearly a year on campus with a mattress under her arm because she had allegedly been raped in her own bed by a fellow student. She received an award from the ‘National Organization of Women‘ because she is a ‘hero’. It was sick and neurotic behavior. That woman lied and every attempt to find out what happened was thwarted by herself, her story was inaccurate. But neurotic behaviour is apparently celebrated. The only thing that it accomplishes is that it alienates men even more from women. We are back in the fifties!”

Camille Paglia: Treating women as more credible than men is reactionary

From the essay here:

Modern democracy is predicated on principles of due process and the presumption of innocence. ... For all its idealistic good intentions, today’s #MeToo movement, with its indiscriminate catalog of victims, is taking us back to the Victorian archetypes of early silent film, where mustache-twirling villains tied damsels in distress to railroad tracks.

This nitwit from New Jersey thinks he can be president

Story here.

Blue wave evaporates in Texas: Newcomer flips Senate District 19 Republican for first time in 139 years, defeating former congressman Gallego

Story here.

Possible foreclosure motive for Ford accusation falls apart: Kavanaugh's mother dismissed the motion

FOX reports here:

The records suggest that the dismissal was granted after the Blaseys and the bank cut a deal that avoided a sale of the property at a foreclosure auction.

Martha Kavanaugh signed off on the motion after the case had initally been assigned to another judge.

Breaking news: Christine Blasé Ford will testify when her picture replaces Jackson's on the $20

The icky Jeffrey Toobin was targeting Brett Kavanaugh already in March 2012 in The New Yorker

Here, over Obamacare.

Send the FBI to Kavanaugh's accuser to take her statement

We'll see if she tells the same story she's peddling in the media.

You can't lie to the FBI and get away with it. (Oops, unless you are Hillary)

Hillary must be laughing to herself that Kavanaugh's accuser touts passing a lie detector test

Clinton is heard laughing as she describes how she succeeded at getting her client a lighter sentence, despite suggesting she knew he was guilty.

"He took a lie-detector test! I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs," Clinton said about her client on the tapes, which were initially recorded, but never used, in the early 1980s.

The rest of the ABC News story from 2014 is here. 

Ten years after fall of Lehman, lawyer still tracking down borrowers who committed fraud

From the story in The Denver Post, here:

“What I kept seeing over and over again is how greed manifests itself,” he said. “There was an unprecedented amount of fraud.” ... People lied about their income, they lied that a home would be a primary residence, they lied about how indebted they were, they even lied about who they were, using other people’s identities to take out loans.

“It was crime on a massive scale, but nobody viewed it that way,” he said.

Banking expert Chris Whalen sums up 2008 the same way, here:

People keep asking what we think of the 10-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.  Our answer is that not much has changed.  Lehman once had the best performing bank in the US and then it was gone.  Why?  Fraud on loans and securities.

It seems our biggest problem, from the top of our society all the way on down to the bottom, is that it is shot through with liars.

Remember that next time you read a poll, or a resume.

Let God be found true, though every man be found a liar. -- Romans 3:4

Wi Gu Wong Wei: China stock markets are down big since their 2015 highs

Shanghai is down 48.7% from its 2015 high.

Hong Kong is down 6% from its 2015 high.

Meanwhile the broadest measure of US stocks, the Wilshire 5000, is up 33.6% tonight from its 2015 high. Its total stock market capitalization currently represents about $36 trillion, up about $9 trillion in the last three years.

Rush Limbaugh ends his show saying the voters are idiots . . .

. . . Sean Hannity starts his show saying they're smart enough to decide for themselves if Brett Kavanaugh stands unjustly accused.

Brett Kavanaugh's accuser might have had revenge motive for foreclosure on her parents' home

Brett Kavanaugh's mother apparently was the presiding judge in the foreclosure on the home of the parents of Kavanaugh's accuser.

Reported here.

Brett Kavanaugh's accuser has reviews by students in her classes saying she's vengeful, has something wrong with her

Story here.

Update:

Story retracted, here.

Hm. Two Christine Fords.

Anne Applebaum for The Atlantic refuses to acknowledge the facts of illegal immigrant crime

The crimes of illegal immigrants, apart from being here illegally, continue as we speak, and continuously are noted in the Twitter feeds and websites of conservatives. Of course all of that is illegitimate to the Anne Applebaums of the world. Nothing is legitimate unless it is sanctioned by coverage in the press which her side owns, and this story is not covered by her press, for political reasons. That story forms the heart of the Trump political campaign, and to give it expression is to do the work of her political enemy, which is what the essay is really all about, her political enemies, in Poland, Hungary and the United States. At one point she even solemnly informs us that "(A ruling party that has politicized its courts and suppressed the media is a party that finds it much easier to steal.)", as if that isn't a perfect description of liberal democratic rule in the United States since FDR. It's now a country where the words "illegal alien" are banned on Twitter. That's how important cheap landscapers are to The Establishment.

From the story here:

Much as Trump used birtherism and the fabricated threat of immigrant crime to motivate his core supporters, Kaczyński has used the Smolensk tragedy to galvanize his followers, and convince them not to trust the government or the media. Sometimes he has implied that the Russian government downed the plane. At other times, he has blamed the former ruling party, now the largest opposition party, for his brother’s death: “You destroyed him, you murdered him, you are scum!” he once shouted in parliament.

Dear Joe Biden: Dregs are delicious, happy to be named in their company!

Brett Kavanaugh's pal was Mark Judge

Brett Kavanaugh’s High School Friend Isn’t Helping the Nominee’s Case:

The New York Times reported that the friend the woman alleged to be in the room with Kavanaugh was conservative writer Mark Judge, who attended Georgetown Prep with the nominee. On Friday, Judge told the Weekly Standard that no such incident took place. “It’s just absolutely nuts,” he said. “I never saw Brett act that way.” ... The amount of drinking Judge describes himself undertaking [at the time] might suggest that his memory of those days may not be entirely reliable.

Barack Obama March 3, 2009: "Buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long-term perspective on it"

Here, after the 10 minute mark.

S&P 500, average nominal per annum return March 2009 - August 2018: 17.51%

Inflated death totals from Puerto Rico study not backed up by any names or cause of death

Julie Kelly, here:

There is just one little problem with the inflated death toll: There are no names of the newly-found victims or hundreds of bodies to be buried. The GWU research team reached the higher figure by comparing predicted fatalities to observed fatalities between September 2017 and February 2018. ... Also, the researchers did not specify how the nearly 3,000 people died. Lynn Goldman, the dean of the school that produced the report, confirmed the study’s limitations, telling the Washington Post, “we can come up with a hundred different hypotheses. What we don’t have is the ability today to tell you these are the factors that caused this.” The team also noted that mortality rates in low-income areas of the country were still elevated even past the study’s time frame, which could call into question the legitimacy of blaming all excess deaths on the storm.

Indirect deaths from hurricanes from 1963-2012 numbered 1,418 but Maria in Puerto Rico alone caused 2,911?

My mother died of old age related heart failure two days after Hurricane Gustav made landfall in Louisiana in 2008:

48 deaths in the state of Louisiana were blamed on Hurricane Gustav. Five were due to falling trees, two due to a tornado and the rest were indirect deaths.

My mother wasn't counted among the 41 indirect deaths in Louisiana, for the main reason that she died in a different state.

But . . .

Hurricane Fatality Reports Leave Out Thousands of Indirect Deaths, According to New Study:

Looking at 59 hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin from 1963 through 2012, the study found that those systems killed a combined 1,803 people directly – by forces like flooding and airborne debris that were caused by the storm itself. But there were also a slew of lingering impacts that proved deadly in those storms, which caused 1,418 "indirect" deaths, according to the findings. ... Nearly half of the indirect deaths attributed to these 59 hurricanes were heart attacks, according to the study's data. Automobile accidents were also a major threat to life, whether the crashes occurred during evacuation or after the storm.

So we're supposed to believe tonight that about 2,911 (2,975-64) Puerto Ricans died indirectly in consequence of one storm (Maria) over the next six months according to the new math of George Washington University and Harvard University when over the course of nearly 50 years' worth of hurricanes indirect deaths for all storms combined came to just 1,418.

Sure we are.

Looks like Hurricane Florence will fall far short of the 1944 hurricane of the same date, disappointing climate catastrophists everywhere

Beaufort, South Carolina's "Island Packet" is reporting Flo at 98 mph at this hour, just still barely a Cat 2.

Habeas corpus: Puerto Rico study showing 2,975 deaths not "a traditional death-toll accounting"

Normally one counts up the bodies, makes a list and checks it twice. But nothing in Puerto Rico is normal.

Reported here:

Researchers at George Washington University determined last month that Hurricane Maria alone resulted in 2,975 'excess deaths' in Puerto Rico. 

That finding wasn't the result of a traditional death-toll accounting, but a public health study that compared mortality in the six months following the storm with the number of deaths that would have been expected if it had not hit the island.  

'The difference between those two numbers is the estimate of excess mortality due to the hurricane,' the scientists wrote. 

G@@gl& scientist resigns due to company's compliance with China's censorship and surveillance demands

Quoted here in The Intercept:

“Due to my conviction that dissent is fundamental to functioning democracies, I am forced to resign in order to avoid contributing to, or profiting from, the erosion of protection for dissidents.”

“I view our intent to capitulate to censorship and surveillance demands in exchange for access to the Chinese market as a forfeiture of our values and governmental negotiating position across the globe,” he wrote, adding: “There is an all-too-real possibility that other nations will attempt to leverage our actions in China in order to demand our compliance with their security demands.” ...

[H]e is surprised more of the company’s employees have not quit over Dragonfly.

It's taken incompetent Puerto Rico eleven months to raise its official death toll from 64 to 2,975, just in time for the election

But in all that time incompetent Puerto Rico still hasn't made use of the millions of water bottles still sitting on a runway in Ceiba.

Possibly millions of water bottles meant for Hurricane Maria victims left on tarmac in Puerto Rico:

Puerto Rico's governor last month raised the U.S. territory's official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975. The storm, which devastated the territory last September, is also estimated to have caused $100 billion in damage.

Flashback to the story from 2 November 2017.

Puerto Rico's water woes raise fears of health crisis six weeks after Hurricane Maria:

Bottled water can be hard to find and gets expensive, said her aunt, Maria Ortiz, 66. “If you are lucky to find some, a pack of 24 water bottles that used to be $3.99 now is about $7.50,” she said. 

They can't count, and they can't even drink.

The Hill: "Puerto Rico's government raised its official death toll which previously sat at 64"

But the culture of complaint that is Puerto Rico wasn't satisfied with the low number, so they commissioned a study to add deaths six months out from the post-hurricane period:

[A] George Washington University study commissioned by Puerto Rico's governor examin[ed] the effects of Maria in the six months following landfall in September 2017.

The long time period was used to determine the hurricane's lingering effect on deaths on the island. It compared the death rates in the post-hurricane period to other periods not affected by natural disasters.

Only in the minds of lunatics is the number of deaths from Maria 1,175 worse than from Katrina (1,800 estimated total deaths). This new methodology of liberal math is just in time for the politics of the current hurricane season, and coincides with Obama's ridiculous claim that this economic recovery is his, not Trump's.

The story is here.

Remembering the incompetence of Hillary's beloved California and FBI on 9/11

David Dayen thinks Tim Geithner's disobedience of Obama's orders fed the anger at government Trump parlayed into the presidency

Of course, this begs the question whether Obama knew what he was doing, or even wanted to know.

Here in The New Republic:

Every action fit Geithner’s worldview: The financial system must be stabilized at all costs, as the only way to heal the economy so real people benefit. “We do not need to imagine that he was in the pocket of any one bank,” Adam Tooze wrote in the new book Crashed. “It was his commitment to the system that dictated that Citigroup should not be broken up.” ...

Today, some may welcome the internal dissension in the Trump administration. But Geithner’s actions to protect banks from the president he served, and the anger it bred at a “rigged” system, diminished the public’s faith in government intervention and helped install Trump in the White House.

Who ya gonna believe, the mayor or the cops?

EXCLUSIVE: Some Jersey City Muslims did celebrate 9/11, cop and residents say:

Numerous people called police to report an exultant crowd on the roof of 2801 John F. Kennedy Blvd., a distinctive, five-story apartment building at the intersection of Sip Avenue, said retired officer Arthur Teeter, who worked in the radio room at police headquarters on Sept. 11. ... Teeter, the officer who worked in the radio room, said the address was one of several where 911 callers cited rooftop celebrations. "There were enough calls that it was disturbing," he said. "That's the only word I can use." ...

The officers, including a high-ranking official, said their reluctance to speak publicly also stemmed from concern they would run afoul of Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who has repeatedly said celebrations did not take place. "I saw it with my own eyes," the ranking officer said. "In the end, police officers are professionals, so we just observed that stuff and sucked it up."

Seventeen years later America still has 8,475 soldiers in Afghanistan

And Afghanistan has a record 810,000 acres producing opium.

Scoffers separated at birth?

Oliver Bullough for The Grauniad blames all the wealth inequality today on an invention of a Jewish banker

Siegmund George Warburg, here, whose invention destroyed the Bretton Woods system.

Except Bullough never mentions he's the descendant of a long line of Jewish bankers who originated in Venice:

One banker in particular was not prepared to tolerate this: Siegmund Warburg. Warburg was an outsider in the cosy world of the City. For one thing, he was German. For another, he hadn’t given up on the idea that a City banker’s job was to hustle for business. In 1962, Warburg learned from a friend at the World Bank that some $3bn was circulating outside the US – sloshing around and ready to be put to use. Warburg had been a banker in Germany in the 1920s and remembered arranging bond deals in foreign currencies. Why couldn’t his bankers do something similar again?

Investors Business Daily thinks no one noticed Obama's recent public embrace of Bernie's radical socialism

Here.

We noticed. We just didn't mention it because we've been pointing out Obama's socialism for nine years already. Yawn.

But Obama was only a fair weather friend of socialism for most of that time because most of the Democrat Party remained neoliberal. Nothing points up his lackluster leadership and servile character throughout that time better than his constant fear of a backlash from the neoliberal wing of a party he supposedly led. Actually it led him. Obama was relieved to wash his hands of the economic crisis and delegated fixing it to Bill Clinton's neoliberal retreads. The guy couldn't even take the socialist baton of Pelosi's single payer plan for crying out loud, or embrace a Paul Krugman approved properly sized stimulus spending bill. And making the Bush tax cuts permanent? That was hardly the work of the leader (in his head) of world socialism.

Freed from the strictures of politics, Obama is now free to advance his fanciful sympathies without consequences, as long as the wind is blowing in that direction. My guess is the left wing of his party sees this as nothing more than his feeble attempt to be relevant again when to them he had already become an object of contempt by the end of 2009.

The author of Dreams from My Father is just dreamin', that's all. All he ever did.

We should track down all the descendents of Emma Lazarus and force them to pay reparations

Two months out Real Clear Politics has just nine Republican seats "likely" going Democrat: That's no blue wave

Democrats and liberals, however, want you to think it's already hopeless for Republicans. Like Al Hunt, who thinks Democrats will turn out because Trump is their great motivator to do so. Al, however, thinks the toss ups are already down to 20 to 25 seats. If it's true, as he thinks, that Republicans tend to reduce their polling deficits as the election nears, his already low estimation of the size of the field of prospects suggests this is a lot closer than he's willing to admit. The generic Congressional poll currently favors Democrats by +2 to +4 (Rasmussen). Remember Rasmussen had Hillary at +2. Al thinks the current math means Democrats need 23 seats to take the House. That means almost all of his toss ups have to flip.

Not likely!

USA Today had it right predicting Naomi Osaka's U.S. Open victory: Osaka had already whopped Serena back in March

Watch out Serena; Naomi Osaka is going to win the U.S. Open:

Osaka already showed her hand. Back in March, she played Serena for the first time, showed no sense of nerves and rolled her 6-3, 6-2 in the first round in Miami. Now, that match doesn’t tell us much about how Osaka’s style will contrast with Serena’s in Saturday’s U.S. Open final, as the first match was just Serena’s fourth since returning from maternity leave and, as she’d later admit, she wasn’t in the right shape to be winning matches. Still, even with Serena playing at 40% of her capabilities, we saw how Osaka responded to seeing her across the net. There was no fear, no awe, no deference. Osaka says she often asks herself “what would Serena do?” And what Osaka did in that Miami match is exactly what a young Serena would have done to one of the stars of the game back in 1999. No fear. ...  [I]n the past year, she’s defeated the world Nos. 1 and 2 in hard-court matches and took home the title at the prestigious Indian Wells tournament. ... PREDICTION: Naomi Osaka in straight sets.

Serena is an old cow (36) compared to Osaka (20). So is Roger Federer (37), who didn't lose recently just because it was hot and humid. Tiger Woods is 42 and hasn't won anything important in ten years but keeps trying. The old bulls fall to the young bucks, eventually, that's nature's way.

The old bulls just don't want to accept it sometimes, that's all. And then out come the excuses. Too bad for tennis that this time the excuses were political. But hey, Kaepernick paved the way. Expect more of the same.

Personally I can't wait for Osaka to cream Serena again.

Ari Fleischer to anonymous op-ed writer: Who the hell are you to decide what the right direction is?

New York Times op-ed betrays Trump, voters. Staffers don't get to steer US: Ari Fleischer

"No White House staffer is above the will of the people, especially one whose name none of us know." 

Counting illegal aliens as population in California unlawfully gives it 5 more seats in the US House than it should have

The State of Alabama and Mo Brooks are suing the federal government to stop the practice.

The story is here.

Ken Rogoff calls Adam Tooze's new book CRASHED an ambitious but flawed work

Rogoff takes Tooze to task for certain inaccuracies and omissions, including about Rogoff's own published work.

It's a longish read, but well worth it, here. And don't miss the second part, which reviews Sebastian Edwards' AMERICAN DEFAULT.

The only "dispropotiate influnce" Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse should worry about is that wielded by a stupid senator

The story is here.

Rhode Island gets smaller by the minute.

T. A. Frank tries to dial down the hysteria a notch or two: This still isn’t the behavior of a dictator, the press is doing just fine

T. A. Frank for Vanity Fair, here:

Finally, this still isn’t the behavior of a dictator. As much as Trump blusters about libel laws and maligns journalists, the press is doing just fine. A truly dangerous president would cloak his aims in high principles and ask Congress to pass new laws. He would ignore someone like Woodward and say quietly, to henchmen behind the scenes, “Who will rid me of that meddlesome journalist?” He wouldn’t pick up the phone and have a fumbling phone call with Woodward asking if the book was going to be bad, before concluding, glumly, “I assume that means it’s going to be a negative book. But you know, I’m sort of 50 percent used to that. That’s all right. Some are good and some are bad. Sounds like this is going to be a bad one.”

But all of this is, again, one more confirmation of what we already knew: Trump talks tougher than he acts. He also struggles to get his way, everywhere. ... Trump knows how to stoke his base, and he has started to reshape the G.O.P., but he has had a hell of a time implementing his campaign promises. He lacks the self-discipline and intuition.

And the best lines of all:

Why campaign like Pat Buchanan if you staff up like Jeb Bush? ... The man who insulted Goldman Sachs and Saudi princes and promised infrastructure and walls instead hired Goldman Sachs, did the bidding of Saudi princes, and stuck to tax cuts.

Can't very well become Donaldus Magnus if you won't appoint people to fight for and implement your agenda.

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