We are in deep kimchi.
And please note that Trump hasn't fixed it. The year 2015 was better than 2018.
Sunday, April 7, 2019
Saturday, April 6, 2019
CNN's Amanpour thinks it's the duty of journalists to keep certain things secret, like Hillary's health
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour Formally Comes Out as Pro-Hillary, Anti-Journalism:
Where it was their job to be adversarial, journalists instead [occasionally] chose collusion and the democratic process suffered.
Now Amanpour would have us do the same, but with
“sexism” as the excuse instead of privacy concerns. It’s not sexist or
wrong or intrusive for journalists to inquire about a presidential
candidate’s health after they’ve obviously fallen ill in a public
setting, or to demand transparency from public officials. It’s just
called journalism.
Suddenly Trump is channeling Bart Simpson on immigrants: Our country is full so turn around
Trump to Illegal Immigrants: The Country Is Full, So Turn Around:
I say, and this is our new statement, the system is full. We can't take you anymore. Whether it is asylum or anything you want, illegal immigration, we can't take you anymore. Our country is full. Our area is full. The sector is full. We can't take you anymore. Sorry, can't happen. So turn around, that's the way it is.
The context of the full remarks appears to be making the case that Border Patrol can and should stop following procedures under these new, extraordinary circumstances, but without real presidential backup apart from these words I think it highly unlikely that anyone will take the risk of acting independently. The president needs to intervene in an unconventional, convincing manner, and so far this looks like just more talk with no action of that kind likely to follow.
Friday, April 5, 2019
Thursday, April 4, 2019
Ann Coulter shows her hubris here, opining about unemployment which she understands little better than Rush Limbaugh
Yes, there was an effort in 2010 and 2011 to track Americans unemployed "260 weeks or longer", but that is irrelevant to the unemployment rate, which has declined so much because so many are no longer counted in the labor force, that's all. That would include the long term "unemployed", who aren't really unemployed because those people get kicked out of the labor force according to the definitions used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
You may not like that. You may not agree with that. But that's what happens. If you haven't looked for work in 4 weeks but have in the last year, you'll still be in the labor force, but after a year you are out if you've given up looking. And presto, when millions can't find work in this shrunken economy, they drop out by not looking any longer, so the labor force shrinks, and thus fewer people get counted as unemployed. It's as simple as that.
A better way to look at it is, How many people have full time jobs?
Since 1968 the average percent of the civilian noninstitutional population employed full time at peaks has been 51.2%. At troughs it has been 48.6%. In February 2019 49.9% had full time jobs.
At 51.2% in February 2019 instead of at 49.9%, however, we'd have about 3.46 million more working full time than we actually have.
That's what is wrong with the Trump economy inherited from Obama.
There remains no economic driver for a jobs boom.
Ann is still right, however. Why on earth would you import more people to America in a situation of labor slack like this?
It's insane, and perverse. It does active harm to people already here who can't find full time work.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump hasn't got a clue about this.
Like I said, we are well and truly screwed.
Trump withdraws threat to close the border, which will only create a bigger surge at the border
The quintessential boomer parent who doesn't know how to say No, doesn't really want to say No, and actually means Yes when he does say No.
What a disaster this guy is. The kids are already running wild, and it will only get worse.
Trump capitulates on border closure (ONE YEAR!), Ann Coulter was right when she called him a wimp
Ann Coulter takes victory lap after Trump backs down from border closure:
Trump recently scaled back his threat to close the border, saying that Mexico now has a year to get illegal crossings under control before Trump takes drastic action.
Incompetent Trump: Republicans will always support pre-existing conditions!
He means coverage for pre-existing conditions, not the conditions.
I think.
Incompetent CNBC: "MacKenzie shared that her and ex-husband completed the process"
That's how they talk around here in west Michigan. Not supposed to happen in New York.
LOL Incompetent WOOD Radio 1300 in Grand Rapids has run Wednesday's weather report today at 1230pm, 100pm and just now at 130pm
And then "Want to hear it again?" they advertize right after that.
Can't make this stuff up, but hey, it's the station of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in Grand Rapids.
Wednesday's weather report was better anyway, sunny and windy. Today it's cloudy and less windy. I like how they help me remember yesterday.
Update 203pm: We're tracking a sunny but very windy Wednesday!
Update 232pm: We're tracking a sunny but very windy Wednesday!
Update 303pm: Fixed it! Chucky took over the microphone from Megan at 230pm and didn't like the tape he was hearing! "Hey, this is Thursday! Why are we playing yesterday's weather?"
Update 203pm: We're tracking a sunny but very windy Wednesday!
Update 232pm: We're tracking a sunny but very windy Wednesday!
Update 303pm: Fixed it! Chucky took over the microphone from Megan at 230pm and didn't like the tape he was hearing! "Hey, this is Thursday! Why are we playing yesterday's weather?"
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
England swings . . .
Boobies on buildings, two by two
Elizabeth Hurley the Tower of Pig Pen
The rosy-red cheeks of embarrassed children
Climate update for Grand Rapids, MI, March 2019
Max temp 61 / Mean 66
Min temp 8 / Mean 7
Av temp 32.2 / Mean 34
Precip 2.23 / Mean 2.45
Snow 7.9 / Mean 9.1
Snow to date 76.4 / Mean 63.7
Heating degree days 1006 / Mean 955
HDD to date 5910 / Mean 5849
So, it's been 20% snowier than the mean and 1% colder by HDD.
Even when correcting himself Rush is wrong: Beto won election to the Texas House and quit after a year
Democrats Are Ignoring Their Frontrunner [Bernie]:
Oh. I erred, folks. I said Beto O’Rourke had never won an election. He did. He won an election to the Texas House and then quit after a year to run against Cruz in the Senate. What I meant to say was that Beto O’Rourke’s biggest life achievement is losing to Ted Cruz in the Senate race, not that he’s never won an election. Because he has.
Beto was elected to the US House three times, in 2012, 2014 and 2016, representing TX-16.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
John Gray: The possibility that millions value some things more than economic gain is not considered by the British political classes
Sounds oddly familiar.
Brexit has left the British political class trapped by its own history:
Persistently denying respect to Leave voters in this way can only bring
to Britain the dangerous populism that is steadily marching across the
European continent.
President Kushner has alternative facts about Florida voter registrations by felons
The Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald looked at the most recent year of data on citizens who lost their right to vote in the 20 largest counties in the state and found a lot of Democrats. In those counties, which hold more than 80 percent of the
state’s voters, 52 percent of those who lost their voting rights because
of a conviction were Democrats. Only 14 percent of those who lost their
voting rights because of felony convictions were Republicans. The rest
had no partisan affiliation. ... Democrats could see a net gain of several hundred thousand votes from the new amendment.
New York's moron Senatrix, Kirsten Gillibrand, doesn't know seven states, including her own, didn't have a popular vote for president, for example in 1796
There was no principle of one person, one vote. The legislatures of Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Massachusetts and Vermont appointed Electors to the Electoral College. Other states actually had Electors names on the ballots, not the names of the presidential candidates. And women didn't get to vote everywhere as a matter of federal law until 1920.
Kirsten is giving Hawaii's Crazy Mazie a run for her money.
Everything human beings touch turns into a shit-hole, including near-earth orbit
Space debris from India’s anti-satellite missile test a threat to ISS, NASA says :
But speaking on Monday, Bridenstine said NASA had identified 400
pieces of orbital debris from the test, with at least 24 of them — each
one larger than 10 cm — having gone above the apogee of the ISS,
something he described as “a terrible, terrible thing” and which put the
safety of the ISS at risk. However, he confirmed that because the test
was carried out low enough in Earth orbit, the fragments — and therefore
the risk — would dissipate over time. The space agency is currently tracking 23,000 pieces of orbital debris,
each one 10 cm or larger. Scientists, meanwhile, have been working on a
number of different projects aimed at getting rid of the debris.
When Republicans like Rush Limbaugh keep blaming loss of the House on "retirements", just remember Republicans didn't even run candidates in 38 districts
Republicans ran no one against the Democrat in 38 districts in 2018:
AL-7
AZ-7
CA-5
CA-6
CA-13
CA-20
CA-27
CA-34
CA-40
CA-44
FL-10
FL-14
FL-20
FL-21
FL-24
GA-5
LA-2
MA-1
MA-4
MA-7
MA-8
MI-13
MS-2
NY-5
NY-6
NY-7
NY-8
NY-16
NY-17
PA-18
TX-9
TX-20
TX-28
TX-30
VA-3
WA-2
WA-9
WI-2.
Democrats meanwhile abandoned the field in just four districts:
AK-1
CA-8
GA-8
NC-3.
Like lotto, you gotta be in it to win it.
It also helps to have a message.
Do Republicans have one anymore, except more freedom?
You know, freedom to ship your jobs overseas where the labor is cheaper and safety, health, and environmental regulation is next to nonexistent, freedom to cut the taxes of the businesses that won't give you a job, freedom to spend your tax dollars on defense of "US interests" abroad which are really the interests of those businesses not yours, freedom to keep bringing in millions of cheaper laborers to compete for your jobs and drive down your wages, and freedom to keep charging 4.45% for federal students loans in a 2.49% 10-yr note economy.
Yes, we need freedom all right. Freedom from Republicans.
Unfortunately that means Democrats.
Which is why we are well and truly screwed.
Monday, April 1, 2019
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Democrats should man-up and go full socialist and back Bernie: They're gonna lose anyway, might as well pick someone whose lunacy at least has some gravitas
Don't want no gaffe machine!
Don't need no furry queen!
Can't have no renegade cop!
Or a fake Indian tomahawk chop!
Just give us that Bernie man,
And his hurdy-gurdy socialist plan.
CBS, the most perverse of the news organizations, tries to put a positive spin on the coyotes
Hitler built the autobahn!
Wow, I missed this one: Michael Morell, former CIA director under Obama, in March 2017 said Chris Steele PAID Russkies for dossier info
Clinton Ally Says Smoke, But No Fire: No Russia-Trump Collusion:
About the dossier, Morell said, "Unless you know the
sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a
particular piece of information, you can’t judge the information — you
just can’t." The dossier "doesn’t take you anywhere, I don’t think," he said. He continued: "I had two questions when I first read it. One
was, How did Chris talk to these sources? I have subsequently learned
that he used intermediaries. "And then I asked myself, why did these guys provide this
information, what was their motivation? And I subsequently learned that
he paid them. That the intermediaries paid the sources and the
intermediaries got the money from Chris. And that kind of worries me a
little bit because if you’re paying somebody, particularly former FSB
officers, they are going to tell you truth and innuendo and rumor, and
they’re going to call you up and say, ‘hey, let’s have another meeting, I
have more information for you,’ because they want to get paid some
more. "I think you’ve got to take all that into consideration when you consider the dossier." Another former CIA officer in the room pointed out that the CIA also pays its sources. "But we know who the source [i]s and we know how they got the information," Morell responded.
Sad to see Glenn Greenwald retweeting the spitting-on-Vietnam-vets-is-a-myth crap
The left-wing standard for doubting the veracity of the claims continues to be the inability to find corroborating news accounts at the time of the alleged spitting incidents, as if Vietnam vets were such whiny weenies that they ran like babies to the papers to complain "that hippie spit on me!" See the 1998 book by Jerry Lembcke which depends on this line of reasoning to argue the spitting incidents are a myth.
In our own time there has been a virtual news blackout on assaults against Trump supporters, especially during 2015 and 2016, which partisans point to as evidence those also are myths.
"If we don't report it, it's not news."
The problem with this analysis, now standard, is that libertarianism co-opted conservatism
The three-legged stool of "conservatism" in the age of Reagan consisted of a libertarian leg, a social conservative leg, and a foreign policy hawk leg. The libertarian leg came to dominate (the money interest), as is typical, which discarded the conservative leg except when it needed it, at election time (traditional values agenda), and put the foreign policy leg to work in its interests (global free trade).
This has happened before. The proponents of the professional, managerial state in the early 20th century similarly co-opted the rural Christian farming population to pass the "progressive" agenda, in the name of Christian fairness, of women's suffrage, popular election of senators, the corporate and income taxes to make business and the rich pay their fair share, and Prohibition, in exchange for political power.
The gulls in this game have always been the core Christian population. They are being replaced now, however, by a new class, the Latinos.
The 3-D chess masters will have to run the future scenarios. Yo no hablo espanol. But I expect them to be less charitable when jilted.
Current illegal immigration surge totally predictable but Trump botched the response
The Border Patrol has been facing a record influx of migrant families since fall, but in recent weeks the numbers have begun to escalate substantially, thanks to the annual surge before the arrival of the deadly summer heat.
For months, the federal authorities knew that this spring was likely to set records, but only now is it becoming apparent how big the numbers will be. Apprehensions already dwarf the numbers of five years ago and echo those of the spring of 2014, when the arrival of the first migrant families from Central America transformed the nature of immigration along the southern border.
“The current surge was totally predictable and the Trump administration chose not to prepare for it. Instead it launched a raft of harsh deterrence measures that were totally ineffective,” said Wayne Cornelius, a migration scholar at the University of California, San Diego. ...
In the 2018 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, nearly 400,000 migrants were apprehended at the border, a low figure compared with the peak of 1.6 million in 2000. But experts predict that arrivals this fiscal year could hit one million, a level not seen since the record numbers in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Trump's incompetence combines with Congress' inaction on immigration resulting in human traffickers confidently overwhelming the asylum system with hordes of illegals
Border Patrol officials were on pace in March for more than 100,000 apprehensions and encounters with migrants – the highest monthly tally in over a decade, he said. Around 90 percent of those – or 90,000 – crossed the border between legal ports of entry. ... Increasingly, smugglers are bringing larger numbers of families together and delivering them across the Rio Grande, knowing they’ll overrun facilities and be released until their immigration court date, she said. Under U.S. law, Border Patrol is not supposed to hold any migrant for longer than 72 hours. Usually, Border Patrol hands them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which can detain families for up to 20 days. But all of those facilities are overcrowded, [Theresa] Brown [of the Bipartisan Policy Center] said, leading Border Patrol to skip the transfer to ICE and release migrants to shelters en masse. “This is a system-wide collapse,” she said.
Saturday, March 30, 2019
No, not The Onion: New political party forms in the realm which gave us rum, sodomy and the lash, calls itself CUK
Short for Change UK, formed on the day when Brexit was finally supposed to occur.
Apparently their idea of change is no change, as in no Brexit.
Looks like the woman in the center realizes their mistake, but that's probably just wishful thinking.
Any seat in Parliament kept by one of these in the next election one wag says will constitute a CUK-hold, but they all already have made cucks of the people of the UK they represent. It is an odd fetish, thankfully, enjoyed by but few, less than 2% of the UK's constituencies.
Friday, March 29, 2019
Education is so bad that even common idioms like "turned out" and "ended up" are lost to us
Or is it the toxoplasmosis?
67% of Democrats think Russia tampered with vote tallies to get Trump elected in latest Economist/YouGov poll
Democrats also believe in reincarnation,
yoga, astrology, spiritual energy and the evil eye by 2 to 1 over Republicans in a Pew Research study from 2009.
The same goes for being in touch with the dead, ghosts and fortune
tellers.
Independents are almost as bad at 1.8 to 1 on average.
Ding dong.
Leader of New Zealand mosque says the Joos did it!
Must be why Democrats run interference for Muslims so much.
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Gee what a shock, millions of older Americans get fired in the Great Recession, and their homelessness soars
Welcome to libertarian hell.
UCSF researchers estimate that half of the single homeless adults are age 50 or older, compared to 11 percent in the early 1990s — a 354 percent uptick. This data is emblematic of a graying homeless population across the nation: America’s homeless elderly population is projected to nearly triple by 2030, according to new research encompassing New York City, Boston and Los Angeles County. And this problem spans the globe: A 2017 report on the U.K.’s homeless population found that the population of homeless people over 60 had increased 111 percent since 2009, and for those over 75 it had increased by 155 percent — compared to an increase of 48 percent in the general population.
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Alexandra Chalupa's timeline of her activities and of her fears about Paul Manafort's influence in Ukraine in his capacity as part of the Trump campaign isn't convincing
In late 2015, a small group of Ukrainian-American and Ukrainian civic leaders visiting Washington, D.C. told Chalupa they had heard Manafort’s former clients in Ukraine were remobilizing again, and that Manafort had made a fortune working in Kyiv. ...
It was around this time that Chalupa started to develop a gut feeling that Manafort was poised to help Trump’s bid for the White House. ...
By early 2016, Chalupa notified a senior DNC executive that a political spin doctor who had worked against America’s interests for the pro-Kremlin Yanukovych and was linked to some of the most powerful Russian oligarchs serving Putin was to play an important role in the effort to get Trump elected. ...
On March 28, The New York Times broke the story that Manafort had joined the Trump campaign.
The problem with this timeline and Chalupa's obsession with Manafort's Ukraine connection is that Manafort's overture to Trump to come on to the campaign didn't come until February 29, 2016, according to The New York Times. And the overture came at the urging of Trump's close friend Tom Barrack, who wanted Manafort to help a flailing and inexperienced Trump by managing successfully the potentially explosive upcoming Republican convention in Cleveland. Manafort's Republican political experience dating from 1976 onwards is well known.
Chalupa would have had no reason to believe Manafort would suddenly become active in the Trump campaign in late 2015 and early 2016, as she claims, when it wasn't until sometime in mid-February 2016 that Tom Barrack made his pitch to Manafort.
It is more likely that Manafort became the convenient focus for Chalupa after the fact when all along it was opposition to Trump's proposed opening to Russia which motivated her activism and overtures to the DNC long before Manafort came on the scene.
There is absolutely nothing in this puff piece in The Kyiv Post about Chalupa's longstanding loyalty to and work for the Clintons.
Alexandra Chalupa is at the nexus of what has become the criminalization of a foreign policy difference between Trump Republicans on the one hand and Democrats and NeverTrumpers on the other, like John McCain who was notably famous for his deep involvement in the political dispute in Ukraine.
George Washington tried to warn us about the consequences of entangling foreign alliances, and those have been Exhibit A for the last two years.
If 29% of 2016 population 55 and older have absolutely nothing coming in retirement except Social Security, we're talking about 26 million Americans
Of those 55 and older, 48 percent had nothing put away in a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan or an individual retirement account, according to a GAO estimate for 2016 that was released Tuesday. That’s an improvement from the 52 percent without retirement money in 2013.
Two in five of such households did have access to a traditional pension, also known as a defined benefit plan. However, 29 percent of older Americans had neither a pension nor any assets in a 401(k) or IRA account.
Lee Stranahan in Dec 2018: CNN peddled lies trying to put daylight between DNC and Alexandra Chalupa, but Wikileaks now proves Chalupa was working with Dems to connect Trump to Russia long before DNC was hacked or Trump Tower meeting
And notice how after Hillary's unexpected loss, Chalupa's sister, who admits Alexandra's role with the DNC, is suddenly deeply involved in the effort to spread the story that the Russkies hacked the voting totals of Election 2016.
Over the weekend, Wikileaks tweeted about how CNN had reported last year a denial by the Democratic National Committee and Hilary [sic] Clinton officials of illegal election collusion between the DNC and the government of Ukraine during the 2015 [sic] election. CNN’s conduct is a textbook example of smothering a story and leaving out relevant facts.
The story that CNN was trying to bury was published in Politico in January 2017 titled Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire. That story was written by David Stern and Ken Vogel (who is now writing at the New York Times) detailed how a DNC operative named Alexander [sic] Chalupa worked closely with officials at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, including Ukrainian Ambassador Chaly, to try and dig up dirt connecting Donald Trump and Paul Manafort to Russia. The story also mentions that Chalupa told people that the Democrats were planning to hold hearing connecting Trump to Russia in fall of 2016, just before the election.
It should be noted that this illegal attempt to gather information from the Democrats [sic] was underway by March, 2016…which is before the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC was detected as well before the Trump Tower meeting that are cited by the media as examples of Russian collusion. In other words, the DNC was actively working on a plan to connect Trump to Russia before the alleged collusion ever happened.
I reported on this, what, like in July 2017, how POLITICO already in Jan 2017 tried to spin Hillary's collusion with Ukraine
Here, where the exploits of one anti-Russian pro-Ukrainian Alexandra Chalupa may ultimately be the origin for the whole Trump-Russia collusion narrative of the last two years.
She really ought to be investigated and deposed. Maybe she knows more than she's letting on about how the New York Times got the information it published causing Manafort to resign from the Trump campaign.
In the article below John Solomon appears to be completely oblivious to this POLITICO article excerpted at the link above, which outlined how long time Clinton ally and Ukrainian-American activist Alexandra Chalupa was instrumental in siccing Democrats on Paul Manafort for his alleged Russian ties immediately after Manafort became Trump's campaign manager in 2016. The DNC and Marcy Kaptur in particular are named as very interested parties who gave Chalupa a hearing, as were Ukrainian diplomats. Chalupa also notably claims to have been a major source on Ukraine for the reporter Michael Isikoff.
The upshot is that the Hillary campaign as the pro-Ukrainian in the 2016 race (along with John McCain!) was the intended principal beneficiary of the effort to destroy Manafort for his alleged pro-Russian activities.
Ukraine’s top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his country’s law enforcement apparatus intentionally leaked financial records during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.
The leak of the so-called black ledger files to U.S. media prompted Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign and gave rise to one of the key allegations in the Russia collusion probe that has dogged Trump for the last two and a half years.
Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko’s probe was prompted by a Ukrainian parliamentarian's release of a tape recording purporting to quote a top law enforcement official as saying his agency leaked the Manafort financial records to help Clinton's campaign.
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