Sunday, September 10, 2023

Sanctuary in Name Only: Illegal aliens are damned inconvenient when plopped down in the backyards of liberal land

Eric Adams Late to Party With Warning on Migrant Crisis

Michael Goodwin, NY Post

GOP Talking Points Are Winning in New York's Migrant Crisis

Hayes Brown, MSNBC

Democrats Buckle Under Biden Border Chaos

Washington Examiner

Saturday, September 9, 2023

She's 83: What's two more years after 36 years of turning the place into a shit-hole?

Pelosi: The "Needs" Of San Francisco Really Call For Me To Stay Another Term

November 5, 2024: Groundhog Day all over again

Democrats' 2024 Magic Bullet: Mass Mail-In Voting

Kristin Tate, The Messenger

In 2020, only about a third of Americans voted at a physical polling location on Election Day. The 2020 election represented the first time in American history that more than half of the electorate voted on a day that was not Election Day. The expansion of Election Day to “Election Month” brought out a number of lower-propensity, and arguably lower-information, voters who cast their ballots by the millions. Young people increased their voting share sharply in the last election.

In some states, the changes were even more dramatic. Between 2016 and 2020, New Jersey saw its share of mail ballots increase from just 7% to an astounding 86%. The partisan lean should be no more surprising. Among voters in Pennsylvania who voted by mail, 76% went for Joe Biden. In Maryland, it was 81%. In the crucial state of Georgia, Trump received just 34% of the mail-in ballots.

The 2020 trampling of precedent under the guise of an “emergency” was especially pronounced in critical states such as Pennsylvania, where officials were ordered to count mail-in ballots that arrived within three days after the election toward the final result — even those that did not have a postmark. The move undoubtedly had a massive impact on the swing state’s outcome. ...

By codifying mail-in balloting, it is likely that Republicans will be at a constant disadvantage in voter turnout. GOP voters tend to show up at the polls on Election Day. Democrats effectively harvested millions of votes in 2020 for their candidates.

Friday, September 8, 2023

Mukasey: Trump was never an "officer" of the US and the Supremes have said so twice, ergo, they'll have to defeat him at the ballot box

Trump can't be excluded from the election on the grounds that he was an officer under the 14th Amendment.

Here:

In U.S. v. Mouat (1888), the Supreme Court ruled that “unless a person in the service of the government . . . holds his place by virtue of an appointment . . ., he is not, strictly speaking, an officer of the United States.” Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated the point in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010): “The people do not vote for the ‘Officers of the United States.’ ” ...

Mr. Trump took an oath as president pursuant to Article II, not as an officer pursuant to Article VI. Because the Insurrection Clause applies only to those who have taken an oath “as an officer of the United States,” he can’t be barred by that clause from serving in any capacity. ...

Even a criminal conviction wouldn’t bar him from seeking and winning the presidency. The Constitution specifies only that a person seeking that office be at least 35, a natural-born citizen and a 14-year U.S. resident. If Mr. Trump is to be kept from office, it will have to be done the old-fashioned way, the way it was done in 2020—by defeating him in an election.

Thursday, September 7, 2023

New CNN poll taken in the days right after the first Republican debate shows Nikki Haley beating Joe Biden by 6-points, Trump beating Biden by only 1-point

Here.

The women like Nikki.

LOL here come the Democrats-in-panic headlines from Democrats

Don't Panic When You See New Trump-Biden Poll Numbers

Paul Waldman, MSNBC

An Antidote to Democratic Panic Syndrome

Heather Parton, Salon

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

I can see it now: Edward Snowden foe Mike Rogers will be the Republican candidate for US Senate from Michigan and Justin Amash will run as the Libertarian Party spoiler to help Democrat Elissa Slotkin win

Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan native and former FBI agent who rose to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee before leaving Congress more than eight years ago, announced Wednesday he is running for the Republican nomination for the state's open U.S. Senate seat next year.

The story, here, never mentions Rogers' strong opposition to what Edward Snowden did to reveal illegal US government surveillance of US citizens.

Fourth Amendment libertarians are certain at least to take note.

Rogers is ex-FBI.

Chris Christie credits Fed interest rate policy for denting government-spending-induced inflation but misses the role of collapsing energy prices

Chris Christie is a smart guy with many of the right ideas about government spending, taxes, inflation, energy, and the environment.

But it's a real stretch to think that the timid interest rate increases of the Fed are responsible for this year's so-far moderating inflation indicators when it's falling energy prices since the winter which deserve the real credit. Christie himself admits that outrageous government spending hasn't been curbed at all.

His is a simple binary view which, while conventional and correct as far as it goes, doesn't get to the heart of the current matter.

Low energy prices have always been and remain key to a successful economy, and it was the spike in natural gas cost inputs because of the Russia-Ukraine war which accelerated inflation globally, not just in the US.

Fed chair Jerome Powell was correct in June of 2021 to believe that inflation would be transitory for "weak supply" reasons, but the Fed rate increases didn't actually commence until the start of the war in Ukraine, which compounded those reasons with the cutoff of European natural gas supplies.

But since the winter the natural gas price is down 73% from peak, coal is down 70%, and gasoline is down too, but a comparatively modest 24%.

Americans consumed in 2022 the energy equivalent of 26.9 billion kWh/day of natural gas, 13 billion kWh/day of gasoline, and 7.9 billion kWh/day of coal.

Natural gas is twice as important as gasoline in the overall American energy picture, primarily for heating, and as a substitute for coal in electricity generation.

Natural gas produced 4.6 billion kWh/day of electricity in 2022, the top source of electricity, vs. coal at 2.3 billion kWh/day and nuclear at 2.1 billion kWh/day.

Chris Christie is right though. We must "uncap" US oil and gas production and be energy independent.

Europe's natural gas storage, by the way, is presently 93% full as the war in Ukraine drags on. They are ready.

The US used 88.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in 2022. We presently have about 35 days in storage.

Crude oil consumption in 2022 was about 20.3 million barrels per day. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is down to about 17 days of supply, from about 35 in 2011.

Watch CNBC’s full interview with GOP Presidential Candidate Chris Christie

Christie lets Fed off the hook for inflation, blames Trump and Biden for overspending

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Democrat National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison is selling the same old Obama hopium for Election 2024

While they try to use fear to divide us, we use hope to move our communities forward. ...

It is a race between hope and fear. Hope must always prevail. ...

We’re going to use hope to build a country where we all have the opportunity to reach our full potential.

More.

Flashback lol: Look fat

December 5, 2019

Iowa

Monday, September 4, 2023

There has to be a movement, see, otherwise Democrats have nothing to run against

Donna Brazile: We Have To Respect The Fact That Donald Trump Is Leading A "Movement," Like Reagan Or Obama

Saturday, September 2, 2023

The unemployment rate rose to 3.8%, but not because people lost jobs

The unemployment rate rose to 3.786% from 3.495% on a bigger 736k increase to the size of the labor force than to the employment level, not because people lost jobs.

The employment level actually made a new high in August 2023, but up a smaller 222k.

The unemployment rate went up in August because record new high employment in August, 161.484m, is a smaller percentage of a new larger labor force in August, 167.839m than was the case in July: 96.2% in August vs. 96.5% in July = 3.8% and 3.5% unemployed respectively.

And do not mix the limited Establishment Survey (122,000 businesses and agencies) total nonfarm jobs oranges (156.419m) with the unemployment rate Household Survey (60,000 households) whole universe of jobs apples and try to make them agree. They don't, and never will.

The Establishment Survey went up 187k in August, but the unemployment rate is not derived from that survey.

Friday, September 1, 2023

Breaking: President Joe Biden interrupts never-ending vacation to ask Congress for more ice cream money

White House asks Congress for short-term funding to avoid government shutdown

Full-time employment as a percentage of US civilian noninstitutional population held steady at 50.7% in August

YTD the average ticked up to 50.3% from 50.2% in July.

Compare with prior full years:

Thursday, August 31, 2023

When inflation leaves you naked from the sheer

When the fleece is shorn,

Then their defenceless limbs the brambles tear;

Short of their wool, and naked from the sheer.

-- John Dryden

They were led as sheep to the slaughter, like lambs dumb before the inflation shearer, so opened they not their mouths

Scandalous: Core inflation has been running ahead of the 10-year US Treasury for an unprecedented 3-years and 5-months, and everyone just shrugs

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Greece arrests dozens for arson fires, WaPo doesn't mention it

Greece struggles to contain Europe's largest wildfire on record...

Tuesday, August 29, 2023

CNN story reporting dozens arrested for arson fires in Greece says fires were caused by climate change

Greek police arrest dozens for arson as EU’s largest-ever wildfires rage

CNN NewsourceAugust 29, 2023

<i>Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters</i><br/>Destroyed corral where eighteen bodies were found following a wildfire near the village of Avantas.

By Eleni Giokos, Xiaofei Xu and Niamh Kennedy, CNN

(CNN) — Greek authorities have arrested dozens of people on arson-related charges as deadly wildfires – the largest ever recorded in the European Union – rage across the country.

Wildfires in Mount Parnitha, north of the Greek capital Athens, are still out of control Friday, with more forest destroyed overnight.

The biggest fire front line in Greece remains near the northeastern town of Alexandroupolis, in the Evros region.

The burned body of a man was found on a rural road near Dadia national park, near the border with Turkey, state media AMNA reported Friday.

Earlier this week, 18 people were found dead near a village in northern Greece. The fire brigade said Tuesday they may have been migrants. Another person was killed in a fire northwest of the capital Athens on Monday.

Greek police have made 79 arson related arrests, Greek government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis told public broadcaster EPT Friday.

“What is happening is not just impermissible, but obscene and criminal,” Greek Climate Crisis Minister Vassilis Kikilias said in a statement.

“You are committing a crime against the country. You will not be spared. We will find you and you will be held accountable in Justice,” Kikilas added.

With more than 73,000 hectares burned, the fires in Alexandroupolis are officially the largest wildfires ever recorded in the European Union, according to EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič.

Wildfires have intensified around the globe, providing a stark reminder of how the climate crisis is upending lives and inflicting billions of dollars a year in damage.

While wildfires are often ignited by lightning strikes or human activity, they are becoming more frequent because of human-caused climate change. Scientists found, for instance, that climate change made the extreme weather conditions that fueled the 2019-2020 destructive fire seasons in Australia 30% more likely to occur.

More.

Cumulative COVID cases in the US have been stuck at 103.44 million for three months, effectively meaning zero per month

There were about 22.4 million cases added to this data between about May 9, 2022 and May 9, 2023, when just 12.49 million Americans received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine at the same time.

So few vaccinations. So few cases.

🤔

About 118,230 Americans died of COVID year over year on May 9, 2023 as well. Deaths also have been stuck: At 1.13 million May 8, 2023 to Aug 23rd, now over three months.

Let's check in on Nordic COVID champion Sweden

Still the leader lol!

Drill for oil and eat your King Oscar sardines, folks.

Good governance and good politics

DeSantis Halts Campaign Amid Florida Shooting, Hurricane Threat

National Archives admits it has thousands of VP Joe Biden emails in which he used aliases to communicate with many including Hunter Biden about both government and family business

President Joe Biden may have used pseudonyms in nearly 5,400 emails, electronic records and documents when he was vice president, a bombshell letter from the National Archives and Records Administration reveals.

The trove of communications was confirmed after the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for emails connected to aliases allegedly used by Biden, including Robin Ware, Robert L. Peters, and JRB Ware.

Republicans have been demanding the release of the emails they say could show Biden used the names to discuss foreign business with his son and share information on countries where he was doing deals.

The White House has insisted Biden was never in business with his son, and vice presidents and high-level government officials often use pseudonyms to prevent being inundated with spam and emails from the public.

At the time, the Obama administration dismissed criticism the communications were 'secret' because they were all archived.

But the sheer volume of emails raises questions over whether then-VP Biden broke the 'absolute wall' he said he maintained between the 'the personal and private, and the government'.

Emails from Hunter's laptop also reveal business partners referred to Biden as the 'big guy'.

The SLF submitted the FOIA request in June 2022 and the results appear to confirm that Biden was using the emails connected to the aliases.

Biden used various private email addresses from which he sometimes sent, received and forwarded government correspondence.

The names are all pseudonyms that Biden was known to use while he served as Vice President under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017 and were used on emails that were about both official and family business.

The Southeastern Legal Foundation took legal action against NARA on Monday to secure the records' release.

The Foundation alleges that the documents might potentially demonstrate instances where President Biden forwarded government information and discussed government matters with his son, Hunter Biden, together with other individuals.

'All too often, public officials abuse their power by using it for their personal or political benefit. When they do, many seek to hide it. The only way to preserve governmental integrity is for NARA to release Biden's nearly 5,400 emails to SLF and thus the public.

'The American public deserves to know what is in them,' Kimberly Hermann, SLF general counsel, said in a statement.

The Southeastern Legal Foundation also accuses NARA of using delaying tactics ever since the initial FOIA request was filed more than 14 months ago.

No specific emails have been provided despite NARA acknowledging their existence.

'We have performed a search of our collection for Vice Presidential records related to your [June 9, 2022] request and have identified approximately 5,138 email messages, 25 electronic files and 200 pages of potentially responsive records that must be processed in order to respond to your request,' Stephannie Oriabure, director of NARA's archival operations division, wrote to the Southeastern Legal Foundation on in June 2022, the lawsuit revealed.

Earlier this month, Kentucky Republican James Comer, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded unredacted records from NARA, that similarly showed President Biden's use of a pseudonym during his vice presidency.

On that occasion, the purpose was to look into the role the former vice president played in his son's international business dealings.

Previously released emails from Hunter Biden's laptop indicated President Biden used the email address 'Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov' during his time as Vice President.

The emails also revealed correspondence between his aide and Hunter Biden over Joe Biden's daily schedule.

For at least four weeks in 2016, a worker in the Office of the Vice President, John Flynn, would send Biden his daily schedule to his private email address, Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov while copying in Hunter.

There were 10 such e-mails which were copied to Hunter between May 18 and June 15, 2016.

The Robert Peters e-mail address used a @pci.gov domain. The service had been labeled as problematic by the DNS Institute's Domain Name System security report in 2020.

One email from Flynn to being sent to Joe, a.k.a Robert Peters, from May 2016 which was also cc'd to Hunter schedules '8.45am prep for 9am phonecall with Pres Poroshenko' who was the Ukrainian president.

At the time, Hunter was being paid $83,333 a month to sit on the board of corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings Ltd.

He had started working for Burisma in 2014 and finally departed two months after his father left the office of vice president.

Just months earlier, in December 2015, Biden had threatened Poroshenko that he would withhold $1 billion in US aid unless he fired Ukraine's top prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky.

Shokin was widely accused of corruption and removed from office in March 2016.

State Department officials are said to have attempted to raise concerns with directly with Biden about Hunter's involvement with Burisma but the complaints were rebuffed.

Another forwarded email from Joe Biden using one of his alias private emails, RobinWare456@gmail.com, saw him write to both Hunter and his brother Beau, who was the Delaware attorney general, on March 26, 2012.

The forwarded e-mail was from Deputy Secretary of State (and now current Secretary of State) Antony Blinken.

The email was from the US Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft: 'Beau visited Kyev [Ukraine] on the Friday and gave a talk on corruption at the Hyatt . . . then attended reception at the residence where he met many young Ukrainian lawyers. We received many compliments on his presentation and for simply a frank discussion of a problem that still bedevils this country.'

Hunter started working for Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company, in 2014.

He earned $83,333-a-month from Burisma until two months after Biden left office.

He was referred to as 'the big guy' and described in an email from a Ukrainian executive at Burisma which suggested he'd gotten access to him through Hunter.

It raised serious questions because the executive was also being investigated by a Ukrainian prosecutor who was ousted after Joe leveraged $1billion in American aide money to get him out.

President Biden has in the past denied ever offering access to him or the White House to any of Hunter's business associates.

Biden has long claimed there was complete separation between his family's business activities and his vice presidential responsibilities but Rep. Comer said that evidence appears to suggest otherwise.

'Joe Biden has stated there was 'an absolute wall' between his family's foreign business schemes and his duties as Vice President, but evidence reveals that access was wide open for his family's influence peddling,' Comer said in a statement on August 17.

'The National Archives must provide these unredacted records to further our investigation into the Biden family's corruption,' he added.

One concerning May 2016 email referenced in Comer’s letter and previously reported by DailyMail.com shows White House staffers sent Joe’s schedule, including a call with then-Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, to Joe’s secret email ‘Robert L. Peters’.

The staffer, John Flynn, also inexplicably copied Hunter, who was working for allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm Burisma at the time, on the email.

White House staffers copied Hunter on a total of 10 emails to Joe’s alias addresses, records from his laptop show.

Joe and Hunter appeared to use the then-VP’s secret email to discuss government business in another incident in June 2014.

Hunter used his Rosemont Seneca consultancy email address to write to his father on June 23, 2014 about the employment of then-deputy White House counsel John McGrail.

‘Before you fill position pls talk to me — J. McGrail very much wants to serve as detail fr treasury,’ Hunter wrote.

‘Re Johnny call me right away Dad,’ Joe wrote back from the email robinware456@gmail.com.

McGrail was promoted to VP’s counsel the following year, then got his desired move to the Treasury as Senior Counsel in January 2017. He is currently Counselor to the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the department, according to his LinkedIn account.

Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson have been asking for unredacted records from NARA regarding Joe’s alias emails since 2021.

In their letters they cited the Presidential Records Act which requires POTUS to provide copies of all communications involving government business, whether on personal email addresses or not, to the National Archives.

Comer has now also joined the push. In his August 17 letter to NARA, he pointed out that the emails challenge Joe’s previous claim that while VP he had ‘an absolute wall between the personal and private, and the government’.

‘Evidence reveals that access was wide open for his family’s influence peddling,’ Comer said in a statement last week.

‘We already have evidence of then-Vice President Biden speaking, dining, and having coffee with his son’s foreign business associates. We also know that Hunter Biden and his associates were informed of then-Vice President Biden’s official government duties in countries where they had a financial interest.

‘The National Archives must provide these unredacted records to further our investigation into the Biden family’s corruption.’

Other emails show Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote to Joe using his alias addresses while acting as National Security Advisor to then-VP Joe.

Blinken forwarded a March 26 2012 email from Ukraine ambassador John Tefft to Joe’s ‘Robin Ware’ address, describing a speech given by Beau to Ukrainian members of parliament in Kyiv on the topic of corruption.

Sounds like Vivek Ramaswamy might have read James Burnham

Ramaswamy: The Managerial Bureaucracy In A Shadow Government Without Accountability Is Running The Country

LOL: 18-year old Democrat Vivek Ramaswamy wiser than 38-year old Republican Vivek Ramaswamy

20-Year-Old Clip Of Vivek Resurfaces: 'Why Should I Vote For One With Least Experience?' :

RAMASWAMY: Reverend, Hello. I’m Vivek and I wanna ask you, last week on the show we had Senator Kerry, and this week and the week before, we had Senator Edwards. And my question for you is, of all the Democratic candidates out there, why should I vote for the one with the least political experience?

SHARPTON: Well, [you] shouldn’t, because I have the most political experience.

Update: There's video.

Monday, August 28, 2023

Emerson College Poll post-Republican debate shows Trump ahead of Biden by 5-points with the Green Party's Cornel West on the ballot

In a hypothetical matchup between Trump and Biden, 46% would vote for Trump and 44% Biden. Ten percent are undecided. With Green Party candidate Cornel West added to the ballot test, 44% support Trump, 39% Biden, 4% West, and 13% are undecided.

More.

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Another black guy named Floyd: The left would have bailed out their guy in a heartbeat, MAGA on the other hand . . .

Co-defendant remains in jail; Cannot afford lawyer... :

It was not immediately clear why Floyd was told he could not be represented by a public defender. ... Floyd, a former U.S. Marine and mixed martial arts fighter, is accused of participating in a scheme to pressure an election worker to falsely admit to voting fraud.