NATO chief concedes Trump has a point lol

 Stoltenberg knows damn well he might have to deal with Trump again if he's elected in November, and isn't about to alienate him now. After the election and Trump loses? Yeah, maybe then, but not now.

Reported here:

NATO chief concedes 'valid point' of spending criticism as allies up defense budgets

---

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg

Susana Vera | Reuters

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg conceded to criticism that some members have been underfinancing the coalition’s defense budget, saying he expects a record 18 allies to meet their military spending goal this year.

His comments come on the footsteps of the controversial remarks of former U.S. president and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, who said he would not protect NATO nations from Russian hostilities if they fall behind on their membership payments.

Trump’s statements kindled widespread ire from the international community, including from fellow Republicans, drawing Stoltenberg to earlier this week accuse that such a suggestion “undermines all our security.”

“The criticism that you hear is not primarily about NATO, it’s about NATO allies not spending enough on NATO. And that’s a valid point,” Stoltenberg said during a press briefing on Wednesday, in response to a question on whether Trump’s comments aligned with the broader views of Republican officials that the NATO chief has engaged.

“It’s a point and a message that has been conveyed by successive U.S. administrations that European allies and Canada have to spend more, because we haven’t seen fair burden sharing in the alliance,” Stoltenberg added. “The good news is that this is exactly what NATO allies are now doing.”

Bob Nardelli gets it

 "The general population will not be duped by this aversion [sic; read diversion] to try and blame inflation on corporate America. It starts at the raw materials, it starts at transportation, it starts at energy," former Home Depot and Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli said on "Cavuto: Coast to Coast" Monday. "A whole host of things that are driving this up, wage increases." ...

"This is all about, I think, trying to buy votes. This is all about an administration that is out of control," he continued. "We have a strong bias towards spending versus having a conservative policy or a sustainable future."

More.

I'm so old I remember when politicians ran on less government, now it's less corrupt government lol

 

Less Corrupt, More Accountable Government Wanted

America's New Majority Project

 

This is so silly. Politicians buy voters with spending legislation. Right now they want to give families and businesses $70 billion in new tax credits, and to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan $95 billion in new defense aid.

You don't get $34 trillion in debt by accident.

We have the government we deserve. It's the voters who are corrupt.

Oooh, but that's a surer third rail statement than "I want to cut Social Security" ever was. You cannot insult the voters and get re-elected.

That's what pulpits used to be for, but no one goes there anymore. Somebody has to say it.

Smaller government means less money sloshing around to help your friends and hurt your enemies, which is what this is really all about.

Repent, and believe the gospel. The alternative is oblivion for the U. S. A.

But of course it's not too late for Joe Biden to drop out

 

It's Too Late for Democrats To Switch Out Biden

Jonathan Martin, Politico

 

LBJ announced he wouldn't run on Mar 31, 1968. Humphrey announced he would on Apr 27.

 

Core cpi inflation seasonally adjusted pops 0.4% in Jan 2024: month over month measure trending ever higher since Jun 2023, seven months

 

But you said inflation was coming down!

 

Molly, Molly, Molly, you watch too many movies

 

Robert Hur's Pro-Trump Hit Job Is a Trap

Molly Jong-Fast, MSNBC  

Molly thinks it's completely normal for Anthony Fauci not to recall 174 times in a deposition, and thinks Merrick Garland did all this to Joe Biden on purpose! He must be a closet Republican in league with Robert Hur! He's as bad as that Republican James Comey who sabotaged Hillary!

They don't call it PMSNBC for nothing.

Shame on Attorney General Merrick Garland for letting this partisan hit job be released. ... Garland didn’t need to appoint a Republican special counsel. Garland didn’t need to let Hur release this report filled with talking points for the right-wing media echo chamber. Hur may be a partisan, but Garland let this happen.

 

 

 

Why should there be any politics involved when their statue says "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" ?

It really is a mystery.

Apparently New York doesn't believe it anymore. 

Send the statue back where it came from then.

 

New York Is the Epicenter of Immigration Politics

Nia Prater, New York Magazine

The incidents were related in that the two suspects allegedly used AR-style weapons

It is unknown whether seasonal affective disorder may have played a role in these cases, coming as they did in, or shortly after, the winter season.

NBC News, March 27, 2023:

“There’s some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake told Lester Holt of NBC News. ... “She targeted random students in the school ... whoever she came in contact with, she fired rounds,” Drake said, referring to the shooter. ... He said Hale was transgender. 

CNN, February 12, 2024:

The woman, identified in a search warrant as Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36, entered the church shortly before 2 p.m. wearing a trench coat and backpack and opened fire, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said in a Sunday afternoon news conference. ... Attorney William Capasso said he represented Moreno in 2021-2022 and told CNN that Genesse Ivone Moreno went by the name Jeffrey Moreno Carranza at the time.

No country for old leaders

 

Trump is the accidental anarchist to Biden the intentional one

 Trump treating NATO like a plaything in South Carolina:

'No, I would not protect you [NATO], in fact I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want, you gotta pay! You gotta pay your bills.'

Also in South Carolina, Trump oblivious to Nikki Haley's husband's military deployment:

“Then she comes over to see me at Mar-a-Lago. ‘Sir, I will never run against you.’ She brought her husband. Where’s your husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone! He knew. He knew,” Trump said.

In Michigan Ron DeSantis is still on the ballot Tuesday February 27th:

Anti-semitic defender of Hamas Dutch PM Dries Van Agt 93 and wife die in double euthanasia

Dries Van Agt, who served as prime minister of the Netherlands from 1977 to 1982, and whom Dutch watchdog groups condemned in recent years as an antisemite, chose to die last Monday with the assistance of a doctor, along with his wife. He was 93. ... In 2008, the former prime minister spoke at a rally featuring a televised address by a Hamas official. As a justice minister in the 1970s, Van Agt cited his "Aryan" roots in explaining his plan to pardon four Nazi war criminals due to health reasons.

More.

Hamas intelligence hub found beneath United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza City, 12 of whose employees are linked to Oct 7 massacre of Jews

 The Wall Street Journal reports:

Israel’s discovery of the Hamas operations below Unrwa offices is likely to put further pressure on the agency, which is facing international scrutiny after Israeli allegations that at least 12 of its employees had links to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which authorities say killed 1,200 people.

Israeli military officials assert that people working at Unrwa would have been aware of the tunnel complex, either from activities during its construction or by what they said would have been a jump in electricity usage when the complex started operating. ...

 

The organization’s main donors, including the U.S., have frozen funding pending the outcome of an investigation into the allegations. ...

 

Israeli military officials say they have known about the complex under Unrwa’s headquarters for a few years but say they decided they couldn’t use airstrikes to target it because of the U.N. presence above. ... 

 

Israeli military intelligence has estimated in recent weeks that roughly 10% of Unrwa’s 12,000 or so employees in Gaza, most of whom are Palestinian, have ties to the militant group, including nearly a quarter of its male employees—a percentage that Israel says is higher than the roughly 15% of Gaza males who are linked to the group, through either its military or political wings. ...

 

The Israeli military in a statement late Saturday said it had found large quantities of weapons, including rifles, ammunition, grenades and explosives, in rooms of the Unrwa buildings above the tunnel complex.

Joe Biden just had to come back to that podium

 

President Biden's disastrous Thursday Feb 8, 2024 news conference the White House hopes you forget, or never see

 In my opinion the president actually acquitted himself quite well for an old man in a difficult job, however much he avoided the controversial conclusions of the special counsel as to what he did with the classified materials, who saw them, and about his mental state. If only he had not returned to the podium after ending his remarks he wouldn't be in the same mess he's in, immediately proving the special counsel correct when he mixed up Mexico and Egypt.

For a change, the press acted like the jackals they always were with Trump. Its Hamas wing thinks this is their opportunity to oust the befuddled old man who stands between them and their enemy Israel.

The White House has de-listed the video.

Sad to learn Ron Radosh joined the enemy

In a cogent essay, a leading conservative scholar and former high ranking State Department official, Peter Berkowitz, examines why about half the country believes elite legal progressives “have weaponized federal law enforcement.” He notes that “four criminal indictments [were] brought against Trump−all between April 4 and August 10, 2023, more than two years after he left office and just as the 2024 campaign ramped up….” In other words (as the Marxists used to say) it was no coincidence. 

Berkowitz characterizes as “reckless” the Colorado Supreme Court decision to remove Trump from the ballot on the grounds that he violated the 14^th Amendment’s prohibition on those who “engaged in insurrection.” He points out that Trump has never been charged (let alone convicted) of insurrection. 

Berkowitz excoriates neoconservative Robert Kagan’s argument that “the threat Trump poses to freedom and democracy in America justifies abusing the law to banish him from the political arena.” In this sense, Berkowitz notes, ”anti-Trumpers thereby facilitate the unraveling of the rule of law that they seek to avert.” 

Gabe Schoenfeld and fellow apostate Ron Radosh devote an entire essay to rebutting Berkowitz’s argument. They defend the efforts by the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine Secretary of State to disqualify Donald Trump from running for president as “the working out of the rule of law.” Further, Schoenfeld and Radosh laud Kagan’s endorsement (he “deserves high praise”) of “taking every conceivable measure” to stop Trump.

What better language than “every conceivable measure” to describe the logic of war?

More.

The far worse public perceptions of Biden than of Trump have been confirmed by the special counsel report released yesterday and the disastrous Joe Biden news conference last night

 

The Democrats’ continuous calls during his four years in office to use the 25^th Amendment to remove President Trump from office on the presumed grounds of mental instability took a disastrous turn this week, as the effort self-combusted in a Hindenburg-sized blowback.

More.

A number of people stated emphatically in the last year that Biden would drop out, maybe after today he will have to

Dems Panic Over Hur's Report on Biden’s Mental Fitness

Peter Nicholas, NBC News

  

 

DC civil jury of six finds Mark Steyn defamed Michael Mann, who plans to go after National Review next

 Jury awards climate scientist Michael Mann $1 million in defamation lawsuit

During the trial, Steyn represented himself, but said through his manager Melissa Howes that he would be appealing the $1 million award in punitive damages, saying it would have to face “due process scrutiny.”

Biden holds press conference to show his brain really is applesauce

 

Biden's Unannounced Press Conference an Absolute Disaster

Matt Margolis, PJM

They're not going to prosecute Joe Biden for willfully retaining and disclosing classified materials, but they are going to let grandpa Applesauce Brains stay president lol

 From special counsel Robert Hur's report here:

In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden's memory was worse. He did not
remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview
when his term ended ("if it was 2013 - when did I stop being Vice President?"), and
forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began ("in 2009, am I
still Vice President?"). He did not remember, even within several years, when his
son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan
debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said
he "had a real difference" of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact,
Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Eiden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo
to President Obama.

Our country is a giant prank played on the American people.

 Biden ‘willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency,’ special counsel says

But the special counsel, Robert Hur, said he was declining to prosecute Biden over his handling of classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Biden’s entries about national security.

This is James Comey not prosecuting Hillary all over again. 

But they will prosecute Trump in his classified documents case, upcoming. 

This double standard will be all the reason people want and need to vote for Donald Trump again.

Ann Coulter knows a prick when she sees one

 

Trump embraces Bud Light, leaves Ann Coulter with no legs to stand on

 

Trend for annual heating degree days in Grand Rapids, Michigan 1904-2023

The mean for annual heating degree days has dropped about 63 HDD from 1904-1963 at 6726 shown, to 6663 for 1963-2023, or 0.94%. 

In the last 23 years, just 5 have been at or above the old mean shown, while 18 have been below. In the previous 23 years the pattern was much more even: 13 above the old mean shown and 10 below.

This is clearly a picture of recent moderating winters, but people forget that this comes on the heels of a prolonged period of much more severe winter cold extending 55 years from 1943-1997. During that period there were 40 winters above the old mean shown, and just 15 below it.

That cold period itself followed upon a previous period of previously well known warming where about 58% of the seasons in the record saw heating demand well below the old mean.

The Dust Bowl era. Maybe you've heard of it.

Higher mean heating degree day totals in the second half of the 20th century indicate its colder conditions compared with the eras book-ending it:

1904-1943: 6685 (40yrs)

1943-1997: 6883 (55yrs)

1997-2023: 6351 (27yrs).

Trend for annual mean average temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan 1898-2023

The mean has risen 0.1 degrees F 1898-1963 at 48.2 shown, to 48.3 1963-2023, which is 0.2%.

The uptrend traverses about 0.9 degrees F over 125 years.

Planet's on FIRE lol.

Could easily be just heat island effect. The mean for average temperature is definitely warmer since 1997:

1997-2023: 49.4 (27yrs)

1943-1997: 47.5 (55yrs)

1898-1943: 48.4 (46yrs).

The relatively colder second half of the 20th century remains the noteworthy anchor of this graph's center.

Iran's spy ship BEHSHAD still in Chicom naval base in Djibouti can't orchestrate Houthi attacks in the seas near Yemen

 

#FUDC

 

Victor Davis Hanson finally figures out what Sam Francis knew in the 1990s

 

Trend for annual precipitation in Grand Rapids, Michigan 1903-2023

 Wetter!

The long term trend for the Oceanic Nino Index is thought to be predictive of this wetter outcome in the Upper Midwest. The index trend is cooler from about +1 degree F anomaly to -1 degree F anomaly since 1951.

Mean annual precipitation at KGRR has risen from 31.88 inches 1903-1951 to 36.81 inches 1951-2023.

 

 

Trend for Oceanic Nino Index 1951-2023

 Long term trend is definitely cooler: La Niña.

Values for the first five measuring periods of the 2024 season are warmer, totaling +7.7: El Niño.

 

RIP Toby Keith 1961-2024

 

Mayor of Chicago deserves a medal lol

If the job gets any harder watch out fam! He may trade you in for a different color.

 

Storms knock out power in California Sunday affecting more than a million, half a million still in the dark

 Story.

 

This is your periodic reminder that the net worth of U.S. households is $151 trillion but there's only $2.3 trillion fiat currency in circulation anyway

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TNWBSHNO

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CURRCIR 

Meanwhile all the gold and silver in the world hardly close the gap: 

 

 

Since the US Airforce started bombing targets on Friday, Iran's recon vessel which was relaying info to the Houthis high-tailed it to the Chicom naval base in Djibouti to hide out

 

The former president of ABC News James Goldston was the Joseph Goebbels of January 6th The Movie

About 6% of the country at best tuned in for the Jan 6th theatrical production, compared with 71% for the Watergate hearings.

 

You can't put bitcoin in your pocket like gold and silver, and gold doesn't require 150 terawatt-hours of electricity annually for its existence

Crock of shit this bitcoin is. Same for anything digital.

But crypto has a dirty little secret that is very relevant to the real world: it uses a lot of energy. How much energy? Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, currently consumes an estimated 150 terawatt-hours of electricity annually — more than the entire country of Argentina, population 45 million. Producing that energy emits some 65 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually — comparable to the emissions of Greece — making crypto a significant contributor to global air pollution and climate change.     

More.

 

Drudge promotes Kamala Harris because . . .

 . . . her unfavorables are sky high and somebody better do something quick, might as well be me, lol. Timed for the bigger Sunday audience:

PAPER: How Kamala Harris found her groove...

43% of registered voters in the Bloomberg/Morning Consult swing state poll have a VERY UNFAVORABLE view of her.

43% also have NO CONFIDENCE WHATSOEVER that she could fill Joe Biden's shoes.

Her numbers are worst with anyone aged 45+, with total negatives in the vicinity of 60%.

She's a huge drag on the ticket, which is why they keep her on a tight leash.

D.C. anarcho-tyranny proves fatal to ex-Trump U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission official Mike Gill

 

UPDATE: Ex-Trump official shot in D.C. carjacking spree dies..

In a statement, Washington's Metropolitan Police Department said the violence began Monday afternoon when an unidentified person got into a car and shot a male driver before running away. Gill's family said he was the man who was shot. 

Police said the ordeal, which involved a Jeep Grand Cherokee, occurred in about three minutes. The attacker later tried and failed to steal a Mercedes-Benz, according to police. ...

The attacker, identified as 28-year-old Artell Cunningham, was fatally shot by police Tuesday in New Carrollton, Maryland, Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown said in a statement.

The country went from one illegal immigration extremist to another overnight

 

The Declaration of Independence's Anarcho-Tyranny of King George III holds up pretty well, requires but little updating for today

 He Joe Biden has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Illegal Alien Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

 

Speaker Mike Johnson: Joe Biden, Kaos Agent

 Speaker Johnson Slams Biden On Border In First Floor Speech: "He's Inviting Chaos And Disorder"

Is four days long enough since Iranians killed American soldiers for them to escape back to Tehran or nah?

 SHOWDOWN: Pentagon plans for strikes on Iranian personnel and facilities approved...

Weather will be a major factor in the timing of the strikes, the U.S. officials told CBS News, as the U.S. has the capability to carry out strikes in bad weather but prefers to have better visibility of selected targets as a safeguard against inadvertently hitting civilians who might stray into the area at the last moment. ... [SECDEF] Austin told reporters the U.S. was trying to "hold the right people accountable" without escalating the conflict in the region.

Another Fed interest rate pause and dashed hopes for a March rate cut, so the greedy money men throw a little temper tantrum

 Core inflation has a long way to go before it's like it was in the Trump era.

Meanwhile the little people continue to pay, and pay, and pay.

Obama affirmative action hire admits she's not up to the task of serving on the Supreme Court

 SOTOMAYOR OVERWHELMED...

 “Cases are bigger. They’re more demanding. The number of amici are greater, and you know that our emergency calendar is so much more active. I’m tired,” she said, per Bloomberg Law. 

In Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll in Pennsylvania, it's still the economy, stupid: More important to women voters than abortion by 29 points, the cost of everyday goods being the most important economic factor

 The women shop. The women remember.

The massive poll results for seven swing states is available here.

The women think Trump is the one to fix it, by 11 points.

 

 

Trump 2024: What doesn't kill him only makes him stronger

 

Now why would they do that lol?

 

MAGA GOES TO WAR ON SWIFT    

Norway, Europe's most anti-semitic country, is also its most fascist economy, centered in dem ebil fossil fuels lol

 Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, was established in the 1990s to invest the surplus revenues of the country’s oil and gas sector. To date, the fund has put money in more than 8,500 companies in 70 countries around the world.

More.

Real Clear Politics becomes The Grauniad lol, The Grauniad is convinced that killing your baby is the winning issue of our time

 

Abortion Is Biden's Strongest Issue. He Should Act Like It

Moira Donegan, Guaridan

The left is upset that Joe Biden isn't more enthusiastic about it, dammit:

 

Biden himself is not a particularly convincing abortion rights advocate. He is, at best, unenthused about the issue. Biden speaks of abortion in stilted, euphemistic terms, talking about “restoring the protections of Roe” or “a woman’s right to choose” more than “abortion”. (He did not use the word in public remarks until he was forced to after facing pressure from activists.) On the stump, he frequently ad libs, straying from prepared remarks to make his dislike of abortion clear. In one set of remarks last year, he unhelpfully offered that he was “not big on abortion”. In remarks this past week, he characterized his own position using anti-choice buzzwords, saying he was opposed to “abortion on demand”. ... Biden is talking like he believes that abortion remains a delicate issue, as if it is something he thinks he will lose by being too strong on.

The slide into the surveillance state picks up the pace as TSA to expand facial recognition scanners from 30 to over 400 US airports

 TSA Expands Facial Recognition Scanners to 400+ Airports...

 “The CAT-2 units are currently deployed at nearly 30 airports nationwide, and will expand to more than 400 federalized airports over the coming years,” the TSA official said, noting that it is currently optional for travelers to participate in facial recognition screenings. Those that decline to do so can notify a TSA agent and go through the standard ID verification process instead. ... During a discussion at the South by Southwest festival in March 2023, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said “eventually we will get to the point where we will require biometrics across the board because it is much more effective and much more efficient.”

Currently optional, eventually required.

Dingbat Pelosi cries Russia! Russia! Russia! when it's Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran

 

Pelosi: FBI Should Investigate Progressive Groups Calling For Gaza Ceasefire, Possible Financial Ties To Russia

Left Wing Turns Airports Into Homeless & Illegal Alien Dumping Grounds

Right Wing Turns Planes & Airports Into DEI Battlegrounds

David Ingram, NBC News

 

Meanwhile:

 

Biden Offers Airports in Atlantic City, on Canadian Border to House NYC Migrants

 

South Jersey leaders oppose proposal to shelter migrants at Atlantic City International Airport

 

Chicago's O'Hare Airport used as a migrant shelter as crisis overwhelms city: 'Like a scene from Mad Max'

 

Migrant families set up camp in Boston airport as Bay State overwhelmed by arrivals: ‘We need DC to act’

 

Hundreds of migrants living in San Diego airport as California battles 'unimaginable' homeless crisis

Three US soldiers killed, 25 injured in drone attack in northeast Jordan

 

Just absolute shit journalism from The Wall Street Journal, by Egyptian American Nancy A. Youssef: "the Oct. 7 start of Israel's war in Gaza"

Administration officials have asked Beijing to convey messages to Iran about avoiding a broader conflict in the region, since the Oct. 7 start of Israel’s war in Gaza.

More.

What happened on October 7th, Nancy?

Israel did not start this war.

Biden administration half-measures fail to prevent another ship damaged by Houthi ballistic missile fire in the Gulf of Aden

Chemical tanker M/V Marlin Luanda called a Mayday after the Houthi ballistic missile attack set it on fire. Coalition forces including France and India responded and the fire was eventually extinguished, but not before the crew temporarily had to abandon the ship.