Hooah: US disinvites Chicoms from Hawaii naval exercises because of South China sea militarization

From the story here:

“The United States is committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific. China’s continued militarization of disputed features in the South China Sea only serve to raise tensions and destabilize the region. As an initial response to China’s continued militarization of the South China Sea we have disinvited the PLA Navy from the 2018 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) Exercise. China’s behavior is inconsistent with the principles and purposes of the RIMPAC exercise,” Logan said.

“We have strong evidence that China has deployed anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, and electronic jammers to contested features in the Spratly Islands region of the South China Sea. China’s landing of bomber aircraft at Woody Island has also raised tensions,” he continued.

“We believe these recent deployments and the continued militarization of these features is a violation of the promise that President Xi made to the United States and the World not to militarize the Spratly Islands.”

This is so gay: Real men don't even do this for their girlfriends

Andrew McCarthy wonders why the FBI didn't give the Trump campaign a "defensive briefing" in early spring 2016

Instead, Comey waited until early January 2017 to do this, on instructions from Clapper.

Here:

There are many different ways the Obama administration could have reacted to the news that Page and Manafort had joined the Trump campaign. It could have given the campaign a defensive briefing. It could have continued interviewing Page, with whom the FBI had longstanding lines of communication. It could have interviewed Manafort. It could have conducted a formal interview with George Papadopoulos rather than approaching him with a spy who asked him loaded questions about Russia’s possession of Democratic-party emails.

Instead of doing some or all of those things, the Obama administration chose to look at the Trump campaign as a likely co-conspirator of Russia — either because Obama officials inflated the flimsy evidence, or because they thought it could be an effective political attack on the opposition party’s likely candidate.

From the “late spring” on, every report of Trump-Russia ties, no matter how unlikely and uncorroborated, was presumed to be proof of a traitorous arrangement. And every detail that could be spun into Trump-campaign awareness of Russian hacking, no matter how tenuous, was viewed in the worst possible light.

Rush is right: Comey admitted his dossier meeting with Trump was an "assignment"

Rush thinks Comey got this assignment from Clapper.

Notice that Comey admits he was acting at the behest of "all the intelligence chiefs". That would include Brennan at CIA, and presumably the heads of NSA, DIA and NGIA.

Also notice how Comey characterizes this "defensive briefing" of Trump as part of the FBI's "counterintelligence" operation. He's admitting a counterintelligence operation of a presidential campaign and transition was in existence, at the behest of Obama's government, and that the briefing was part of this.

The adversarial character of all this is hardly appreciated by your average observer. 

From the transcript, here, Meet the Press, 4/29/18:

CHUCK TODD:

When you told him the contents of the Steele Dossier, did you get the impression it was the first time he'd ever heard those allegations?

JAMES COMEY:

Yes. And I didn't give him the briefing on the whole Steele Dossier. My assignment was to brief him on a small part of it that was salacious and personal. And my sense was-- I didn't get a sense that he knew about those.

CHUCK TODD:

I want to re-ask a question that Reince Priebus asked you, and you said in your memo, why include that salacious part? If it was something that you thought was, you know, not that necessary to the investigation? Or did you think it was important that he knew?

JAMES COMEY:

We thought it was important that he knew. And I say, "We," meaning all the intelligence chiefs that put together the intelligence community assessment. We thought it was important that he know, because we knew, and we don't want to be holding that back from the new president. And also, the F.B.I.'s role is counterintelligence. And so we do a defensive briefing, whether or not something's true, just to let the person who might be the target of a leverage effort, of an effort by an adversary to gain advantage over him know that we have this information.

Chicoms admit human nature is evil, justifying imposition of tyrannical "social credit system" modeled on FICO

Apparently the model is the US FICO credit scoring system, except a low score on the Chinese version really emphasizes the socialism, meaning the State won't just stop you from getting a loan to buy a car or house, it will prohibit you from simply traveling, as a form of punishment. Socialism, you see, aims to be all-encompassing, a secular form of Puritanism.

From the propaganda source itself, globaltimes dot cn, here:

In 2014, China released an outline for building a government-led national social credit system, pledging to establish a set of laws and regulations regarding social credit, a credit reference system that covers the whole of society and a related reward and punishment system by 2020. Whether people have ridden the train without tickets, violated traffic laws, conducted heroic acts or performed exemplary acts are rated and the score plays a part in their life, determining whether he or she can buy a plane ticket, secure a loan etc.

In today's Chinese society, trustworthiness is not highly honored. That's why we see corruption, expired vaccines, commercial fraud, tax dodging and academic cheating from time to time. Take the arson case in Hangzhou last year. A nanny started a fire that killed a mother and her three children: She was in huge debt and starving for more money from her wealthy employer. It was a tragedy caused by the lack of a credit ranking system.

Brookings: Trump's record on GDP and investment is "middling"

Correctamundo.

Here.

Slate takes The Atlantic to task for not taking the 1% seriously enough

Here in "Actually, the 1 Percent Are Still The Problem".

Actually, the Reagan 1986 tax reform was the problem, but Jordan Weissmann never mentions it.

This despite his wonderful graph of the top 10% over time showing the 1% take-off after the reform. When it becomes easier for the already rich to take high incomes the ordinary way, like everyone else, because of low top marginal rates, less money ends up getting plowed back into productive purposes like it used to before 1986.

We keep believing the myth that "the rich are different than you and me", but they're not. They're as indolent, undisciplined and blinkered as any middle class family leveraged to the hilt which believes it deserves a house a little larger than it can afford, two car payments, the weekly fine dinner out and the expensive annual winter vacation.

The 1% aren't the problem. You will have them always with you, by definition. The problem is human nature, and government's failure to correct for it.

Say what you will about "Christian" belief, previously it at least curbed the 1%'s enthusiasm, with the stick of high marginal income tax rates and the carrot of low long term capital gains taxes.

The American Spectator singles out Michigan for its $16 billion in corporate welfare, but the cronyism trend is up 39% just in the top 10 states since 2015

The story is here, and is more than correct to state:

Unfortunately, crony capitalism is something both parties are willing to get behind. Part of the problem is that voters often approve of these subsidies when the phrase “bringing jobs to the state” is uttered.

We're more like China than we'd like to admit, where state-owned enterprise is the rule. We simply practice state-capitalism-lite.

The data is tracked comprehensively here, updated it appears through 2015. The last time I reported on this in 2015 the top ten crony states alone were up to $96 billion in corporate welfare handouts. Three years later the top 10's cronyism has grown to $133 billion, an increase of nearly 39%.

Free market capitalism this is not.

You ask me why I refuse to fly?

Here's why:

A jobs recovery to the trend line suggests we have a jobs gap of about 5 million in April 2018

The chart shows the trend line for the percent of the population employed in Aprils since 1948. Recovery to this trend line in April 2018 would mean about 62.3% employed instead of 60.3%, implying a jobs gap of about 5.1 million.

Miles to go before he sleeps, and promises to keep . . ..

Seventeen months since his election, Trump ranks fourth since 1948 for putting people back to work

The passionate are mislead

All the art of rhetorick, besides order and perspicuity, only moves the passions, and thereby misleads the judgment.

-- John Locke (1632-1704)

Hired for his "passion for literacy", Caledonia, Michigan high school principal uses "me" when he means "I"

The outgoing interim principal was quoted here about the new hire in 2015:

"Brady [Lake] has created a reputation for being a strong instruction [sic] leader that challenges students and staff alike to reach their full potential. He has a passion for literacy and has worked very hard to implement new instructional [!] models that benefit students," Kingsbury said.

The Sun and News for Saturday, May 19, 2018, however, quotes Lake recently thusly:

"I do not want the board, or anybody, to think that me as an administrator am not 100 percent behind Dr. Martin."

They like to say that they pursue excellence in the school district, it's just that they haven't quite caught up to it yet. 

China intends to go to war to defend its claim to the South China Sea, ready to base its version of B-52 in Spratly Islands

It's like the Japs in WWII all over again.

China air force releases statement, reported here:

“A division of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) recently organised multiple bombers such as the H-6K to conduct take-off and landing training on islands and reefs in the South China Sea in order to improve our ability to ‘reach all territory, conduct strikes at any time and strike in all directions’,” it said in the statement issued on Friday.

It said the pilot of the H-6K bomber conducted assault training on a designated sea target and then carried out take-offs and landings at an airport in the area, describing the exercise as preparation for “the West Pacific and the battle for the South China Sea”.

Mass projection syndrome: The Swamp is violating all the norms it claims it's defending

Ben Weingarten, here:

The political establishment that wishes to bring down the Trump presidency daily shows itself willing to eviscerate all norms, from corrupting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court and violating Department of Justice procedures, to perhaps even planting FBI informants inside the Trump campaign. It has exhibited a willingness to undermine national security in the form of gross intelligence and law enforcement politicization, game-playing with redactions, and endless leaks. The establishment has taken such actions under the guise of defending “norms” and protecting “national security.”

James claptrap Clapper is glad the FBI abused its power

Here.

No wonder, since he's abused power himself by lying to Congress.

Hooah: Michigan Republicans tell MSU to use $1 billion rainy day fund to pay off sex abuse claims

Reported here:

State Sen. Rick Jones of Grand Ledge and State Rep. Tom Leonard of DeWitt both said any proposals to ask the Michigan Legislature for funding will be dead on arrival. ... Michigan State has a $1 billion unrestricted that could be tapped for the settlement, along with a $59 million insurance fund. "They have a larger rainy day fund than the state does and it's been storming over there for well over a year and they need to pay for this," Leonard said.

Just a reminder of what a real jobs recovery would look like: Multiple months and years with job increases at or above 313,000 a month

Time article joins The Atlantic attacking the new aristocracy's moats, styling it the Baby Boom even though the author doesn't mention it even once

Here in "How Baby Boomers Broke America", which never once mentions the role of the Baby Boom and is really about how lawyers did it.

Steven Brill should sue.

The only human thing which guarantees liberty, equality and fraternity