The 1999 price of gasoline in H1 averaged $1.038. Adjusted for inflation that would be $1.53 in 2017.
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Monday, July 16, 2018
Strzok testimony confirms partisan channel for accusations against Trump was through Ohr at DOJ, whose Russia expert wife worked for Fusion GPS, Democrat bankrollers of the dossier
From the story here:
The first-time disclosure is significant because it confirms an unusual and continuing channel for collusion accusations that started outside the government with anti-Trump people and reached Mr. Ohr at the Justice Department and then the FBI. Around that time, Mr. Ohr was communicating with dossier writer Christopher Steele. Mr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, a Russia researcher, worked for Mr. Steele’s paymaster, investigative firm Fusion GPS, which was trying to damage Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Mr. Ohr met with Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson after the November 2016 election. ...
Republicans now know that the dossier trail started with Mr. Steele, Mr. Ohr, Fusion GPS and Mr. Simpson and a journalist. Mr. Corn has denied he worked with the FBI. ...
“Bruce Ohr, the fourth-ranking official at the Department of Justice, his wife works for Fusion GPS in the summer. He gets information and passed it to the FBI. That becomes the basis to spy on the Trump campaign, plain and simple,” Mr. Jordan said. “This is the first time to my knowledge the FBI has admitted that . . .."
Sunday, July 15, 2018
Hacked DNC servers, never examined by FBI, have now conveniently disappeared, so Mueller's charges against the ham sandwiches are doubly meaningless
From the story here:
The one thing [the indicted Russians] are alleged to have done that is serious is hacking the servers of the Democratic National Committee. That’s a serious charge. It’s also completely unprovable, which makes it a brilliant political move by Mueller.
It’s a serious charge. But if any of the people charged with doing it were to show up in court, which is highly unlikely, their lawyers would demand to see the DNC’s servers so they could have their experts examine them. Mueller says Russians hacked them, but the servers have magically disappeared. So how can anyone be certain who hacked them, or if they were even really hacked at all?
Since none of those charged are going to show up in court, there will be no challenge to the allegation, no demand to see the evidence, and no legal embarrassment for Mueller when the charges are dropped because the key piece of evidence not only can’t be provided to the defense, it wasn’t even examined by the prosecutor. He appears to have simply taken the word of the Democratic Party about what happened.
Saturday, July 14, 2018
Babe, 1995's piggy prophet to the alt-right
Baa-ram-ewe!
Baa-ram-ewe!
To your breed,
your fleece,
your clan be true!
Sheep be true!
Baa-ram-ewe!
Friday, July 13, 2018
Mark Fuhrman's use of the n-word damaged the prosecution's credibility in the OJ case, but Democrats expect us to believe in Strzok's credibility even though he hates Trump's guts
A point made by a black caller to The Chris Plante Show in the last half hour.
Ann Coulter: The point isn't being made enough that the Russia investigation began because of Peter Strzok
Here.
It was the hubris and political animus of a single high-level FBI functionary, Peter Strzok, which sought to stymie the political will of the American people who elected Trump by presenting a phony dossier as credible evidence to a FISA court in order to surveil a presidential candidate.
The whole thing is reminiscent of nothing so much as the Lois Lerner affair, when one person in The Swamp used her position to curtail the free-speech rights of The Tea Party during the 2010 revolt against Obamacare and government bailouts of all and sundry except the taxpayers.
For 80% of workers, inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings are down 0.22% from a year ago in June 2018
If it were a real jobs boom, we'd see rising real earnings pressure. We don't. The measure has been comparatively flat for two and a half years.
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Political reality in Michigan summer 2018
The left is still here, waiting to be roused.
Barack Obama 2008: 2,872,579
Barack Obama 2012: 2,564,569
Donald Trump 2016: 2,279,543
Hillary Clinton 2016: 2,268,839
While Hillary's deficit to Trump was just 10,704 votes, to Obama it was between 295,730 and 603,740 votes.
Somebody here in Michigan really disliked Hillary.
Who could it be?
Bernie Sanders 2016 Democrat primary: 598,943
Hillary Clinton 2016 Democrat primary: 581,775
Donald Trump 2016 Republican primary: 483,753
all other Republicans 2016 primary: 842,836
Trump admitted in December 2016 in remarks in Grand Rapids that "a bunch of people didn't show up" in November, which is the real reason he won here. Obviously a mix of Bernie supporters/black people couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hillary in the general.
But they didn't just go away.
But they didn't just go away.
Trump approval in Michigan in June 2018 is at 44%, disapproval at 52%. He was at 48/40 in January 2017. That growth of disapproval combined with erosion of approval looks problematic for Michigan Republicans in November.
Michigan's employment level, though much improved, still hasn't recovered to pre-Great Recession levels, and is flat to slightly declining in early 2018. GDP on the other hand is better than the pre-Great Recession period, but is flat in the mid-threes. These things argue for continued Republican governance, but cheerleaders for a Trump boom will encounter a disconnect with the actual experience of people. They are advised to cool it.
Michigan's employment level, though much improved, still hasn't recovered to pre-Great Recession levels, and is flat to slightly declining in early 2018. GDP on the other hand is better than the pre-Great Recession period, but is flat in the mid-threes. These things argue for continued Republican governance, but cheerleaders for a Trump boom will encounter a disconnect with the actual experience of people. They are advised to cool it.
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Looks like NeverTrumpers went fishing with multiple dossiers at the FBI until NeverTrumper Peter Strzok bit
Hey, we got a live one here!
John Solomon reports in "Did FBI get bamboozled by multiple versions of Trump dossier?":
Now, memos the FBI is turning over to Congress show the bureau possessed at least three versions of the dossier and its mostly unverified allegations of collusion.
Each arrived from a different messenger: McCain, Mother Jones reporter David Corn, Fusion GPS founder (and Steele boss) Glenn Simpson. ...
[T]he generally same information kept walking through the FBI’s door for months — recycled each time by a new character with ties to Hillary Clinton or hatred for Trump — until someone decided they had to act.
That someone was Strzok, whose own anti-Trump bias was laid bare by his personal text messages.
Child separations are a feature, not a bug: Illegals are abandoning their children to the US so they get green cards and become anchors
From the story here quoting Matthew Albence of ICE:
"I will say that for the vast majority of the individuals [who leave their children]… it is because they completed the smuggling act. Their goal when they paid their smuggler, the criminal organizations, these cartels, $5,000 or $6,000 to smuggle themselves into the country, their goal was to get their child here. They’ve accomplished that goal. So if they return on their own [to their home country], they are willing to do so and leave the child here because that was the intended goal of their illegal entry in the first place." ...
DHS officials also cannot force parents who are released from detention in the United States to pick up their claimed children from the shelters operated by the Department of Health and Human Services, said Albence. “If individuals choose not to do that, there is nothing we can do to force them to claim their child,” he said during a telephone interview arranged by DHS.
Foreign children and youths who are left in the United States by their parents are allowed to file for green cards on the grounds that their parents abandoned them. The migrant children are also eligible for various welfare and aid programs, and are allowed to attend taxpayer-funded schools and universities. Once adopted by the United States, then legalized and naturalized, the new Americans will be allowed to bring in their foreign parents and siblings via unreformed chain-migration laws.
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Laura Ingraham lies, says the voters knew Kavanaugh was on Trump's list when they elected him
Just now on the radio show.
Kavanaugh was added to the list in late 2017, according to rumor at the behest of Justice Kennedy himself, who had been angling to retire:
Two others — Brett Kavanaugh, another former Kennedy clerk now on the powerful D.C. Circuit, and Amy Coney Barrett, a University of Notre Dame law professor nominated by Trump last year to the Chicago-based 7th Circuit — were added to the list last November.
Rick "Tin Ear" Santorum: Trump's base will be "turned off" by Brett Kavanaugh
Quoted here.
No one in the base who watched Kavanaugh's remarks was turned off in the least.
In fact, Kavanaugh impressed as a person with a common, ordinary touch, who is deeply committed to his family and to the law. And he endeared himself to his listeners because the emotion welling-up underneath his remarks went far to prove his sincerity.
Methinks Santorum, exasperated that he didn't get more support from Catholics in 2012, is a little jealous of his fellow Catholic, whose credentials and experience already stand out from those currently serving on the Supreme Court, not to mention from Santorum's.
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