Rick Gates testimony the complete opposite of MSNBC buffoon Chris Hayes: Manafort working to ally Ukraine with EU not with Kremlin

From the story here:

Gates said that their shell companies in Cyprus had transferred money between themselves in payments disguised as loans.

Manafort crafted a policy for Yanukovych aimed at bringing Ukraine into the European Union called “Engage Ukraine”.

Manafort recruited top former European politicians to help out with that effort.

Manafort’s income fell precipitously after Yanukovych stepped down in 2014.

Manafort then had trouble paying his bills.

Manafort then worked briefly advising Ukraine’s current president, Petro Poroshenko. ...

“Engage Ukraine became the strategy for helping Ukraine enter the European Union,” he told prosecutors Tuesday.

The meaning of "high" in "high crimes and misdemeanors" refers not to the nature of the offenses, but to their sphere

Gary L. McDowell, "High Crimes and Misdemeanors": Recovering the Intentions of the Founders (1999) here:

[I]t was essential to their way of thinking to make clear that impeachment was a political process dealing with political wrongdoing and not a part of the criminal justice process. Thus, they made clear that punishment for impeachment could not "extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States." But they emphasized that impeachment was not a bar to prosecuting criminal acts that the person impeached may have committed by noting that "the Party convicted [of impeachment] shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law." Thus, although an indictable crime may be deemed an impeachable offense, impeachable offenses are not simply limited to indictable crimes. ...

In all of the English cases the political nature of the offenses charged in impeachments was revealed by the use of the word "high" to modify both "crimes" and "misdemeanors." The use of "high" in "high crimes and misdemeanors" did not refer to the substantive nature of the offense, that it was a particularly serious offense, but that it was a "crime or misdemeanor" carried out against the commonwealth itself. This use of "high" to distinguish crimes and misdemeanors against the society as a whole derived from its use in distinguishing "high" treason from "petit" treason. Alexander Hamilton summarized this understanding of "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" as adopted by the Federal Convention in his explanation of the impeachment process created by the Constitution. The objects of impeachment, he noted, "are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself."

Nearly 1 million Americans, many of whom are rich urban elites, received over $13 billion in farm subsidies in 2017

From the story here about the findings of the organization headed by Tom Coburn:

'Today, our organization, American Transparency, released its OpenTheBooks oversight report, “Harvesting U.S. Farm Subsidies.”  The report catalogues $13.2 billion in these subsidies flowing to nearly 958,000 recipients in fiscal year 2017. Using our interactive mapping platform at OpenTheBooks.com, taxpayers can search all recipients receiving $100,000 or more in FY2017 farm subsidies by ZIP Code.'  

FBI now admits they improperly continued to solicit and receive info from Steele through Bruce Ohr

As reported here by John Solomon:

Ohr’s own notes, emails and text messages show he communicated extensively with Steele and with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. Those documents have been turned over in recent weeks to investigative bodies in Congress and the DOJ, but not reviewed outside the investigative ranks until now.

They show Ohr had contact with Steele in the days just before the FBI opened its Trump-Russia probe in summer 2016, and then engaged Steele as a “confidential human source” (CHS) assisting in that probe.

They also confirm that Ohr later became a critical conduit of continuing information from Steele after the FBI ended the Brit's role as an informant. ...

Steele's FBI relationship had been terminated about three months earlier. The bureau concluded on Nov. 1, 2016, that he leaked information to the news media and was “not suitable for use” as a confidential source, memos show.

The FBI specifically instructed Steele that he could no longer “operate to obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI,” those memos show.

Yet, Steele asked Ohr in the Jan. 31 text exchange if he could continue to help feed information to the FBI: “Just want to check you are OK, still in the situ and able to help locally as discussed, along with your Bureau colleagues.” ...

FBI officials now admit they continued to receive information from Steele through Ohr, identifying more than a half-dozen times its agents interviewed Ohr in late 2016 and 2017, to learn what Steele was saying.

That continued reliance on Steele after his termination is certain to raise interest in Congress about whether the FBI broke its own rules.

But the memos also raise questions about Ohr’s and the Justice Department’s roles in the origins of building a counterintelligence case against the Republican presidential nominee, based heavily on opposition research funded by his rival's campaign, the DNC, and the DNC’s main law firm, Perkins Coie.

Despite personal support from Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, lefty candidate Welder in Kansas defeated

Trump beat Hillary in Ohio's 12th District 53% to 42% in 2016, Republicans barely held on to it yesterday

Last October yesterday's result was hardly thinkable:

Map makes Republicans strong favorites to retain Pat Tiberi's 12th Ohio congressional district

Total nonfarm employment has come a long way in Ohio, especially overperforming quite recently in vaulting well past the 5.6 million mark.

You'd think the voters had been more grateful yesterday, but like Hillary energizing Trump supporters by calling them deplorables, Republican Troy Balderson managed to get out the Democrat vote for his opponent by insulting part of his own district, in Franklin County.

All politics is local.

Liz Peek's talk radio echo chamber: Trump's already solved the jobs crisis

This morning on the Steve Gruber show.

This is the sort of hubris which precedes debacles, especially when the hubris isn't justified by the facts.

The difference between an employment population ratio at 60.5% today vs. 63% pre-Great Recession is in excess of 6 million jobs, or 120,000 votes in each and every one of the fifty states in the union. Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by fewer than 80,000 votes total. Failure to expand employment decisively beyond current levels is courting disaster.

Hardly a time for gloating.

Egyptian American Abdul El-Sayed came within 3 points of beating Gretchen Whitmer in Kent County MI in the Democrat primary for governor

Whitmer overall captured the nomination for governor among Democrats in Michigan with nearly 52% of the vote, but Democrats in the county around Grand Rapids, Michigan, are clearly very divided. El-Sayed crushed Whitmer in the city itself, 49% to 36%, and beat her also in the city of Wyoming.

El-Sayed is an accomplished individual, who however has the support of very far left people like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Linda Sarsour, and of the far left The Nation magazine.

Public Enemy #1 of democracy is Connecticut's Democrat Senator Chris Murphy

Dan Bongino for Mark Levin opens the show on fire tonight

He's saying the rules which say Republicans have to lose ground in November because that's what usually happens two years after a new president is elected . . . aren't the rules.

Good for him.

Fight! Trump broke the rules, so can we.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for July 2018

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for July 2018

Max temp 94, Mean Max temp 94

Min temp 54, Mean Min temp 49

Av temp 74.4, Mean Av temp 72.2

Av temp to date 48.3, Mean Av temp to date 46.6 (actual is elevated 3.6%)

Precip 2.30, Mean precip 3.12

Total precip to date 21.5, Mean total precip to date 19.7 (actual ahead 1.8 despite dry conditions)

Cooling Degree Days 301, Mean CDD 241, Season to date 577, Mean Season to date 425

The cooling season to date as measured by CDD has moderated to 35.76% warmer than the mean after a hot early start to the summer season.

I notice Mean Max temp for June 2018 has been altered/changed/corrected down to 91 from the 94 I reported. It's also possible I misread it.

Check, check, double check, but still discrepancies arise due to human error . . . just not sure whose. 

Sarah Jeong of The New York Times is guilty of far worse than racism

Frank Rich slams Gary Cohn in NY Mag, Cohn fires back in Bloomberg

Frank Rich on the 5th, here:

The Wall Street bandits escaped punishment, as did most of the banking houses where they thrived. Everyone else was stuck with the bill. ... But it’s a measure of how much the country is broken that we just shrug with resignation when the wealthy Democratic Goldman Sachs alum Gary Cohn joins this administration to secure an obscene tax cut, then exits without apology to enjoy his further enrichment at the expense of the safety net for the country’s most vulnerable citizens.

Gary Cohn here on the 6th:

In ’08 Facebook was one of those companies that was a big platform to criticize banks, they were very out front of criticizing banks for not being responsible citizens. I think banks were more responsible citizens in ’08 than some of the social media companies are today. And it affects everyone in the world. The banks have never had that much pull. ... In Washington nothing’s perfect, so I’m not thinking it’s perfect, it’s never going to be perfect. But the fact that we got something really important done, which is corporate tax reform, which made us competitive with the rest of the world, is good.

Laugh of the Day 2.0: Boris Johnson objects to "The New English Letter Box"

Quoted here:

"If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces, then I totally agree," he said.

"I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes."

And he added that "a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber" he would ask her to remove it to speak to her.

Frank Rich: The sole upside of the 2008 crash is that it exposed the kleptocratic Establishment of both parties

The chief kleptocrat, of course, was Bill Clinton, but Franky doesn't mention that, nor that his hero Barack Obama, who in the worst of economic times managed to come in third for increasing income inequality, is hard at work in retirement trying to catch up with him. Former President Carter, meanwhile, is building and restoring over 30 homes in Indiana for his 2018 work project. 

Still, it's a worthwhile read, if your indignation has been flagging of late.

In 2008, America Stopped Believing in the American Dream

Variety review of Dinesh D'Souza's new movie can't get even recent history right

Here:

At one point, amid all the fringe academics he interviews, D’Souza sits down with Richard Spencer, the white supremacist and alt-right crusader who came to mainstream prominence when he led the May 13, 2017, riots in Charlottesville.

There were no riots in May. Those were in August. And about the only thing Spencer led then was the retreat when the local Democrat authorities gave police a stand down order, effectively giving Antifa the green light to attack.

There is no variety at Variety, just the homogeneity of political correctness, aka fake news.

Meanwhile orthodox Jewry in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut is head over heels in love with Donald Trump

Laugh of the Day: Socialist Jew invested in being white gets the bad news that just being white makes him a racist

Isaac Chotiner: What could a white person in America in 2018 do to not be racist, or do you believe that’s impossible?

Robin DiAngelo: Well, I have to ask you a question I forgot to ask you earlier. What is your racial identity?

Isaac Chotiner: I’m white. My family’s originally from Eastern Europe. 

Seen here.

Mandela's ANC government in South Africa writes off whites as murderers

I guess Obama's message in July fell on deaf ears:

'It’s not justice if now you’re on top, so I’m going to do the same thing that those folks were doing to me, and now I’m going to do it to you. That’s not justice. “I detest racialism,” [Mandela] said, “whether it comes from a black man or a white man.”'

Asli Erdogan: Turkey has descended into fascism under President Erdogan

Quoted here:

The award-winning author [not related to the president], still traumatised by the four months she spent in an Istanbul prison, warns that Turkey's institutions are "in a state of total collapse".

"The extent of things in Turkey is like Nazi Germany. I think it is a fascist regime. It is not yet 1940s Germany, but 1930s. A crucial factor is the lack of a judicial system. Erdogan is almost omnipotent. He decides on the price of medicine, on the future of classical ballet, his family members are in charge of the economy. Opera, which he hates, is also directly tied to him. That's the nice thing about fascism, it's also pathetically funny sometimes. It's an emergency state made permanent."