Saturday, April 27, 2019

God help us: Biden doesn't know when to use "is" vs. "are" and leftwing authority Jacobin acquiesces to an undercount of US billionaires by 26%

It's always the same old story. Reading, writing and arithmetic.

Hey Ollie, this Lifer says don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!


America won a multi-front world war in less than four years at peak white, but is now almost 18 years in Afghanistan


Once upon a time in America conservatives opposed women's suffrage, social security, medicare and the 1994 crime bill, now they are for all those things (and Obamacare)


Apparently it's news to some alien peoples that Great Britain provided 68.7% of the US population's ancestry in 1790

Ancestry for 19.3% was black, the 12% balance other European (German, Dutch, French, Swedish).

John Solomon: Joe Biden in March 2016 pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor investigating company paying Hunter Biden, bragged about it to CFR audience in 2018

Joe Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived:

But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.

U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.

The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.

Shokin told me in written answers to questions that, before he was fired as general prosecutor, he had made “specific plans” for the investigation that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.” ...

The timing of Hunter Biden’s and Archer’s appointment to Burisma’s board has been highlighted in the past, by The New York Times in December 2015 and in a 2016 book by conservative author Peter Schweizer. ...

According to Schweizer’s book, Vice President Biden met with Archer in April 2014 right as Archer was named to the board at Burisma. A month later, Hunter Biden was named to the board, to oversee Burisma’s legal team.

But the Ukrainian investigation and Joe Biden’s effort to fire the prosecutor overseeing it has escaped without much public debate. ...

Between April 2014 and October 2015, more than $3 million was paid out of Burisma accounts to an account linked to Biden’s and Archer’s Rosemont Seneca firm, according to the financial records placed in a federal court file in Manhattan in an unrelated case against Archer.

Foreign Affairs Issue Launch with Former Vice President Joe Biden

Tuesday, January 23, 2018:

I was—not I, but it just happened to be that was the assignment I got. I got all the good ones. And so I got Ukraine. And I remember going over, convincing our team, our leaders to—convincing that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t. So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

 

Friday, April 26, 2019

John Solomon is also interviewed by Michael Savage today on Joe Biden's Ukraine problem

The podcast is free and can be accessed at michaelsavage.com.

Biden's son Hunter was on a Ukraine company's payroll due to Joe Biden's influence when Joe was Vice President. Solomon reports that Joe Biden is caught on tape boasting about getting a Ukrainian prosecutor fired who was looking into possibly improper payments to Hunter Biden's company.

The Hill's John Solomon: Obama administration had January 2016 meeting in DC with Ukrainian officials to pursue Manafort

How the Obama White House engaged Ukraine to give Russia collusion narrative an early boost:

U.S. officials “kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united,” said Andrii Telizhenko, then a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington tasked with organizing the meeting.
 
Telizhenko, who no longer works for the Ukrainian Embassy, said U.S. officials volunteered during the meetings — one of which was held in the White House’s Old Executive Office Building — that they had an interest in reviving a closed investigation into payments to U.S. figures from Ukraine’s Russia-backed Party of Regions. ...

Kostiantyn Kulyk, deputy head of the Ukraine prosecutor general’s international affairs office, said that, shortly after Ukrainian authorities returned from the Washington meeting, there was a clear message about helping the Americans with the Party of the Regions case.

“Yes, there was a lot of talking about needing help and then the [Manafort] ledger just appeared in public,” he recalled.

Kulyk said Ukrainian authorities had evidence that other Western figures, such as former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig, also received money from Yanukovych’s party. But the Americans weren’t interested: “They just discussed Manafort. This was all and only what they wanted. Nobody else.”

 

Egads, now we're expecting 5 inches of snow in Grand Rapids

Saturday Night: Rain and snow, becoming all snow after 7pm. The snow could be heavy at times. Low around 29. North northeast wind 8 to 13 mph, with gusts as high as 21 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New snow accumulation of around 5 inches.

The bond market isn't buying the GDP print either


Meanwhile sharp-eyed Diane Swonk wasn't at all fooled by the GDP print, expect 2Q to unwind this