1Q2023 GDP, third estimate: +2.0% annualized rate
Nominal: $26.5298 trillion
Nominal change yoy 1Q: 7.23%
Real: $20.2828 trillion
Real change yoy 1Q: 1.80%
Thursday, June 29, 2023
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
The biggest turd at the Department of Justice is Merrick Garland
When Obama nominated that guy for the Supreme Court, it was like throwing a Molotov Cocktail at it.
The federal prosecutor tasked with investigating Hunter Biden told at least six witnesses last year that he lacked authority to charge the first son outside Delaware and was denied special counsel status, according to an IRS whistleblower — and now the House Judiciary Committee wants to talk to them.
Delaware US Attorney David Weiss made the shocking disclosure at an Oct. 7, 2022, meeting with top IRS and FBI officials — contradicting sworn testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland, IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley told the House Ways and Means Committee last month. ...
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Sunday that Republicans
will launch an impeachment inquiry into Garland if Shapley’s account is
corroborated.
More.
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
The NPEIS qualification exam
Create a word from the letters NPEIS to see what career you are most qualified for.
A. Spine.
Congratulations. Your career path is Doctor of medicine.
B. Pines.
Not too bad. You will become a tree surgeon.
C. Snipe.
Sorry Charlie. Prepare to lie regularly for a politician in the pages of a cheap tabloid newspaper.
D. Penis.
You, sir, are headed to Navy flight school.
Monday, June 26, 2023
Democrats begin Election 2024 leading with the lie that gun violence is the number one cause of death among children
The CDC says otherwise.
Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death among US children aged 1-17 years since 1999, totaling 126,650. Among those the number one cause is motor vehicle traffic accidents, totaling 67,884. Number two is drowning accidents, at 19,062. In eighth place is firearm accidents, totaling 2,265.
The second leading cause of death is childhood cancer, totaling 36,312.
The third leading cause of death is homicide, totaling 31,690. Among those the number one cause is firearms, totaling 19,306.
The fourth leading cause of death is suicide, totaling 26,653. Among those the number one cause is suicide by suffocation, totaling 12,890. The number two cause is suicide by firearm, totaling 10,934. Believe it, or not.
If you total firearm accidents, firearm homicides, and firearm suicides over the last 22 years for Americans aged 1-17 you still get only 32,505, a distant third place behind motor vehicle traffic accidents and cancer.
Meanwhile Democrats champion abortion on demand, which has killed untold millions upon millions of children since 1973, for which guns is just the smokescreen.
OPEC expects global oil demand to rise to 110 million barrels per day by 2045
Reported here.
2022 global production averaged 80.6 million barrels per day on one accounting.
OPEC must think the 2022 figure closer to 90 million bpd since it projects growth in demand of 23%.
According to this, crude oil remained the top primary energy source in the world at 31.2% in 2020, followed by coal at 27.2%, and natural gas at 24.7%.
71% of China's primary energy is derived from coal. China is the world's number one emitter of so-called greenhouse gases.
Sunday, June 25, 2023
Saturday, June 24, 2023
Influence-peddling WhatsApp message to Chicoms from Hunter Biden in July 2017 came from his father's guest house in Delaware
Byron York, here:
Hunter Biden wanted something from Zhao — it appears it was a payment of some sort — and he wanted it immediately. "I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled," Hunter Biden wrote. "Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father."
Shapley said the IRS team discovered the message in August 2020. Even for people who questioned the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop — and we now know the FBI had verified its authenticity in December 2019 — the WhatsApp message was worth investigating. "In August 2020, we got the results back from an iCloud search warrant," Shapley said. "Unlike the laptop, these came to the investigative team from a third-party record keeper and included a set of messages. The messages included material we clearly needed to follow up on."
No kidding. The July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message was the clearest evidence ever
that Joe Biden, then the former vice president, knew about his son's
business dealings. Now, maybe Hunter Biden was lying in the message.
Maybe his father wasn't in the room. Maybe there's some other
explanation. What was clear was that the WhatsApp message was evidence
that needed to be investigated. But Shapley and the other IRS
investigators soon ran into a brick wall at the Justice Department.
The IRS team wanted to execute a search warrant at the guest house and Joe Biden's house in Delaware, where Hunter Biden was staying at the time of the message. In discussions with the Justice Department, they were told that there was more than enough probable cause to get a warrant but that "optics" were a problem. A Justice Department official told them, in Shapley's words, that "a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden but said there is no way we will get that approved."
IRS team investigating Hunter Biden's alleged crimes never investigated the Ukraine-Burisma bribes allegations
Jerry Dunleavy, here:
Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian owner of Burisma, was the "foreign national" involved in the alleged "criminal bribery scheme" aimed at shaking an alleged investigation into Burisma by then-Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, according to sources familiar with the FBI record who described its contents to the Washington Examiner.
The sources said Zlochevsky said he believed it would be difficult to unravel the alleged bribery scheme for at least 10 years because of the number of bank accounts involved.
Amid the threat of being held in contempt of Congress, FBI Director Christopher Wray allowed members of the GOP-led House Oversight Committee to review an FD-1023 form this month that contained redacted versions of the allegations from the paid FBI informant.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, repeatedly claimed following a late May FBI briefing that Barr and his “hand-picked prosecutor” — Scott Brady, then the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania — ended the investigation into the bribery claims in 2020. But Barr quickly said that is false.
“It’s not true,” Barr soon told multiple outlets in early June. “It wasn’t closed down. On the contrary, it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”...
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also revealed this month that a less redacted version of the form he has viewed says Zlochevsky claimed to have 17 recordings of his conversations with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden (two of the former and 15 of the latter) as an "insurance policy."
Zlochevsky’s alleged reference to Joe Biden as the “big guy” appears independent of the apparent reference to the now-president as the “big guy” by a Hunter Biden business associate during negotiations with Chinese intelligence-linked businessmen. The China-related reference occurred in a May 2017 email not made public until October 2020.
Shapley said that Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf instructed FBI and IRS investigators not to ask witnesses about “dad” (Joe Biden) or about “the big guy.”
Hunter Biden reached a plea deal on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun, Weiss’s office revealed in a court filing on Tuesday.
The IRS whistleblower claims detailing the politicization and slow-walking of the Justice Department investigation were made public on Thursday, including allegations that Weiss had sought special counsel status from the DOJ and sought to file charges in California and in the nation’s capital but was repeatedly denied. The whistleblowers also pointed to new apparent links between Joe Biden and his son’s China deals and that the FBI authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop by November 2019.
I don't know but I'm guessing her initials are Lesley Wolf
The question remains who within the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office
withheld the FD-1023 from Shapley and his team when Barr had directed
that the CHS’s reporting be sent there for further investigation.
Further, Barr has recently confirmed
the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office was briefed on the detailed
allegations contained in the FD-1023, following then-U.S. Attorney Scott
Brady’s conclusion that the CHS’s reporting did not appear to be
misinformation. ...
Every indication suggests it was the FD-1023 that the FBI HQ’s team falsely labeled disinformation, which raises the specter that individuals in the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office were colluding with FBI HQ to protect the Biden family. It is now up to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s whistleblower to close the circle.
More.
Friday, June 23, 2023
IRS whistleblower says FBI confirmed authenticity of Hunter Biden laptop in November 2019, almost one year before New York Post laptop story
“In October 2019, the FBI became aware that a repair shop had a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden and that the laptop might contain evidence of a crime. The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID,” Shapley said.
The laptop’s contents linked Joe Biden to his son’s dealings, including in China and Ukraine — contradicting his public claims he never discussed business with his son Hunter or brother James Biden.
Despite the FBI’s internal corroboration, 51 former US intelligence agency leaders signed a pre-election letter saying that the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” ...
But behind the scenes, “when the FBI took possession of the device in December 2019, they notified the IRS that it likely contained evidence of tax crimes,” Shapley said.
Shapley, who has worked at the tax agency for 14 years, supervised a 12-person team that determined Hunter Biden had failed to pay $2.2 million on $8.3 million in income earned between 2014 and 2019 from foreign countries where his father held sway as vice president, such as China, Romania and Ukraine.
The case was resolved Tuesday with the announcement of a probation-only plea deal with the first son, despite investigators attempting to recommend felonies, Shapley and another IRS whistleblower told the committee.
On October 19, 2020 — the same date the “spies who lie” letter was fed to Politico — Shapley said he emailed Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf to tell her: “We need to talk about the computer.”
More.
So the Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf is the one who stymied the FBI investigation of Joe Biden's links to Hunter Biden's deals
[Whistleblower] Shapley said that, prior to the interview with [Hunter Biden business associate Rob] Walker, “we had obvious questions like who was H, who the big guy was, and why this percentage was to be held separately with the association hidden.” But the whistleblower said that Delaware assistant U.S. attorney Lesley Wolf “interjected and said she did not want to ask about the big guy” and stated that she did not want to ask questions about "dad."
The whistleblower said that “when multiple people in the room spoke up and objected that we had to ask, she responded, there's no specific criminality to that line of questioning.” Shapley said, “This upset the FBI too.”
“There were multiple times where Lesley Wolf said that she didn't want to ask questions about dad,” Shapley said. “We referred to Hunter Biden's father, you know, as dad.”
Shapley quoted the Delaware prosecutor as saying, “I don't want to talk about the big guy. I don't want to ask about dad. … Don't ask about the big guy.”
Shapley said, “The IRS and FBI agents conducting this interview [of Walker] tried to skirt AUSA Wolf's direction.” He added that the FBI agent tried to get Walker to talk about the email “while not directly contradicting” the direction by Wolf not to ask about “the big guy.”
The IRS whistleblower argued that “based on guidance provided by the prosecutors on a recurring basis to not look into anything related to President Biden, there is no way of knowing if evidence of other criminal activity existed concerning Hunter Biden or President Biden.”
The whistleblower said that “in August 2020, we got the results back from an iCloud search warrant” and that “the messages included material we clearly needed to follow up on.” Shapley said that “nevertheless, prosecutors denied investigators' requests to develop a strategy to look into the messages and denied investigators' suggestion to obtain location information to see where the texts were sent from.”
More.
IRS whistleblower says Hunter Biden could have been charged with failure to file or pay taxes for each of the 5 years 2015-2019 and felony tax evasion and/or filing a false return for each of the years 2014, 2018, and 2019
Earlier this week, Biden agreed to enter guilty pleas for two misdemeanor tax charges that related to his failure to pay tax on more than $3 million in income. As part of the deal with Delaware U.S Attorney David Weiss — who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump and was kept in the position by the current administration to continue the probe — Biden will avoid full prosecution on a separate gun possession charge. A Delaware judge must approve the agreement at a hearing currently set for July 26.
More.
One law for me, another for thee.
Thursday, June 22, 2023
Criminal head of the FBI James Comey withheld evidence of Hillary plot against Trump from his own FBI agents investigating Trump
They all knew, except the agents. Hillary Clinton continues to be the worst person in the whole world, and all her patsies the dumbest.
What did Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey know about Russia-collusion — and when did they know it? John Durham dropped a bombshell in his testimony today at House Oversight, which will go on for at least a couple of hours or more, but this part wasn’t the bombshell. In his special-counsel report, Durham had already revealed that CIA Director John Brennan briefed these four in August 2016 that Hillary Clinton planned to paint Donald Trump as linked to Russian intelligence, presumably to shift attention away from her own e-mail scandal.
That briefing resulted in a “referral memorandum,” and one of its recipients was then-FBI director James Comey. Oversight chair Jim Jordan asks Durham whether Comey ever bothered to share that with the agents assigned to the newly launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane or ever presented to the FISA court when applications were made for domestic surveillance of Trump campaign officials. Nope, Durham says, and explains how he found that out . . .
. . . the director of the FBI knowingly withheld evidence pertinent to an FBI investigation. That resulted not just in errors made by the agents conducting the investigation that might have resulted ending what turned out to be a witch hunt, but also contributed to misrepresentations to the FISA court about the nature of the evidence they used to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign figures. ...
Comey knew it, but made sure the agents assigned to the case did not. So did Obama, Lynch, and Biden. And yet all of these officeholders lied publicly about the nature of the rumors and innuendo consistently for months.
More.
Iowa meteorologist who was global warming apostle driven out of the profession by one e-mail stalker who was caught
WaPo tells his litany of woe, here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)