Sunday, September 10, 2023

I'm sure everyone will be just thrilled to know that the Secret Service detail protecting the Kennedy family had been out "socializing" until 5 a.m. the day JFK was assassinated

 Mr. Landis said he was surprised that the Warren Commission never interviewed him, but assumed that his supervisors were protecting the agents, who had been out late the night before socializing (Mr. Landis until 5 a.m., although he insisted they were not drunk). “Nobody really asked me,” he said.

Many pictures of those days of mourning show Mr. Landis at Jacqueline Kennedy’s side as she endured the rituals of a presidential farewell. Night after night, those seconds of violence in Dallas kept replaying in his head, his own personal Zapruder film on an endless loop. “The president’s head exploding — I could not shake that vision,” he said. “Whatever I was doing, that’s all I was thinking about.”

With Mr. Landis and Mr. Hill still protecting her, the former first lady was in constant motion in the months afterward. “She’d be in the back seat sobbing and you’d want to say something but it wasn’t really our place to say anything,” Mr. Landis recalled.

After six months, he could not take it anymore and left the Secret Service. Haunted, he moved to Cape Cod in Massachusetts, then New York, then Ohio near Cleveland. For decades, he made a living in real estate and machine products and house painting, anything as long as it had nothing to do with protecting presidents.


More.

That's what caught my eye about this man's story that the so-called magic bullet didn't injure Governor Connally. Landis says he found it "in the presidential limousine lodged in the back of the seat behind where Kennedy was sitting" and later put it on Kennedy's stretcher, which corrects his written testimony from the time.

Sanctuary in Name Only: Illegal aliens are damned inconvenient when plopped down in the backyards of liberal land

 

Saturday, September 9, 2023

She's 83: What's two more years after 36 years of turning the place into a shit-hole?

 Pelosi: The "Needs" Of San Francisco Really Call For Me To Stay Another Term

November 5, 2024: Groundhog Day all over again

 

Friday, September 8, 2023

Mukasey: Trump was never an "officer" of the US and the Supremes have said so twice, ergo, they'll have to defeat him at the ballot box

Trump can't be excluded from the election on the grounds that he was an officer under the 14th Amendment.

Here:

In U.S. v. Mouat (1888), the Supreme Court ruled that “unless a person in the service of the government . . . holds his place by virtue of an appointment . . ., he is not, strictly speaking, an officer of the United States.” Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated the point in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010): “The people do not vote for the ‘Officers of the United States.’ ” ...

 Mr. Trump took an oath as president pursuant to Article II, not as an officer pursuant to Article VI. Because the Insurrection Clause applies only to those who have taken an oath “as an officer of the United States,” he can’t be barred by that clause from serving in any capacity. ...

Even a criminal conviction wouldn’t bar him from seeking and winning the presidency. The Constitution specifies only that a person seeking that office be at least 35, a natural-born citizen and a 14-year U.S. resident. If Mr. Trump is to be kept from office, it will have to be done the old-fashioned way, the way it was done in 2020—by defeating him in an election.

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

I can see it now: Edward Snowden foe Mike Rogers will be the Republican candidate for US Senate from Michigan and Justin Amash will run as the Libertarian Party spoiler to help Democrat Elissa Slotkin win


 Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan native and former FBI agent who rose to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee before leaving Congress more than eight years ago, announced Wednesday he is running for the Republican nomination for the state's open U.S. Senate seat next year.

The story, here, never mentions Rogers' strong opposition to what Edward Snowden did to reveal illegal US government surveillance of US citizens.

Fourth Amendment libertarians are certain at least to take note.

Rogers is ex-FBI.

Chris Christie credits Fed interest rate policy for denting government-spending-induced inflation but misses the role of collapsing energy prices

 Chris Christie is a smart guy with many of the right ideas about government spending, taxes, inflation, energy, and the environment.

But it's a real stretch to think that the timid interest rate increases of the Fed are responsible for this year's so-far moderating inflation indicators when it's falling energy prices since the winter which deserve the real credit. Christie himself admits that outrageous government spending hasn't been curbed at all.

His is a simple binary view which, while conventional and correct as far as it goes, doesn't get to the heart of the current matter. 

Low energy prices have always been and remain key to a successful economy, and it was the spike in natural gas cost inputs because of the Russia-Ukraine war which accelerated inflation globally, not just in the US.

Fed chair Jerome Powell was correct in June of 2021 to believe that inflation would be transitory for "weak supply" reasons, but the Fed rate increases didn't actually commence until the start of the war in Ukraine, which compounded those reasons with the cutoff of European natural gas supplies.

But since the winter the natural gas price is down 73% from peak, coal is down 70%, and gasoline is down too, but a comparatively modest 24%. 

Americans consumed in 2022 the energy equivalent of 26.9 billion kWh/day of natural gas, 13 billion kWh/day of gasoline, and 7.9 billion kWh/day of coal.

Natural gas is twice as important as gasoline in the overall American energy picture, primarily for heating, and as a substitute for coal in electricity generation.

Natural gas produced 4.6 billion kWh/day of electricity in 2022, the top source of electricity, vs. coal at 2.3 billion kWh/day and nuclear at 2.1 billion kWh/day.

Chris Christie is right though. We must "uncap" US oil and gas production and be energy independent.

Europe's natural gas storage, by the way, is presently 93% full as the war in Ukraine drags on. They are ready.

The US used 88.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in 2022. We presently have about 35 days in storage.

Crude oil consumption in 2022 was about 20.3 million barrels per day. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is down to about 17 days of supply, from about 35 in 2011.

 

Watch CNBC’s full interview with GOP Presidential Candidate Chris Christie

Christie lets Fed off the hook for inflation, blames Trump and Biden for overspending




 

 

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Democrat National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison is selling the same old Obama hopium for Election 2024


While they try to use fear to divide us, we use hope to move our communities forward. ...

It is a race between hope and fear. Hope must always prevail. ...

We’re going to use hope to build a country where we all have the opportunity to reach our full potential.

More.

 

Flashback lol: Look fat


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 5, 2019

Iowa

Saturday, September 2, 2023

The unemployment rate rose to 3.8%, but not because people lost jobs

 The unemployment rate rose to 3.786% from 3.495% on a bigger 736k increase to the size of the labor force than to the employment level, not because people lost jobs.

The employment level actually made a new high in August 2023, but up a smaller 222k. 

The unemployment rate went up in August because record new high employment in August, 161.484m, is a smaller percentage of a new larger labor force in August, 167.839m than was the case in July: 96.2% in August vs. 96.5% in July = 3.8% and 3.5% unemployed respectively. 

And do not mix the limited Establishment Survey (122,000 businesses and agencies) total nonfarm jobs oranges (156.419m) with the unemployment rate Household Survey (60,000 households) whole universe of jobs apples and try to make them agree. They don't, and never will.

The Establishment Survey went up 187k in August, but the unemployment rate is not derived from that survey. 

 



 

Tuesday, August 29, 2023

CNN story reporting dozens arrested for arson fires in Greece says fires were caused by climate change

 

Greek police arrest dozens for arson as EU’s largest-ever wildfires rage

<i>Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters</i><br/>Destroyed corral where eighteen bodies were found following a wildfire near the village of Avantas.
Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters
Destroyed corral where eighteen bodies were found following a wildfire near the village of Avantas.

By Eleni Giokos, Xiaofei Xu and Niamh Kennedy, CNN

(CNN) — Greek authorities have arrested dozens of people on arson-related charges as deadly wildfires – the largest ever recorded in the European Union – rage across the country. 

Wildfires in Mount Parnitha, north of the Greek capital Athens, are still out of control Friday, with more forest destroyed overnight.

The biggest fire front line in Greece remains near the northeastern town of Alexandroupolis, in the Evros region.

The burned body of a man was found on a rural road near Dadia national park, near the border with Turkey, state media AMNA reported Friday.

Earlier this week, 18 people were found dead near a village in northern Greece. The fire brigade said Tuesday they may have been migrants. Another person was killed in a fire northwest of the capital Athens on Monday.

Greek police have made 79 arson related arrests, Greek government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis told public broadcaster EPT Friday. 

“What is happening is not just impermissible, but obscene and criminal,” Greek Climate Crisis Minister Vassilis Kikilias said in a statement.

“You are committing a crime against the country. You will not be spared. We will find you and you will be held accountable in Justice,” Kikilas added. 

With more than 73,000 hectares burned, the fires in Alexandroupolis are officially the largest wildfires ever recorded in the European Union, according to EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič. 

Wildfires have intensified around the globe, providing a stark reminder of how the climate crisis is upending lives and inflicting billions of dollars a year in damage.

While wildfires are often ignited by lightning strikes or human activity, they are becoming more frequent because of human-caused climate change. Scientists found, for instance, that climate change made the extreme weather conditions that fueled the 2019-2020 destructive fire seasons in Australia 30% more likely to occur.

More.