China accused of imposing exit bans on American citizens

From the story here:

It’s difficult to know exactly how many U.S. citizens have been affected. The State Department declined to confirm the number of cases, citing privacy concerns, but [John] Kamm said he knows of about two dozen cases over the past year and half alone.

“One of the problems with exit bans is that you don’t know that there is an exit ban on you until you actually get to the airport,” said Kamm. “There may be people in the country who have exit bans on them and they don’t know it.”

By surviving past May 30 and not resigning, John McCain has insured there will be no election for his seat until 2020

When he dies, as he surely will, the governor of Arizona is obligated to appoint a Republican to fill out the remainder of his term.

Another man might have given Arizona voters what they deserve under the circumstances, a fully-capable senator whom they themselves elected, but that man is not John McCain.

Democracy for me, but not for thee.

The story is here.

Edit:

Of course, not resigning but sequestering in Arizona for medical reasons brings a twofer: He stymies the advance of the Trump agenda in the Senate where the votes are razor-thin even when he's there. This makes the likelihood of success for "moderate" alliances between liberal Republicans and Democrates in the Senate even greater.

Trump's National Guardsmen at the border are busy shoveling horseshit and changing flat tires, not running razor wire

Way to go, Brownie!

Politico has the story here:

[I]n one assignment, soldiers are actually feeding and shoveling out manure from the stalls of the Border Patrol’s horses. ... Other soldiers, like Sgt. Jonathan Sanchez, 35, a cook, are performing maintenance on the Border Patrol’s heavily used vehicles. “We fix flats,” he explained on a steamy afternoon after completing his shift in the motor pool a few miles north of town. ... A few National Guard helicopters and crew have also been enlisted to join the Border Patrol fleet for aerial surveillance, but more troops are clearing vegetation, serving as office clerks and making basic repairs to Border Patrol facilities.

Our wizards of smart have hollowed out our country and run it straight into the ditch

Fake economic boom: Industrial Production went negative in May 2018

Compared to the 1950s, this economy might as well be sleeping.

Maybe more to the point, when did Strzok and Page have any time to do any actual work for the FBI?

If there are 16 waking hours in the day, they were texting each other during them every 6.6 minutes for 17 months straight!

The FBI should ask for its money back.

The evil Robert Mueller has just separated Paul Manafort from his family

By sending him to jail.

Something about witness tampering.

You know, like Robert Mueller does every day with his inexhaustible supply of government money and time to intimidate, bully and bankrupt defenseless American citizens until they tell him what he wants to hear.

Reunite all the detained illegal aliens with their families

Back in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua . . ..

They have to go back.

Did Trump voters in 2016 vote for a huge corporate tax cut, war with North Korea, and a DACA amnesty?

I watched all the rallies and never heard about these things.

The enthusiasm was all for The Wall, a symbol of the out of control immigration problems facing the country, of which we haven't gotten one inch 19 months later. We could have had 2000 miles of razor-wire by now, but for that you'll need Hungarians apparently, not Americans.

The secondary enthusiasms were for jobs and an end to Obamacare, which have been half-heartedly addressed, not in the least because rank and file Republicans are about business as usual, i.e. keeping their jobs. We still have 16.1 million total unemployed in May 2018, and (unusable) privately purchased health insurance premiums going through the roof.

They don't give a damn about us or what we need, except at election time.

I'm voting in the primaries against incumbents where possible, and third party (but no libertarians) in the general. Otherwise it'll be for Mickey Mouse, Dopey and Goofy, but never again for these fools. The cartoon variety would be an improvement.

FBI's Page and Strzok never had time for sex: Texted each other 144.9 times every 24 hours for 17 months

Julius Malema wants white people dead, views China as model for South African communism

Istanbul-based TRT World reports here:

[H]e once said the EFF [Economic Freedom Fighters party] was not calling for the white genocide “yet.” ... “This inequality, which is growing, which the gap is widening and racially based – blacks becoming more poorer and whites becoming more richer is not sustainable,” Malema explained, warning it would lead to “loss of life”. “So I am saying to you, not under my leadership will we call for the slaughter of white people. I don't know who is coming after me, I will not speak for them.” Nevertheless, he is adamant about the racism that he says is still prevalent in South African society today. “They (white people) hate the idea of equality. That irritates them. That a monkey can never be equal to a white man,” he said. “White people are scared of equality. They don't want it because equality is a threat to privilege.” ...

Malema says China is still a “model” for nations that want to take up the socialist cause and that they are in the process of getting there. “They (the Chinese) have never abandoned the strategic vision and mission of the Communist Party.”

Ann Coulter: The rich are like sharks, all appetite and no brains

Here:

Trump thought North Korea was hard? With immigration, we have all of the most influential forces in our culture on the same page. Immigration is a great unifier of the rich and powerful. 

The rich are like sharks -- all appetite, no brain. With their cheap labor voting 7-3 for the Democrats, it won't be long until Democrats have a lock on government. What do you think they'll do then, Business Roundtable? Answer: Make it impossible to do business. Google "California." 

With the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the Koch brothers' incessant lobbying for more and more cheap labor, we see exactly what Lenin said about the capitalists: They will sell us the rope with which to hang them. 

The rich don't care. They can't think beyond next quarter's earnings. 

Mark Levin asks, Why after the IG report does FBI director Wray think the FBI needs to be trained to be unbiased?

Why indeed.

Here.

Inspector General's report reveals several FBI agents politically motivated to act vs. Trump in their official capacity

You can bet any documentary evidence was destroyed long ago by these foxes put in charge of guarding the hen house. The FBI rogues are laughing at this report.

From the story here:

The Justice Department inspector general has referred five FBI employees for investigation in connection with politically charged texts, revealing in its report on the Hillary Clinton email case that more bureau officials than previously thought were exchanging anti-Trump messages. ...

The report noted that it was specifically concerned about text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that “potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations.” ...

[T]he IG report revealed a new one in which Strzok vowed to "stop" Trump from becoming president -- and made clear that as many as five total FBI employees exchanged politically charged messages. "The text messages and instant messages sent by these employees included statements of hostility toward then candidate Trump and statements of support for candidate Clinton," the report said. ...

The report did not, however, find ... "documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions" ... “Nonetheless, these messages cast a cloud over the FBI’s handling of the Midyear investigation [MYE = FBI code for Midyear Exam, aka Hillary Clinton server investigation] and the investigation’s credibility.”

The boom goes bust: "Investment activity is grinding to a full stop for the first time in China's modern history"

Also, "weakest consumer spending since 2003".

And, 46 consecutive months of industrial production at or below 8%, "unprecedented for modern China".

Jeffrey Snider, here.

Australian snowflakes in Afghanistan see a Nazi flag, fear PTSD or something

"Additionally, steps were taken to reinforce education and training for all personnel who witnessed the flag." 

Obviously it was a false flag operation. The Aussies were just trying to have a little fun and convince the Taliban they were friendlies.

Laugh of the Day: Einstein wondered how the Chinese ever reproduced given the indistinguishability of the sexes

Talk about privilege.

Story here.

Canadians cancel vacations to America!

Fake news: Drudge contributes to the false boom narrative

Drudge links to a Zero Hedge story, which doesn't use the word "boom". But Zero Hedge doesn't get it right, either. It calls the May 0.8% monthly percentage "surge" in retail sales "the biggest since January 2017" absent the hurricane surge in September 2017. Not true: The actual 0.76% spike in May 2018 was bested by November 2017 at 0.79%. They both round to 0.8%.

But was the 0.8% significant? The only way to know is to look at what has happened in May in the past, and from that we conclude that May 2018 was obviously up but unremarkably so. We did better in May 2008 and 2009 for crying out loud, in the middle of a deep recession, which just proves it takes a while to get people's attention, even after you beat them in the head with a 2 X 4, multiple times.

The bottom line is retail is struggling over the long haul. The trend isn't up even a full half point after 18 years.

Expect Rush Limbaugh to trumpet the fake news nonetheless.

Here's an extreme he hasn't thought of: Maybe try paying more than "above minimum wage"

The minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, but low-skilled jobs in Michigan start at $10.00 an hour, and pay even higher than that for competent, dependable people. The median wage for a production operator for a local company near me situated here just across the lake from the one in Manitowoc mentioned in the story below commands $13.57 an hour. 

From the story here:

Mike Fredrich shows off unmanned presses in his Manitowoc, Wisconsin, company. They're ready to start production at MCM Composites, a 55-person enterprise that makes custom thermoset molding. The only problem? Fredrich has no one to operate them. "These tools are heated to 300 degrees," he said. "But we're not running them. Had we had the people for the first shift, we could have been running this all day. But we don't, so they sit here heated, ready to go, with no action." Fredrich said the business has gone to extremes to try to find the 15 additional employees it needs. But he's had little success.

"There are no workers, but there's a huge demand. The economy has picked up, but the market is so thin, that we just can't find them. We've gone to extraordinary means to find people that will actually work, including going to the local county jail and recruiting people to work from inside the jail," Fredrich said. ...

Fredrich is also looking for a core staff of his own — low-skilled laborers he's willing to train and pay above minimum wage. "What they need to be able to do is come to work on time every day, pay attention to what they're doing, take instruction well, and just put in an honest day's work," he said.

Republican Rep. Mark Sanford loses in primary: The guy who blamed Trump for leftist's shooting of Republicans

GOP Rep. Mark Sanford: Trump 'partially to blame' for environment leading to baseball shooting

Finally Italy has a leader in Matteo Salvini: They have to go back! Italians First!

47% of legal aliens in US receive at least one form of public welfare, compared with 32% of the native born

Mostly in the form of Medicaid.

The story is here.

Trump may have kept the issue of US troops in South Korea separate from the North Korea talks, but he still wants them out

Removing US troops from the peninsula will only give China what it wants. A robust US presence in South Korea, Japan and Guam helps ensure the security of Taiwan, not simply the security of South Korea. The end game is Taiwan. Trump is misguided to think otherwise.

Quoted here before 6:30 this morning:

“I want to bring our soldiers back home,” Trump said, although he added that it’s “not part of the equation right now.” Then he said: “We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should. But we’ll be saving a tremendous amount of money. Plus, I think it’s very provocative.”

Trump's determination eventually to remove US troops from South Korea isn't what the South wants or the North demands

From the story here in early May:

The South Korean government reiterated this week that the troops were still needed and would not be pulled out as a result of a peace treaty with North Korea. ...

Mr. Kim recently declared, through South Korean officials, that he would drop the North’s longstanding insistence that American troops leave the peninsula. Some experts argue that watching American soldiers depart is far less important to him than winning relief from economic sanctions.

Italy for Italians, Africans out!

Like they don't have enough room in Africa.

The Clapperism Laugh of the Day: FBI seizes reporter's records in order to protect her

Unnamed sources say the records were suspected to be highly toxic weapons of mass destruction.

Just remember: The House Freedom Caucus is no friend of ours, so to stop amnesty all you can do is call 202 224 3121

"The Club for Growth and Koch Industries — both pro-amnesty — are the biggest donors to Freedom Caucus members."

Slow wage growth remains a mystery to economist Noah Smith

Here.

And they call economics a science.

It's not a mystery if you question your presuppositions, for example that the economy is strong, and that the unemployment rate tells you something meaningful. But that might be too much to ask of an economist.

Strong growth is relative. Economic growth in the post-war began with a big bang and has been cooling off ever since. Compared to the beginning, we're half as robust today. So the economy is not strong, just operating in concert with inertia.

The unemployment rate is very low, but only because so many people have dropped out of the labor force at the same time that the slowest jobs recovery in the post-war has occurred. The low unemployment rate is an artifact of this concurrence.

Presently there are over 16 million people unemployed, underemployed, and not in the labor force who want to work. That's why wages aren't growing. We're still flush with labor, and business knows it.

You can be replaced.

Republican corporate tax cuts = record stock buybacks in May 2018 = corporate insiders selling to profit BIGLY

From the story, "Corporate executives are using stock buybacks to pad their own compensation, according to the SEC", here:

Indeed, buybacks totaled $178 billion during the first quarter, hit a record $171.3 billion in May alone and have seen $51.1 billion announced so far in June, according to market data firm TrimTabs. At the same time, insider selling has totaled $23.6 billion.

Meanwhile Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports total hirings in the first five months of 2018 are down 48% from the first five months of 2017.

The Republican tax cuts are working out as predicted: Failing to provide jobs while enriching elites.

Texas alone has 251,000 criminal aliens who aren't good people, committing 663,000 serious crimes since 2011

From the story here:

According to the DHS and the Texas Department of Public Safety, over 251,000 criminal aliens have been booked into local Texas jails between June 1, 2011, and April 30, 2018. They have been charged for a total of 663,000 offenses including:

1,351 homicides;

7,156 sexual assaults;

9,938 weapons charges;

79,049 assaults;

18,685 burglaries;

79,900 drug charges;

815 kidnappings;

44,882 thefts;

4,292 robberies.

The Answer: Because they are slaves

The Question:  Why middle-aged women with kids make the best employees

"... the group that is most discriminated against when it comes to jobs."

Reihan Salam: Permanent normal trade relations with China fostered its tyranny

Well duh. We sell them the rope to hang us with, but first they hang their own.

From the story in The Atlantic, here:

What might the world have looked like had the U.S. never granted PNTR to China? One possibility is that China would have pursued an economic strategy built around fostering indigenous entrepreneurship and bettering the lives of its own workers, as it did in the 1980s. Instead, Beijing chose to transfer wealth from ordinary Chinese citizens to its politically powerful export sector, a path made possible by PNTR. China might very well have become just as rich by embracing a more balanced and humane approach to development. Doing so, however, would have required that its central government surrender a measure of control to its citizens. Rather than foster liberalism and openness in China, I suspect PNTR did exactly the opposite—creating the conditions for China’s central government to exert tighter control over the Chinese populace.

Sheldon Richman, a progressive, Marxist libertarian

 "Most of the old rules are rubbish ... divisions ... wither away with each generation".

Funny how Enlightened England became hostile to American Presbyterianism, and so ruined itself

The ruin of a state is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners, and contempt of religion, which is entirely our case at present.

-- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Buzzfeed attacks Disqus for its alt-right hangouts

The marginalization war continues, and the herding instincts of the targets makes them easy prey. The irony of their ghettoization is lost on them.

Here:

A number of pro-white and alt-right users have created their own bloglike communities inside Disqus’s platform in order to share stories, comment, and coordinate influence trolling campaigns (which the trolls dub “raids”). One channel called Mickey’s Clubhouse — whose popular topics include Jews, Holohoax, Censorship, White Genocide, and Jew World Order — appears to be home to a number of users coordinating the infiltration of comment sections on Breitbart and other conservative publications. The goal, as evidenced by their comments, is to flood conservative-leaning publishers with pro-white and anti-Semitic content in order to win hearts and minds and indoctrinate others to their politics.

Jim Goad's just upset because readership at takimag has dropped off a cliff

Like Rush Limbaugh, he blames his base:

'I’d like to cheerfully suggest that you take that finger you’re always pointing at others and stick it up your ass. With the way you’re always talking about “degenerates,” you’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?'

SECDEF Mattis explicitly states US troops in South Korea are not a bargaining chip in North Korea denuclearization talks

Quoted here:

However, Defense Secretary James Mattis said recently at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that any discussion about U.S. military presence in South Korea will be "separate and distinct" from the negotiations with Pyongyang.

"That issue will not come up in the discussions with [North Korea] and as you all recognize; those troops are there as a recognition of a security challenge," Mattis said.

Our political opponent Charles Krauthammer, unlike John McCain, shows us the way home

Showing gratitude, not acrimony.

Here.

May G-d be with you, Charles.

Just 16% of junior US Navy officers completely competent at ship-handling

But I'll bet the rest know everything there is to know about equality between the sexes and sexual preference.

The story is here.

More US Navy shame, more proof China's our enemy: Chicoms successfully hack 614 gigabytes of highly sensitive data from contractor

WaPo reports here:

Chinese government hackers have compromised the computers of a Navy contractor, stealing massive amounts of highly sensitive data related to undersea warfare — including secret plans to develop a supersonic anti-ship missile for use on U.S. submarines by 2020, according to American officials. ...

In September 2015, in a bid to avert economic sanctions, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to President Barack Obama that China would refrain from conducting commercial cyberespionage against the United States. Following the pact, China appeared to have curtailed much, although not all, of its hacking activity against U.S. firms, including by the People’s Liberation Army. Both China and the United States consider spying on military technology to fall outside the pact.

For failure to understand "not-in-labor-force" it's hard to beat Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King

The only segment of this pie chart which could reasonably be expected to be hiding missing labor is the not-working-aged-between-16-and-64.

Trouble is, 37.4 million of the 45.7 million in the group are in high school and college. That leaves 8.3 million from this group who could possibly work, many of whom are homemakers,the idle rich, people who have just given up finding a job, volunteers, etc. The government says only 5.2 million of them in May 2018 "want a job now".

The idea that we should think about putting old people and the disabled to work is crazy on its face, while there is something to be said for putting prisoners to work.

Why King isn't rebuking Republicans for wanting to replace Americans with cheap foreign workers ought to be the issue. So-called record job openings go unfilled because they can. The unemployed at 7.2 million plus the 5.2 million represent 12.4 million who would work, if only business paid enough.

Ralph Peters drinks the Putin KoolAid

Ralph Peters: "I Am Convinced That Vladimir Putin Has Some Grip On President Trump"

A DACA "fix" is a recipe for more illegal immigration

Amnesty for ‘Dreamers’ won’t solve policy flaw creating DACA dilemma:

"Congress itself has been the culprit. ...

Congress continues to refuse to mandate the well-tested and widely-used E-Verify system. The outlaw employers in construction, manufacturing, hospitality and other services, of course, don't use it. Thus, parents worldwide, at this very moment, are enticed to illegally cross borders and overstay their visas while starting their children on the path to the long-term illegal-status life that Dreamers say is untenable. ...

As soon as amnestied illegal immigrants become U.S. citizens, current law allows them to petition for their parents to also obtain lifetime work permits and permanent residency. ...

But in the lifetime of a young Dreamer given an amnesty today, there would likely be time not only to obtain lifetime work permits for the original chain of extended family but for that Dreamer's grandparents (as parents of the Dreamer's parents), aunts and uncles (as siblings of the Dreamer's parents), and cousins (the children of the Dreamer's aunts and uncles).

The chains don't stop there. Every one of those adults could immediately bring their minor children and their spouse. Every spouse can start the same chains in his or her families.

All of them could receive lifetime work permits to compete for jobs with working-age Americans who don’t have a job, nearly one-in-four Americans, according to government data.

That’s the reality of DACA amnesty that Congress needs to face."

As Republicans and Trump prepare legislation granting a DACA amnesty, illegals are swarming the border with Mexico

These idiots are, well, idiots! They're just sending the same old message: If you come, we will let you stay.

Nay, Nay! They cannot stay! Illegal aliens must go away!

From the story, "Illegal immigration rises for third straight month despite Trump crackdown", here:

Total arrests along the U.S.-Mexico border topped 40,000 last month, according to the [DHS], which is used as a benchmark for understanding the level of illegal immigration occurring at the border. ... The crackdown has seemed to have little effect on the overall numbers of immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, as the arrest numbers have been steadily climbing since January, though some of the rise can be attributed to regular seasonal workers.

Bush's and Obama's legal immigrants have taken all the jobs, no matter how you measure them

Until Bush 41, the average rate of legal immigration into the US was 0.25% of population but has since doubled to 0.49%

Jan Hatzius is hysterical: Unemployment rate set to move into overheating territory

Quoted here:

"We are still creating a lot more jobs than the long-term trend which we would put at 100,000 (each month), so when you are adding 200,000, that means the unemployment rate is set to move into overheating territory," Hatzius added.

The 62-year trend for total nonfarm (Jan 1939 - Jan 2001) is 138,143 jobs/month. Since 2001 through Jan 2018 we're off that trend by 46%, with a monthly rate of just 74,014 jobs added a month. Go back 18 years from May 2018 to incorporate present-day job-creation and the monthly rate goes up only to 76,597 jobs/month.

For workers, the last 17-18 years have absolutely SUCKED!

Nothing is overheating here except Jan Hatzius.

For him recovering the missing 13 million + jobs since 2001 would be a catastrophe . . . for the profits of Goldman Sachs. 

We have 16.1 million total unemployed in May 2018, and 16.8 million new legal immigrants since Bush 43 was elected

That doesn't make any sense!

Legal immigration into the US has been out of control since Bush 41 succeeded Reagan

Kinder, gentler America, my ass.

More like multicultural hell.

Are you paying attention, Mr. Trump?

Brian Wesbury thinks job growth of 2.3 million to 2.4 million is great when we're really just treading water

Here, in "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs":

"[W]e’ve rarely seen a job market this strong. ... Nonfarm payrolls grew 223,000 in May and are up 2.4 million in the past year. Civilian employment, an alternative gauge of jobs that better measures small business start-ups, grew 293,000 in May and is up 2.3 million in the past year."

Where has Brian been? Living under a rock?

Between 1991 and 2000 annual average total nonfarm grew by 2.6 million a year for nine years straight.

How about between 1983 and 1989? Annual average total nonfarm grew then by almost 3 million a year for six years straight.

Payroll growth right now of 2.4 million a year is barely adding 100,000 net new jobs annually with population increasing at a rate of 2.3 million a year.

We have 16.1 million total unemployed as it is.

At this rate it'll take 161 years to put them all back to work.

What that means is the economy has effectively, and permanently, shrunk.

Rush is right: On the eve of Election 2016 the American Bar Association Journal was speculating whether Hillary could pardon herself

The assumption was she would win.

The BS headline about jobs the open-borders fanatics keep repeating: Job openings outnumber available workers

The unemployment level is currently 6.06 million. The part-time who want a full-time job currently number 4.87 million. The number not-in-the-labor-force-want-a-job-now is 5.18 million in May 2018. Add 'em all up and there's 16.11 million people right here in America for the 6.55 million job openings. The employers don't fill the jobs because they can, otherwise the situation wouldn't persist.

Meanwhile 78 million gig workers work side-hustles to make ends meet.

Not enough workers? Like hell there aren't.

Euphoric employment headlines are absurd, signify an economic top

So says macromon, here:

Yikes!  Those euphoric headlines signal an economic top to us, they always do.  Furthermore, they are completely absurd. 

Correctamundo.

Not one month in to his ambassadorship to Germany, Richard Grenell is throwing his weight around like Ernst Röhm

All of Trump's problems begin with personnel, because he picks them.

From the story here:

Richard Grenell had taken up his diplomatic posting in Berlin on May 8, and immediately irked Germany when he tweeted on the same day that German companies should stop doing business with Iran as Trump quit the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic.

He stoked further outrage over the weekend with reported comments to far-right website Breitbart of his ambition to "empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders".

Grenell also raised eyebrows with his plan to host Austria's arch-conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz -- who the US envoy describes as a "rock star", for lunch on June 13.

Trump request for 1 million barrel per day oil production boost from Saudis and others debated in Kuwait over the weekend

What's this? Trump has to ask the Arabs to do what American producers cannot?

The story is here.

Sorry Jonathon Trugman, one month does not a full-time story make

Here he is, without data:

"Yes, folks, things really are looking better for full-time employment." 

It's true that the percentage of the population working full-time in May 2018 is up, to 50.1%.

Unfortunately the average for the first five months of 2018 is only 49.3%, the same as for the whole of 2017. Despite the surge in May, the average indicates no progress over 2017, yet.

Full-time peaks every year in July or August, so we'll see what happens. But when all is said and done, I'm expecting the full year to average about 49.8%, up about a half point.

In any event, we're still down in the basement trying to climb back to 52.1%, the pre-Great Recession average. To do it, we'll need another 5.1 million jobs, right quick like. If using the averages, 7 million.

But there is no driver for such jobs in this country, because we threw out the old one: housing. The whole economy was based on housing in the post-war, and once the Baby Boom bankers and politicians got their grubby little hands on it under Clinton and Bush 43, they managed to screw that pooch right along with everything else they've touched. A bunch of spendthrifts and squanderers are we. 

Laugh of the Day: Supremes rule 7-2 on behalf of Christian cake-baker, CNBC calls it "narrow"

I guess they don't want us to get too excited about the Supremes slapping down Colorado's anti-religious hostility, which violated the defendant's religious rights, according to the story.

Try again. I'm so excited, I'm about to lose control and I think I like it.

The gap in full-time employment has closed by 1.8 million in the last year, but we're still 5.1 million behind the pre-Great Recession average

Full-time employment before the Great Recession averaged 52.1% of the civilian noninstitutional population over a 12-year period through 2008.

In 2017, the average was still 49.3%, meaning relative to the period before the Great Recession, 6.9 million fewer full-time jobs existed than could have, assuming a real jobs recovery to pre-recession conditions.

In May 2018, the actual percentage has risen to 50.1%. The difference between that and full-time at 52.1% is still 5.1 million full-time jobs.

Things are looking better, but we still haven't recovered from the appalling conditions which ensued upon the Great Recession, not by a long shot.

We still live in a shrunken economy.

China's pledge to maintain Hong Kong's freedoms and institutions is as worthless as Xi Zedong's promise not to militarize the South China Sea

Bloomberg reports the threat of a crackdown on June 4 vigil participants, here.

Xi Jinping broke his promise in the South China Sea, and will break the one to Hong Kong as well. It's just a matter of time.

Hooah: France and Britain announce freedom of navigation exercises in South China Sea

It's about time.

The story is here.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for May 2018

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for May 2018

Max temp 94, Mean Max temp 86

Min temp 40, Mean Min temp 32

Av temp 64.8, Mean Av temp 57.9

Precip 5.64, Mean precip 3.46

Snowfall 0, Mean snowfall .2

Heating Degree Days 105, Mean HDD 252

Cooling Degree Days 108, Mean CDD 39

The cooling season has started off like a rocket, 240% warmer than mean to date based on CDD. With one month left to go in the heating season, the heating season as a result has now been 3.1% warmer than mean to date based on HDD.  

One man's threat is another man's treat

Weekend help.

Good Lord, Trump is sounding just like that fool David Cameron, now FORMER UK Prime Minister

Cameron, here, in 2014.

More evidence of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Lee Smith says the Democrat narrative that Mifsud was working for the Russians doesn't pass the smell test

Here:

In an official report, Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence asserted that “in their approach to Papadopoulos, the Russians used common tradecraft and employed a cut-out,” a “Kremlin-linked…Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud.” ...

Conversely, if [the FBI] did know Mifsud and thought he was a Russian agent, why did the bureau continue to send agents to teach at Link, with which he had been affiliated for nearly a decade by the time of the Papadopoulos affair?

Both the bureau and the CIA were constant presences at the school; surely they’d run across Mifsud before.

Many others that the FBI worked with knew him — from high-level British intelligence officials to members of the Italian cabinet. If Mifsud was a Kremlin-linked cut-out, why didn’t the FBI warn the U.S.’s European partners, or even U.S. government agencies, about the man who was at the center of Russiagate? ...

So why did the FBI not arrest Mifsud? The State Department declined to comment when RCI emailed to ask why it did not prevent its officials from appearing at an event with a “Kremlin-linked” figure who was key to Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election.

If Mifsud was a Russian spy, it’s unclear why after Papadopoulos’ July 27, 2017 arrest that no U.S. intelligence officials warned their European partners that they were hosting a foreign agent on their territory. ...

When asked if any action was taken to extradite Mifsud or even interview him further in Europe, the office of the special counsel declined to comment on an ongoing investigation.

The office also declined to answer why Mifsud has not been charged. Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies for their involvement in a pro-Russian social media campaign during the 2016 campaign cycle. But the “Kremlin-linked” individual that is alleged to have passed the Trump team information about Russia’s interference in the election is at liberty.

Andy McCarthy is thinking about Joseph Mifsud, too

But not about his connections to Hillary, or how he might have been acting in concert with her campaign to subvert Trump's.

Someone really ought to find out where Joseph Mifsud is hiding.

Here.

Joseph Mifsud, whose meeting with Papadopoulos was the pretext for the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of Trump, admitted he was "With Her"

Here in November 2017:

Joseph Mifsud is the Maltese professor who, according to the rumors and anticipations of the Russiagate investigation, has approached George Papadopoulos, an aide of Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, to help him to contact Russian authorities in the Kremlin, even for organizing a meeting between Trump and Putin. Mr. Mifsud is said to have given to the aide “dirty information” on Mrs. Clinton collected by the Russian. ...

“I am a member of the European Council on Foreign relations”, he adds, “and you know which is the only foundation I am member of? The Clinton Foundation. Between you and me, my thinking is left-leaning. But I predicted Trump’s victory as well as Brexit. Everyone of us wants peace. If the governments don’t talk each other, we citizens must keep talking”.

China is so full of crap, says US freedom of navigation patrols constitute "militarization" of South China Sea

Here:

Senior Col. Zhao Xiaozhou, of the People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Sciences, suggested in a question to Mr. Mattis that the U.S. Navy’s maneuvers near the islands could also be called militarization.

Like the US, China is free to conduct freedom of navigation patrols same as the US. That isn't good enough for China. It lays claim, illegally, to the whole area, and seeks to prohibit freedom of navigation in the area to everyone else. Building islands out of reefs and occupying them illegally and then militarizing them is proof enough of that.

Military confrontation is inevitable.

Investor's Business Daily drinks the unemployment koolaid

Mish drinks the unemployment koolaid

Just phonin' it in these days.

CNBC drinks the unemployment koolaid

You probably think the economy's great because, well, the stock market

It's a struggling swimmer, treading water.

Hey Rush Limbaugh, 12.4 million black people eating but not working!

Well whoop-de-do: Trump has "cut" federal employment by all of 0.6% since November 2016

It's statistically irrelevant, but Trump's cheering section is sounding it nonetheless.

Meanwhile the big-talkin' man had promised to cut the federal workforce by 20%.

Only 558,900 more federal workers to go there fella.

Like that'll happen, either.

Trump knows his own unemployment rate is fake, but touts it anyway. Sad.

Not-in-labor-force hit a new all-time high in May of almost 96 million.

President Trump used to think 223,000 jobs a month wasn't nearly good enough

Actually, to close the employment gap between today and pre-Great Recession America, we'd need 370,000 jobs a month for the next 50 months straight, four years.

Like that's going to happen.

If we had employment at the pre-recession percentage of population, we'd have 7.3 million more working in May 2018 than we do have

162.7 million employed at 63.2% instead of the 155.4 million actual at 60.4% in May 2018

Like unemployment generally, black unemployment is so low because near record numbers of them aren't in the labor force

And presto! Down comes the unemployment rate when you stop counting them.

It's a numbers racket for blacks no different than for everyone else.

"Not working but still eating" soars to new all-time high of 95.9 million in May 2018, but don't expect Rush Limbaugh to talk about it

Not with a Republican in the White House, no sir.

Employers are still pretty stingy to the average Joe compared to 10 and 20 years ago

Samantha Bee knows something about being feckless, you know

She's from Canada, after all.

What economic boom? Show me!