The cult of Xi erupts over remarks by little Larry Kudlow

Kudlow:

“I don’t think President Xi at the moment has any intention of following through on the discussion we made and I think the president is so dissatisfied with China on these so-called talks that he is keeping the pressure on — and I support that.”

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying:

“That the relevant United States official unexpectedly distorted the facts and made bogus accusations is shocking and beyond imagination. The United States' flip-flopping and promise-breaking is recognized globally."

More here.

Trump Laugh of the Day: Sorry, I misspoke, I meant to say 'Kiss my ass'

Michigan AG Bill Schuette was not a Trump man, but a Jeb Bush campaign co-chair in August 2015

Michigan AG Bill Schuette throws support behind Jeb Bush, will co-chair campaign in Michigan

Lefty mag The Nation: Not a hack at all, but a leak

Flashback to August 9, 2017:

A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack: Former NSA experts say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak—an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.

This official intelligence assessment has since led to what some call “Russiagate,” with charges and investigations of alleged collusion with the Kremlin, and, in turn, to what is now a major American domestic political crisis and an increasingly perilous state of US-Russia relations. To this day, however, the intelligence agencies that released this assessment have failed to provide the American people with any actual evidence substantiating their claims about how the DNC material was obtained or by whom. Astonishingly and often overlooked, the authors of the declassified ICA themselves admit that their “judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.” ...

Despite all the media coverage taking the veracity of the ICA assessment for granted, even now we have only the uncorroborated assertion of intelligence officials to go on. Indeed, this was noticed by The New York Times’s Scott Shane, who wrote the day the report appeared: “What is missing from the public report is…hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack…. Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’”

Primary reason we should believe Russians hacked DNC servers is because US intelligence services say so, not because of evidence

Slate, May 9, 2017, here:

[T]he primary rationale readers are given for why they should believe that the Russian government meddled in the U.S. election is because the FBI, CIA, and NSA believe that to be the case. We are given very little actual detail about what happened or how the incidents were traced to Russia specifically, while we are treated to numerous statements along the lines of: “We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election” or “We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”

Of course, there are many reasons the Intelligence Community might have decided not to reveal any actual evidence for these claims. But in the absence of that evidence, whether or not you believe their conclusions rests entirely on your confidence in the judgment and investigative abilities of the FBI, CIA, and NSA. And if the evidence that they’ve used to level major accusations at a foreign government comes not from agencies of the U.S. government or direct law enforcement investigations, but rather from private sector firms like CrowdStrike, then the “high confidence” of the government counts for very little. ...

So if the FBI didn’t ask for access the DNC’s servers out of laziness or negligence, it certainly should have. And if the DNC denied them that access for fear of being embarrassed by what they might find, or because they had more faith in CrowdStrike than the FBI, then it served only to undermine confidence in the ultimate results of the investigation and give the impression of having something shameful to hide. Neither the DNC nor the FBI should have been satisfied with an investigation that did not involve the FBI conducting a first-hand look at the compromised systems. And all of us should be concerned about the seeming acceptance of both parties to let a private company singlehandedly carry out an investigation with such significant political consequences.

US intelligence wrong about nerve agent use in Syria in April, says Fact Finding Mission of Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons

And yet we're supposed to believe US intelligence is always right, for example, about WMD in Iraq and most recently about Russian hacking of DNC servers.

'A Western NGO received patients suffering from a variety of symptoms, including constricted pupils, coughing, vomiting, and abnormally slow breathing. Some public videos referred to “nerve gas” or an “organophosphate,” which would be consistent with the victims’ accounts of constricted pupils. Social media and the press estimated varying numbers of casualties, including 19 fatalities and 37 injuries',

the White House maintained on April 13th.

Crock of shit that is.

From the OPCW press release twelve days ago, here:

'OPCW designated labs conducted analysis of prioritised samples. The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties. Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.'

Rand Paul on John Brennan: He's unhinged, deranged, an insult to our government

Quoted here:

PAUL: “John Brennan started out his adulthood by voting for the communist party presidential candidate. He is now ending his career by showing himself to be the most biased, bigoted, over the top, hyperbolic, sort of unhinged director of the CIA we have ever had. And really it is an insult to our government to have a former head of the CIA to calling the president treasonous just because he doesn’t like him. But I realized that Brennan — I filibustered Brennan, I tried to keep Brennan from ever being the leader of the CIA. But realized that Brennan and Clapper are known for wanting to expand the authority of the intelligence agencies to grab up everyone’s information, including Americans. So I don’t have a lot of respect for these people even before they decided to go on hating the president. I dislike these people because they wanted to grab up so much power and use it against the American people. ... Some people are deranged with Trump and that’s why I think they’re crazy.”

Liberty means being able to resist buying anything from Amazon since early May and feeling that's OK

Obviously what America needs most right now is unchecked immigration from Ghana

Man confesses to using 675 people [mostly children] for sacrifice; reveals secrets of fake pastors

It's the 22nd anniversary of the TWA Flight 800 explosion off Long Island

Jack Cashill's got a new book about the tragedy which killed all 230 aboard.

Read about it here.

Haven't been in the sky since.

Putin at summit presser: Bring your investigation to Russia and we'll bring ours to America . . .

. . . to investigate the misdeeds of Bill Browder, Jewish grandson of Earl Browder, CPUSA leader from 1930-1945.

Bill Browder renounced his US citizenship in 1998 to avoid taxes and is a British national and major Putin opponent and target.

The Swamp is in complete sympathy with Bill Browder on the subject of Russia. Don't expect the financial transactions of his associates in support of Hillary Clinton to come to light readily.

All we've got so far is this:

But federal records show that Browder's New York financial partners, Ziff Brothers Investments, donated only $1.75 million in the 2016 campaign, spreading it among candidates for many offices in both parties and favoring Republicans in congressional races. The watchdog site opensecrets.org shows it giving only $17,700 for Clinton's election.

From the transcript of the summit presser, here:

Putin:

We have an existing agreement between the United States of America and the Russian Federation, an existing treaty that dates back to 1999. The mutual assistance on criminal cases. This treaty is in full effect. It works quite efficiently. On average, we initiate about 100, 150 criminal cases upon request from foreign states.

For instance, the last year, there was one extradition case upon the request sent by the United States. This treaty has specific legal procedures we can offer. The appropriate commission headed by Special Attorney Mueller, he can use this treaty as a solid foundation and send a formal, official request to us so that we could interrogate, hold questioning of these individuals who he believes are privy to some crimes. Our enforcement are perfectly able to do this questioning and send the appropriate materials to the United States. Moreover, we can meet you halfway. We can make another step. We can actually permit representatives of the United States, including the members of this very commission headed by Mr. Mueller, we can let them into the country. They can be present at questioning. ...

Then we would expect that the Americans would reciprocate. They would question officials, including the officers of law enforcement and intelligence services of the United States whom we believe have something to do with illegal actions on the territory of Russia. And we have to request the presence of our law enforcement.

For instance, we can bring up Mr. Browder in this particular case. Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over $1.5 billion in Russia. They never paid any taxes. Neither in Russia nor in the United States. Yet, the money escapes the country. They were transferred to the United States. They sent huge amount of money, $400 million as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Well, that’s their personal case. It might have been legal, the contribution itself. But the way the money was earned was illegal. We have solid reason to believe that some intelligence officers, guided these transactions. So we have an interest of questioning them. That could be a first step. We can extend also it. Options abound. They all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.

Rosenstein's liberal buzzkill: No crime committed by an American, no vote count changed, no election result affected

From the transcript here:

There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result.

Sen. Ron Wyden: The company that makes half of America's voting machines refuses to answer basic cyber security questions

Here:

Wyden says he’s still waiting for ES&S to respond to the outstanding questions he sent the company in March.

“ES&S needs to stop stonewalling and provide a full, honest accounting of equipment that could be vulnerable to remote attacks,” he told Motherboard. “When a corporation that makes half of America’s voting machines refuses to answer the most basic cyber security questions, you have to ask what it is hiding.”

A booming economy depends on cheaper inputs: To get 1990s-style growth we need gasoline at $1.53 instead of $2.70

The 1999 price of gasoline in H1 averaged $1.038. Adjusted for inflation that would be $1.53 in 2017.

Amid today's hysteria over the Trump-Putin presser, Rand Paul spoke up in support of the president

Here:

"Absolutely I'm with the president on this".

Man UP!

I've always hated Forbes Magazine, but now I really hate it

Story here and here.

Papa John was set up, and Forbes was only too happy to help destroy him.

Strzok testimony confirms partisan channel for accusations against Trump was through Ohr at DOJ, whose Russia expert wife worked for Fusion GPS, Democrat bankrollers of the dossier

From the story here:

The first-time disclosure is significant because it confirms an unusual and continuing channel for collusion accusations that started outside the government with anti-Trump people and reached Mr. Ohr at the Justice Department and then the FBI. Around that time, Mr. Ohr was communicating with dossier writer Christopher Steele. Mr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, a Russia researcher, worked for Mr. Steele’s paymaster, investigative firm Fusion GPS, which was trying to damage Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Mr. Ohr met with Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson after the November 2016 election. ...

Republicans now know that the dossier trail started with Mr. Steele, Mr. Ohr, Fusion GPS and Mr. Simpson and a journalist. Mr. Corn has denied he worked with the FBI. ...

“Bruce Ohr, the fourth-ranking official at the Department of Justice, his wife works for Fusion GPS in the summer. He gets information and passed it to the FBI. That becomes the basis to spy on the Trump campaign, plain and simple,” Mr. Jordan said. “This is the first time to my knowledge the FBI has admitted that . . .."

It's been almost one year since McCain was diagnosed with a cancer which typically kills in 12-15 months

Noted at the time here.

He remains active on Twitter, if that's really him.

Today he's blasting President Trump again, this time over the Helsinki presser, calling it "disgraceful".

The guy's dying and has nothing better to do than vent his spleen.

Sad.

Trump is magnificent in presser: Where is the DNC server? What happened to Hillary's emails?

Here.

Hacked DNC servers, never examined by FBI, have now conveniently disappeared, so Mueller's charges against the ham sandwiches are doubly meaningless

From the story here:

The one thing [the indicted Russians] are alleged to have done that is serious is hacking the servers of the Democratic National Committee. That’s a serious charge. It’s also completely unprovable, which makes it a brilliant political move by Mueller.

It’s a serious charge. But if any of the people charged with doing it were to show up in court, which is highly unlikely, their lawyers would demand to see the DNC’s servers so they could have their experts examine them. Mueller says Russians hacked them, but the servers have magically disappeared. So how can anyone be certain who hacked them, or if they were even really hacked at all?

Since none of those charged are going to show up in court, there will be no challenge to the allegation, no demand to see the evidence, and no legal embarrassment for Mueller when the charges are dropped because the key piece of evidence not only can’t be provided to the defense, it wasn’t even examined by the prosecutor. He appears to have simply taken the word of the Democratic Party about what happened.