Democrat Mayor of Portland, Oregon, is another Antifa enabler

Anarchy Breaks Out in Portland, With the Mayor’s Blessing: A vicious mob targeted the ICE office and even a food cart. The police followed orders to do nothing:

Where were the police? Ordered away by Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler, who doubles as police commissioner. “I do not want the @PortlandPolice to be engaged or sucked into a conflict, particularly from a federal agency that I believe is on the wrong track,” he tweeted. “If [ICE is] looking for a bailout from this mayor, they are looking in the wrong place.” ...

“I join those outraged by ICE actions separating parents from their children, and support peaceful protest to give voice to our collective moral conscience.”

The Hakes family, which owns the Happy Camper food cart across the street from ICE’s office, responded to the statement with incredulity. The mob “terrorized our family” and forced the business to close, Julie Hakes told me.

Mitchell Research and Communications has John James beating Sandy Pensler 44-30 in Michigan Republican US Senate primary

Reported here this morning, +/- 5 points.

Conservatism upside-down: Russell Kirk chair in history at Hillsdale held by professed libertarian

Bradley J. Birzer, here:

"I have never considered myself a classical liberal, but I have always considered myself libertarian."

Russell Kirk, of course, was neither, but especially not libertarian.

And at public universities also it is common for atheists to chair religion departments.

An alt-right taxonomy one year after Charlottesville, and its prospects for survival

Provided by Paul Gottfried, with useful links, in Paul Gottfried: Charlottesville After A Year—As An Outsider, I Think The Alt-Right Far From Finished, from which this excerpt:

Growing racial tensions, reckless immigration and a further weakening of already-weakened social bonds could all help the Alt-Right expand its following.

Part of the Alt Right’s eventual success may come from its anti-traditionalism. The Alt-Right is mostly (but not entirely) anti-Christian and advances a Nietzschean or neo-pagan perspective. It is thereby in sync with the growing secularism of millennials.  

And the Alt-Right doesn’t wear itself out trying to defend the traditional bourgeois family. It appears to be made up largely of young, unattached bloggers. Most of those Alt-Right publicists I read focus on racial conflict or the struggle between civilizations; and they push these themes far more frankly and with less careerist backtracking than the well-paid propagandists of Conservatism, Inc. They also cite telling statistics about racial and gender differences; and they pride themselves on their openness to science as well as on their sometimes vaguely defined “radical traditionalism.”

The Alt-Right belongs to a post-conservative Right. 

This is another way of saying the future success of the alt-right depends on the continued splintering of the American experience occasioned by its enthusiasm for secular ideologies.

Hence the way to defeat the alt-right, if that is what the left really wants, is to reject multiculturalism and participate in unifying the country instead of working toward its demise. And that implies supporting the radical correction of America's immigration laws symbolized and actualized by Donald Trump's wall.

But, of course, that would make too much sense, as little sense as reproducing oneself the old-fashioned way, by marrying and having children.

Idealism, of whatever stripe, is poison, but our thirst for it, unfortunately, is the well nigh inescapable bastard patrimony of our Christian past. 

Or that the charm and venom, which they drunk,

Their blood with secret filth infected hath,

Being diffused through the senseless trunk

That, through the great contagion, direful deadly stunk.

-- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Canto II, iv.

60.5% are working, not 63%: That's 6.4 million missing workers in this so-called boom

If this is a boom how come the scale of pay raises is so puny compared with the last three cycles?

Just received a robocall on behalf of John James for US Senate in the Michigan Republican primary

From the Susan B. Anthony list.

DOJ did not inform the FISA court of FBI interviews with Papadopoulos and Mifsud, but should have

From the story here:

These facts indicate that the DOJ did not inform the FISA court of the FBI interviews with Papadopoulos and Mifsud. But it should have, especially if Mifsud denied Papadopoulos’ claim that the Maltese professor had bragged that the Russians had dirt on Hillary. Or was Mifsud an FBI informant or an asset of a foreign government, and was that instead what the DOJ told the FISA court?

It’s time for the FBI to come clean: Who was Mifsud, and what was his role in the launch of Crossfire Hurricane? And did the State Department assist the FBI in handling Mifsud? Congress and the president supposedly hold power over these agencies. They, and we, need the answers.

Laugh of a whole generation: Rush Limbaugh has had the same ethics, conscience, core beliefs, morality for 30 years

Here:

RUSH: So I’ve had a lot of emails from a lot of people in the past couple of days, and one of them I received last night that started me thinking. Now, I love things that make me think — I’ll be honest with you — and this one did. “Do you know how few people can say that they’ve had the same ethics, the same conscience, the same core beliefs, the same morality, and the same connectivity with themselves in their twenties, through their forties, and into the sixties and beyond, into their best years? Do you realize how few people are as consistent and reliable as you are?”

No, I don’t ever stop to think of anything like that. I don’t think… See, this is why I don’t… I don’t think it’s unusual that things I believed in my heart when I was in my twenties would survive my getting to my sixties. Core beliefs. I can totally believe that I wouldn’t change in those things. But this person said, “You don’t know how rare it is,” and what inspired her to write this, I think she said, was a caller that appeared to the program yesterday saying basically the same thing.

Spouses:

Roxy Maxine McNeely (1977–1980, div.)

Michelle Sixta (1983–1990, div.)

Marta Fitzgerald (1994–2004, div.)

Kathryn Rogers (2010–

Drug use:

Admitted addiction to prescription painkillers (October 2003)

Arrests:

Doctor shopping for prescription painkillers (April 2006)

Confiscations:

Viagra, Palm Beach International Airport (June 2006)

95,598,000 eating but not working in July 2018

Today's example of a woman who doesn't know what she doesn't know

The arbiters of taste at The New York Times rule Roseanne unpalatable but hire a racist pig to write editorials

The good old days: As late as 1971 16 states and the federal government considered rape a capital offense

I wonder how many illegals get the full-frisk TSA treatment while flying free on United

Sandy Pensler grows even more desperate in Michigan Republican race for US Senate, enlists Rand Paul for robocalls

I got that call this afternoon, just days after getting one from Rick Santorum urging a vote for Pensler. Clearly this is Pensler's play for the libertarian vote after the earlier play for the Catholic vote.

Pensler is counting on his expensive ad campaign overcoming Trump's endorsement of his challenger, John James, and on the fractured nature of Republican politics in Michigan to eek out a win, which is a phenomenon of its libertarian leanings.

And as everyone knows, libertarians are a contrary bunch who can hardly come to agreement about anything among themselves, let alone unite anyone around their views once in office. Pensler himself has alienated Polish-Americans with his holocaust remarks. He fits right in with the libertarians.

The right thing to do in this context is vote for John James.

Good comparison of the presidents on GDP by Justin Fox at Bloomberg

Guess Which Presidents Really Oversaw Economic Booms

Fox well reminds his readers that GDP is an inadequate measure in many respects, and gives credit where credit is due even when the numbers don't seem to show it.

His second chart is the better chart since it is a political comparison, which is what this is all about, pegging beginning and end of analysis to fourth quarters when presidents are elected or eclipsed.

He has Kennedy and Johnson first and second (5.5% and 5%), followed by Clinton (3.8%), Reagan 3.6%), Carter (3.2%) and Nixon 3.0%), then IKE (2.5%), then Ford and Bush 41 tied (2.2%), with Obama (1.9%) and Bush 43 (1.8%) bringing up the rear. (Trump so far is seventh, ahead of IKE but behind Nixon, at 2.7%).

A few quibbles.

The data is plenty fine for Truman 1948-1952. He should be included. His performance is the best of them all on a full term basis (5.54%), using the same compound annual growth rate Fox uses. The secret to Truman's success? He slashed government spending in the wind-down from World War II. No one seems to get that. By cutting taxes and not slashing spending, Republicans since Truman only defeat themselves and discredit what works.

Secondly, JFK didn't serve out his first term, Nixon his second. Therefore it makes more sense to view JFK coterminous with LBJ (5.19% together), and Ford with Nixon (2.73%), evaluating them together in two eight year periods of Democrat and Republican political administration respectively, which is what it was.

Third, Fox rounds his numbers, which obscures how close Bush and Obama were in their terrible records (1.83% and 1.88% respectively). 

All in all, though, we come up with similar results: Truman is first (5.54), followed by JFK/LBJ (5.19), Clinton (3.81), Reagan (3.55), Carter (3.19), Nixon/Ford (2.73), IKE (2.52), Bush 41 (2.21), Obama (1.88), and Bush 43 (1.83).

Trump's first year through 4Q2017 is 2.47%. Measured 2Q2017 on 2Q2018 just completed he's at 2.85%.

Only by comparison with the previous sixteen years is this anything to cheer about, but thankfully we have that.

Democrat socialist Ocasio-Cortez is a crackpot, says everyone has two jobs when multiple jobholding is at historic lows

The lights are on there, but nobody's home. Even at the historic highs it was less than 7% of the employed, and that was back in the Clinton era when the economy is pretty much universally acknowledged to have been a lot better than it is now. That suggests multiple job holding is a good thing, not a bad thing. When people can get two jobs that means there is more opportunity to work harder to save for important goals and pay for them. No coincidence, either, that GDP was better then when more people worked multiple jobs. More work equals more GDP.

Governor Moonbeam is clueless about how much warmer it was in Greco-Roman antiquity than today

Jerry Brown, quoted here:

The governor added that "since civilization emerged 10,000 years ago, we haven’t had this kind of heat condition, and it’s going to continue getting worse and that’s the way it is."

Russian non-citizen of the US was registered to vote in San Fran Freako without her knowledge, as a Democrat

Story here.

Seems the scam kicks into motion if you sign a petition on the street. The activists then turn in stacks of registrations with the petitions:

Ms. Shuvalova was signed up — possibly without her knowledge — by an organization circulating a petition for a 2013 ballot initiative to stop a massive condominium development on the San Francisco waterfront. A signed registration card was submitted with the petition to qualify Ms. Shuvalova as a petition signer, said John Arntz, director of the San Francisco Department of Elections. Activists often hand in stacks of registration cards with their petitions, he said. Election officials say they conduct routine cross-references of voter registration information with databases at the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles and the secretary of state’s office but did not flag Ms. Shuvalova as a noncitizen. The box for “vote by mail” was checked on her registration card, and the county began sending her ballots. County records show she received nine ballots but never voted.

Dissent emerges in China from a high place

From the story here:

Censorship and punishment have muted dissent in China since Mr. Xi came to power. So Xu Zhangrun, a law professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, took a big risk last week when he delivered the fiercest denunciation yet from a Chinese academic of Mr. Xi’s hard-line policies, revival of Communist orthodoxies and adulatory propaganda image.

“People nationwide, including the entire bureaucratic elite, feel once more lost in uncertainty about the direction of the country and about their own personal security, and the rising anxiety has spread into a degree of panic throughout society,” Professor Xu wrote in an essay that appeared on the website of Unirule Institute of Economics, an independent think tank in Beijing that was recently forced out of its office. ...

“As things continue in this direction, the question arises whether reform and opening up will come to a halt and totalitarian rule will return,” Professor Xu said in the essay, written in a densely classical style speckled with recondite phrases and historical allusions. “At this time, no other anxiety weighs most heavily on most people.” ...

Professor Xu’s future may now become a test of whether Mr. Xi will display greater tolerance of criticism.

“I have said what I must and am in the hands of fate,” he wrote at the end of his essay. “Heaven will decide whether we rise or fall.”

Mark Levin barked at a caller tonight that doctors aren't in the top 1%, saying that's Marxist crap

Mark is celebrating Milton Friedman's birthday today, so he's in no mood for anyone who has the temerity to question capitalism's idealism.

Meanwhile US News and World Report here says that

"In 2016, a general internist made a median salary of $196,380, according to the BLS. The highest-paid in the profession earned upward of $208,000, while the lowest-paid made $60,080. ...  In fact, a physician's average salary was $201,840 in 2016."

People who made $200,000 or more in 2016 were in the 98.70706th percentile, in other words in the top 1.29294%. There were just 2.1 million such individuals in 2016.

You weren't firmly in the top 1% until you made $250,000 in 2016.

Italy's Matteo Salvini: The EU are swindlers

Quoted here:

“My experience in the European parliament tells me you either impose yourself or they swindle you.”

“There is no objectivity or good faith from the European side.”

The gifts from Hillary's war in Libya just keep on giving

Despite Fed interventions we are still left with the foregone output

Stephen Roach, here, one of the few who openly acknowledges the still-shrunken economy:

The Fed mistakenly believed that what worked during the crisis would work equally well afterwards. 

An unprecedentedly weak economic recovery – roughly 2% annual growth over the past nine-plus years, versus a 4% norm in earlier cycles – says otherwise. ...

Do we want a reactive central bank that focuses on cleaning up the mess after a crisis erupts, or a pro-active central bank that leans against excesses before they spark crises?

That question – whether to “lean or clean” – has fueled a raging debate in policy and academic circles. It has an important political economy component: Are independent central banks willing to force society to sacrifice growth in order to preserve financial stability? It also bears on the bubble-spotting debate. Yet as difficult as these problems are, they pale in comparison to the foregone output of America’s anemic post-crisis recovery.

Bernie defends Medicare For All claiming on national healthcare spending it will save $30 billion a year on net

Bernie links to Jacobin Magazine here which discusses the savings as well as the irony of libertarians openly acknowledging those savings. The article laments their myopic focus on just the increased federal cost.

In the final analysis, the question is whether $30 billion is worth it to have your doctor earn only Medicare level rates instead of market rates.

What incentive does one have to go into medical practice knowing you'll no longer be able to make the big bucks? Mediocre prospects attract mediocre candidates.

What incentive will anyone have to innovate if there's nothing in it for them? Mediocrity will breed mediocrity.

These intangibles are the realm of the hidden hand operating in capitalism which makes it superior to socialism.

The depressing fact is that when Republicans are in charge they should be leading the charge toward a freer market in healthcare, but there is no manliness in libertarianism.

As a result the ladies of socialism are in charge of the conversation. 

Bernie's Medicare For All to add 72% to current outlays

From the story here:

The Mercatus analysis estimated the 10-year cost of "Medicare for all" from 2022 to 2031 [at $32.6 trillion], after an initial phase-in. Its findings are similar to those of several independent studies of Sanders' 2016 plan. Those studies found increases in federal spending over 10 years that ranged from $24.7 trillion to $34.7 trillion.

Current outlays in fiscal 2018 are estimated to finish up at $4.137 trillion, to which add the average increase from BernieCare of $2.97 trillion, an increase of nearly 72% to outlays, and you've got nothing short of a draconian tax increase needed to pay for it all.

Jim Cramer March 2016: Trump has been right the whole way on the trade deals, he's always been pro-worker

Jim Cramer, here:

"I'm with Trump on this. Look, we lose on every trade deal. I ask all these people from either party: name me one trade deal we have had a surplus on in the last decade. They can't name any," Cramer said on "Squawk Box" on Thursday. ... "People should understand this has been his view from day one. It has always been pro-worker," said Cramer. "Have people not been paying attention to what this man has been saying about the trade deals? He's been right the whole way."

Mitch McConnell doesn't just look like a turtle, he moves like one, can't accomplish two important things at once

Time to get someone younger in there.

Carr Fire victims in California had no car, may not have known of evacuation order

The Sacramento Bee reports here:

Also believed to have died are a 70-year-old woman and her two great-grandchildren.

According to relative Donald Kewley, James Roberts, 4, and Emily Roberts, 5, went missing with their great grandmother, Melody Bledsoe, 70, Thursday night. Kewley told The Sacramento Bee that the three were last seen at their home near Keswick Dam Road and Quartz Hill Road – a home that was destroyed in the blaze – before evacuations were ordered.

Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko confirmed that three bodies were found inside the family home, but that no formal identification has been made yet.

“They are overwhelmingly sure that there are decedents at the scene,” the sheriff said. “And they have communicated that with family members. However, no bodies have been recovered. 

Separately reported here:

“There was no evacuation notice,” said Kewley, who lives about two miles away. “Our evacuation was a mile-wide column of smoke rotating toward us.”

Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko Saturday said evacuation notices had been given in multiple formats in the area, including reverse-911 robocalls, calls to cell phones of those who had signed up for such emergency alerts and notifications via TV and the federal Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, which broadcasts warnings during emergencies.

Bosenko could not say if authorities had gone door-to-door in the Bledsoes’ area, as they have in other evacuation sites.

He said Thursday night, as the fire unexpectedly and rapidly came into the city, streets were “bumper-to-bumper” with people trying to escape. At one point, Bosenko said, a civilian purposefully hit a sheriff’s vehicle trying to get through an intersection.

“It was very chaotic and people who had waited to the last minute were panicking,” Bosenko said.

In that frenzy of smoke and confusion, Melody, James and Emily sought help.

Federal Air Marshalls go from armed on-board cops to spying on US citizens under new Trump TSA "Quiet Skies" program

From The Boston Globe story here:

Quiet Skies represents a major departure for TSA. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency has traditionally placed armed air marshals on routes it considered potentially higher risk, or on flights with a passenger on a terrorist watch list. Deploying air marshals to gather intelligence on civilians not on a terrorist watch list is a new assignment, one that some air marshals say goes beyond the mandate of the US Federal Air Marshal Service. Some also worry that such domestic surveillance might be illegal. Between 2,000 and 3,000 men and women, so-called flying FAMs, work the skies.

Since this initiative launched in March, dozens of air marshals have raised concerns about the Quiet Skies program with senior officials and colleagues, sought legal counsel, and expressed misgivings about the surveillance program, according to interviews and documents reviewed by the Globe. ...

Agency documents show there are about 40 to 50 Quiet Skies passengers on domestic flights each day. On average, air marshals follow and surveil about 35 of them.

Trump needs to say he "will" shut down the government if he doesn't get The Wall

"Would be willing" is weasel words, Mr. President.

He also needs to say no one gets back pay this time.

If it's an economic boom why aren't inventories surging?

h/t Jeffrey Snider

The meat in your crab cake is likely picked by an H-2B visa holder, not by a Marylander

Neil Munro has an important story here about the House's efforts to expand H-2B visa caps.

The program already lowers salaries for Americans. Republicans want to see more of that, for some reason.

Apparently they think you are not paying attention this summer.

Islam silent as China continues persecution of up to 1 million Muslims in Xinjiang: Because they're on the payroll

Islamic Leaders Have Nothing to Say About China’s Internment Camps for Muslims:

Hundreds of thousands of Uighur have been detained without trial in China's western region of Xinjiang. Internment camps with up to a million prisoners. Empty neighborhoods. Students, musicians, athletes, and peaceful academics jailed. A massive high-tech surveillance state that monitors and judges every movement. The future of more than 10 million Uighurs, the members of China’s Turkic-speaking Muslim minority, is looking increasingly grim.

As the Chinese authorities continue a brutal crackdown in Xinjiang, the northwest region of China that’s home to the Uighur, Islam has been one of the main targets. Major mosques in the major cities of Kashgar and Urumqi now stand empty. Prisoners in the camps are told to renounce God and embrace the Chinese Communist Party. Prayers, religious education, and the Ramadan fast are increasingly restricted or banned. Even in the rest of China, Arabic text is being stripped from public buildings, and Islamophobia is being tacitly encouraged by party authorities. ...

Part of the answer is that money talks. 

The Republican corporate tax cuts Christmas 2017 have produced no surge in private investment in 2018 H1

Republican government spending in 2018 H1 easily beats out crisis spending under Obama 2009 H2 on a percentage basis

Yesterday Rush told us a crime was necessary to impeach Rosenstein, but today no crime's necessary to impeach Trump

Ah, high crimes and misdemeanors.

Once again, since misdemeanors are "minor wrongdoings", The Constitution cannot be made to say "high minor wrongdoings" in the sense of "severe", as in "severe minor wrongdoings", which would make no sense. "High" refers to where they occur, in federal office, not to their severity. Crimes are severe in and of themselves compared with misdemeanors, which by definition are not. Therefore, "crime" alone is not necessary for impeachment. A minor wrongdoing will do, committed in high office, that is, in the federal government.

Impeachment is the political remedy for both in the political context, i.e. in the federal government.

Once again, Rush is confused, and the House dropping impeachment of Rosenstein is probably a good thing, politically, because Trump could be impeached for almost nothing at all, as long as there is support for it. Best not to get everyone together on that by going after Rosenstein for a misdemeanor.

This is politics, people!

Here yesterday:

Anyway, Professor Dershowitz said this would be a very, very bad precedent because impeachment is always a remedy for criminal activity, criminal behavior. And it’s very risky here to go out and try to impeach Rosenstein simply ’cause he won’t turn things over to you. It’s kind of a tough case to make that Rosenstein’s behaving in a criminal fashion simply because he will not respond to subpoenas that the House leadership and Devin Nunes have demanded to see some documents.

But here today:

I mean, everything [Mueller has] come up with he’s given to some other jurisdiction to prosecute or do with what they will. And impeachment, you have to understand something about impeachment. This is what this has always been about. The effort here has always been to drive Trump’s approval numbers down. Impeachment is not a criminal proceeding.

It’s political. You can impeach a president if he hadn’t committed any crime. You can try it. High crimes, misdemeanors. They are hoping to drive Trump’s approvals numbers down with all of this.

The stock market closed lower after Trump's 4.1% GDP today, selling the news

Trump endorses John James for US Senate from Michigan

Trump endorses ‘star’ John James in Michigan Senate primary

Rush Limbaugh: Trump supporters don't think running around with Playboy playmates means anything compared with saving the culture

Incredible. What's to save, then? 

The basis of culture is the cult, that is, religion. Mine teaches that such behavior is wrong. I'll bet Melania's does, too.

If you want to make promiscuity the new cult, well, count me out.

Keep in mind that Rush Limbaugh is a drug addict and serial monogamist who has been wrong about far more than little old GDP in his lifetime. He was ecstatic to have that flaming homo Elton John sing at his third fourth wedding, so there you go. His Methodism is thimble deep, like his education.

Trump is nothing more than a transitional figure. Once the force of his personality is gone, nothing will be left . . . unless of course he builds that wall.

Here:

For example, Lowry says this incident on tape with Trump talking to a fixer about paying off a Playboy playmate would sink anybody, particularly any Republican candidate. Why doesn’t it sink Trump? Well, we’ve been through all the reasons for this. One of Lowry’s explanations is that the bar has been set so low with Trump that no new revelation is gonna shock anybody, not after the NBC Access Hollywood video. And so there just isn’t anything that’s gonna shock anybody. Trump’s already survived numerous such attempts to take him out.

So something like this, as far as Trump supporters are concerned, there’s nothing new here. No reason to get upset. But I think it’s far more than that. I think not enough credit’s being given to the sophistication of Trump supporters. And it is that it doesn’t mean anything, when compared to what these people think is really important, like saving the country, like growing the country, like saving our culture. Whether Trump’s running around with Playboy playmates is not relevant to them.

Rush Limbaugh is a GDP boob, again

Rush Limbaugh can't remember good GDP under Obama for two reasons.

One, he's never read the press releases from the BEA. These are available anytime of day or night, including right now, right on Al Gore's amazing internet, for the whole Obama era, but it's more convenient to ignore them at the time if they occasionally disagree with your broader political point.

Second, Limbaugh doesn't realize that real GDP is a moving target. Real means it's an inflation-adjusted figure, and therefore is constantly updated going back in time to incorporate inflation's effects. Therefore no report of GDP he remembers from the past is worth anything today, except in the context of its time.

Limbaugh also doesn't understand that while GDP is subject to constant revision from month to month for this and other reasons, today's report is the 15th comprehensive revision, which occurs every five years. The last one was in 2013. If you looked at the data before the 2013 revision and compared it after you'd see noteworthy differences in the numbers you may have remembered differently.

Comprehensive revisions incorporate new methodologies and measurements across all the data. Today's data revision does just that going back all the way to 1929. Limbaugh wants you to believe new methods and measures under Obama distorted Obama's numbers uniquely but weren't applied uniformly to all the data, which is a complete falsehood.

Here's the recent history of 4.0 real GDP or better from today's revisions vs. contemporaneous BEA press releases:

2Q2018: 4.1%

3Q2014: 4.9% (5% in third estimate Dec. 2014)

2Q2014: 5.1% (4.6% in third estimate Sept. 2014)

4Q2011: 4.7% (3.0% in third estimate March 2012)

4Q2009: 4.5% (5.6% in third estimate March 2010).

Trump's GDP in the first half of 2018 is comparable to Obama's and Bush's best performances before him. That's a hopeful sign. But Trump supporters like me will have something to really crow about if and when these numbers look like they did in the 1990s, and do it consistently.

So far, they don't.

The biggest disappointment in today's GDP report was the collapse of private investment

Compared with the average from 2007-2017, the points contributed to real GDP in 2Q2018 by private investment plunged 128%. It was the only category which actually subtracted from real GDP (-0.06 vs. an average contribution of +0.211 from 2007-2017, which includes the subtractions of the Great Recession era).

This was awful, but predicted by just about everybody. The tax cuts were supposed to deliver investment. Instead, they delivered consumption, an orgy of consumption, relatively speaking. The contribution from personal consumption was up 127% compared with the prior eleven year average, some part of which is fueled by borrowing. Total consumer credit outstanding in May hit a new record $3.897 trillion.

And speaking of fuel, the biggest gainer percentage-wise was net exports (oil), its contribution up a whopping 1414% over the previous period average. That's great for the oil business, but consumers are paying over three bucks a gallon for gasoline today. A lot of the personal consumption increase (above) is going straight into the fuel tank.

That's a neat trick of GDP. Export a commodity needed at home, driving up the price which consumers pay, and then the government turns around and counts consumers' misfortune as a sign of a growing economy! Yeah! Reelect the president!

Finally we have the contribution from government expenditures and investment, also up in a huge way, 1056% over the previous period average contributed (which includes all of Obama's stimulus). We needed the big increase to defense spending, to be sure, but that's for maintaining the possibility of increased standards of living. It's not the same thing as an increased standard of living.

Cue the happy talk. Surely it's five o'clock somewhere.

GDP hysteria

Earlier in the week the economic calendar at FXStreet had indicated a consensus estimate of GDP at 4% for 2Q2018. With less than an hour to go, that prediction has risen to 4.1%.

GDPNow at The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta gave it's final prediction of 3.8% yesterday.

Cheerleaders for Trump on talk radio have been crowing like roosters about a booming economy, pointing to the unemployment rate, and they hope to GDP.

GDP consists of four major components: personal consumption, private investment, net imports/exports, and government consumption and investment.

That last one can contribute significantly when there are big increases to government spending, such as just occurred with defense spending.

I expect to see that reflected in this morning's report, but it shouldn't be confused with an economic boom anymore than stimulus spending under Obama.

Government can pay people to dig a hole and other people to fill it back in again, but that is not an economic boom. Neither is a fireworks display.

The lunatics at the Cato Institute admit fiscal windfalls would come from legalizing heroin and cocaine, not marijuana

The Budgetary Effects of Ending Drug Prohibition:

"[A]lthough media outlets and policymakers mostly focus on marijuana, the majority of budgetary gains would likely come from legalizing heroin and cocaine."

There are even bigger windfalls from ending defense spending, until you're overrun by the enemy. 

Jessica Valenti: The snowflake/safe-space phenomenon is all the fault of feminism

And darn it, it just hasn't spread far enough.

The tantrum against intractable human nature continues.

Here:

One of feminism’s biggest successes was creating an alternative culture for girls and women seeking respite from mainstream constraints. Girls worried about unrealistic beauty standards, for example, can turn to the body positivity movement. Those of us who find traditional media’s treatment of women unappealing can read feminist blogs and magazines; female college students who have critical questions about how gender shapes their lives can take women’s studies classes.

From social media campaigns to after-school equality clubs, feminism has birthed dozens of online and real-life spaces where girls can find alternatives to the sexist status quo.

But boys and young men who are struggling have no equivalent culture.

Rick Santorum is suddenly doing robocalls for Sandy Pensler for US Senate here in Michigan, which sounds like desperation

Just got the call a few minutes ago.

Turns out the race is now deadlocked after some time with Pensler in the lead.

Pensler has been advertising vigorously in Rush Limbaugh's timeslot on the radio as well.

His opponent John James has been relying on direct mail to reach his voters.

Pensler is spending an awful lot of money to win when he went out of his way in January to alienate voters by stating for the record that the Polish people were complicit in the Holocaust in World War II.

That's hardly how to win friends and influence people in Macomb and Wayne counties if you really want to be elected to the US Senate in 2018! 

'The Polish legislature yesterday, with particularly insensitive timing, hammered home humanities [sic] dangerous proclivity to insulate ourselves against others. It passed legislation outlawing calling Polish based concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzic and others as “Polish concentration camps” rather they must now be called . [sic] “Nazi concentration camps in occupied Poland”. This attempt to whitewash and deny complicity in the horrors of the Holocaust is dangerous.'

H. W. Crocker III is very confused, and his editor ought to be horse-whipped

In America’s Next Civil War Will Be Worse Than Our Last for The American Spectator, which by the way never says that, H. W. Crocker III says many wonderful things but ends up making a hash of it.

He rightly concludes that the left's hysteria is a "destructive fire that will not be easily quenched, and cannot be reached by cool waters of rational argument."

But then immediately he advocates for just that, rational argument:

"[I]t seems to me that we can at least be as understanding of our own history [as President William McKinley]."

And also:

"[B]ut the point is to regain a rational, even if nostalgic, perspective on our past by eliciting laughter."

And finally:

"If America is to come together again, it will do so only through the restoration of what Lincoln called our mystic chords of memory, a common culture that emerges from a shared and sympathetic understanding of our past."

Well said, but by his own admission Crocker admits the North and South already had these things:

"North and South venerated the Founders. They shared the same language, the same religion, and, in large part, the same general stock. Most of all, they shared what Jeff Sessions was recently rebuked for calling an “Anglo-American heritage” of liberty under law, stretching from the mists of medieval England — even before Magna Carta — to our own Bill of Rights."

Just so. And still they went to war.

How much more we, whose "Anglo-Americans" can't even agree among themselves to stem the tide of the replacement of "the general stock" through immigration?

Such self-understanding demands what must be done for self-preservation: a halt to immigration, revaluation of citizenship, enforcement of assimilationist policies, and prioritization of family formation.

Without these things more leisure to ruminate about history won't even be possible. We'll be too busy watching our backs.

Henry Kissinger: Trump-Putin summit had to take place, I advocated it for years

For more on the reverse Nixon strategy, see Henry Kissinger Pushed Trump to Work With Russia to Box In China.

This elephant, Republican symbol, doesn't like litter and cleans it up without being asked (or paid)

Here.

Time Magazine loved Obama, hates Trump

Meanwhile the US east coast floods, but it's sunny and warm in Grand Rapids

Somebody's bad weather means good weather some place else.

One woman killed, another missing as storms deluge eastern U.S.:

"More than 26 million Americans are under a flood watch this morning, as severe weather grips the eastern U.S. for a fourth straight day. Beginning Wednesday, the storm will start to be felt further north, especially in New York. The heavy rain is expected to last through the weekend and possibly into next week. More than a foot of rain has fallen in parts of Maryland and Baltimore County is having its wettest July on record." 

Greece can't get a break: First financial meltdown, then overrun by refugees, now swept by wildfires

Greeks describe harrowing escapes from deadly fires:

"A pair of wildfires have [sic] left at least 79 people dead, and CBS News correspondent Seth Doane reports dozens are still believed to be missing. In some places around the Greek capital the fires were still burning. Elsewhere people began returning to neighborhoods left unrecognizable."

Turkey defies NATO and the West again over Iranian oil

Turkey vows to keep buying Iranian oil: 'We will not obey'

Drought conditions return to the southwest US, this time to Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado

Mid-July 2017

Mid-July 2018

Al Hunt's tortured logic about Wikileaks: Release e-mails when no one's paying attention in order to divert attention

Yeah, that makes sense!

Poor Al, he thinks voters are so stupid that whenever they hear or read something they are automatically programmed to do as instructed. Dumb lumps of clay are they. To believe otherwise would be unthinkable . . . to the journalist, the academic and the ad-man.

Here:

In early October, almost immediately after a video surfaced in which Trump bragged about groping women, WikiLeaks released its first leak of emails from the account of Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. This happened on a Friday afternoon, not the best time to leak a story if the object is to get attention; the intent was almost certainly to deflect attention from the Trump video. An indictment of 12 Russian operatives last week by Special Counsel Robert Mueller traced the email hacks to a Russian military intelligence unit.

HaHaHaHaHaHa!

And by the way, the indictment asserts, it traces nothing. That would be up to a jury to decide, you know, in an actual trial, which will never happen because it's a show indictment, not a real one.

Al, you are such a joke, just like your outfit with its "You have 6 free articles remaining" message. I'm counting the days.

William Murchison thinks The Wall was a ridiculous, unserious notion, analogous to Sanders' great, gooey slices of socialist pie in the sky

Here in The American Spectator:

Donald Trump, it could be argued, made the political environment safe for over-the-top declarations, e.g., he was going to wall off Mexico from the United States and make Mexico pay for the wall. I am not sure anyone outside the Trump bedroom ever took such a ridiculous notion seriously. It was an attention-grabber.

Mr. Murchison lives in the afterglow of a Reagan revolution which he thinks makes new schemes like Social Security and Medicare permanently unthinkable to the American people.

There are no lost causes because there are no permanent victories.

Ebola survives in woman for 13 months to infect and kill her oldest son after giving birth

From the story here:

Scientists do not know how the virus hid inside the woman for 13 months before re-emerging in lethal form. However, because she fell ill soon after giving birth, experts believe the immune suppression that normally occurs in pregnancy may have triggered a relapse. ...

A 15-year-old boy, the woman’s oldest son, was hospitalized vomiting blood. He tested positive for Ebola and, despite intensive treatment, died 10 days after his symptoms first appeared. ...

[S]urvivors must be tested for Ebola if they fall ill, even if they lack common Ebola symptoms.

Bill Clinton adviser Mark Penn: Mueller investigation is the progeny of Obama administration abuses

"We thought, after the actions of J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon, that we had put in place safeguards to prevent such abuse. ... [T]he Page warrant is a significant indication that government officials are quick to assume the worst about disliked rivals and to use those beliefs to overcome the guardrails on their authority through this backdoor secret FISA process."

Read the whole scathing thing here.

Kevin Williamson asserts but does not prove that conservatives have made peace with New Deal economic nationalism

Here.

Williamson simply presupposes that there is a coherent Trump program to sign up for, not to mention that there was a coherent Obama program, neither of which is true. Lots of Republicans have "made peace" with Social Security, but that doesn't mean they have become New Deal ideologues. Williamson ignores their political pragmatism, and Trump's.

The essay is otherwise interesting. He might have added Reagan to his so-called new nationalist "Roosevelt-Obama-Trump model", but not wanting to inflame too much is understandable given his recent history:

"Conservatives have a conflicted view of government. Many who revile FDR as the root of all welfare-statist evil revere Ronald Reagan, who insisted all his life that he was an FDR Democrat whose former party had simply gone insane."

Yes, Reagan was confused. Hence his movement, and Williamson.

Increase to deficit in fiscal 2018 under Keynesian Trump expected to add 0.6 points to GDP

Discussed here.

Bill and Hillary Clinton, David Boies, photographed dining with Harvey Weinstein at Rao's Dec. 13, 2016!

PICTURED: Hillary and Bill's intimate dinner with Harvey Weinstein weeks after her election loss - showing just how close the Clintons were to the 'serial rapist' movie mogul

"The dinner took place about ten months before Weinstein's world would come crashing down."

21 million people in the world receive treatment for HIV and continue to spread the disease

1.8 million new infections last year.

NOT DISCUSSED here.

Hillary at Oxford at June end avoids discussing Electoral College: Because it prevented the populism which would have elected her

She can't tell the truth about anything.

Hillary At Oxford: Let Us Not Speak Of This Electoral College Today

Hillary:

"‘Turkey also shows that political and intellectual elites, both inside the country and around the world, persistently underestimate the threat which these kinds of leaders pose to the survival of democratic institutions'".

Morrissey is too charitable to say that precisely Hillary is one of these leaders who pose a threat to the survival of democratic institutions, since she's repeatedly come out against the Electoral College since her memoir appeared a year ago:

Ahem. Among those democratic institutions in the US happens to be the Electoral College. And why did the framers of the Constitution create it? To act as a buffer against populism, at least in form. The Electoral College reflects the popular vote on a state-by-state basis to prevent a handful of the most populous states from controlling the executive through the nationwide popular vote, which creates a buffer against the very impulse Hillary decries in this speech.

Why Hillary hates it now: Remembering Trump's completely unexpected landslide victory over Hillary in the Electoral College

Flashback Reuters October 15, 2016:

Clinton heavily favored to win Electoral College: poll

Hillary projected to win "by a margin of 118 Electoral College votes".

Or The New York Times October 17, 2016:

Showing Confidence, Hillary Clinton Pushes Into Republican Strongholds

"The maneuvering speaks to the unexpected tension facing Mrs. Clinton as she hurtles toward what aides increasingly believe will be a decisive victory — a pleasant problem, for certain, but one that has nonetheless scrambled the campaign’s strategy weeks before Election Day: Should Mrs. Clinton maximize her own margin, aiming to flip as many red states as possible to run up an electoral landslide, or prioritize the party’s congressional fortunes, redirecting funds and energy down the ballot?"

Or International Business Times November 7, 2016 (Hillary +108):

Electoral College Map Update: Pollster Predicts Hillary Clinton Landslide, Winning All Swing States Except Iowa, Ohio

"Emerson pollsters predicted Clinton will garner 323 electoral votes compared to 215 for Trump."

Dem Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Kansas City: “We’re gonna flip this seat red in November!"