PrairiePundit

Fox News:
Watch the latest video at foxnews.com

Former congressman Trey Gowdy talked to Maria Bartiromo Sunday and discussed the infamous Christopher Steele Dossier, what it is and why it is important find the extent of its use.

"I mean people use the word dossier and how such an official sound to it. I mean let's just call it for what it is. It's a series of rank hearsay compilations put together by an FBI source who was later defrocked. Paid for by the Democrat National Committee then oh by the way Christopher Steele hated Donald Trump too so that we can call it a dossier. It sounds official," Gowdy said on "Sunday Morning Futures."

"It's really something the National Enquirer would blush if they printed so we know that it was used four times by the United States government."
... Why did government lawyers not recognize they were dealing with third-hand hearsay that was unreliable and with a prejudice person paid for by the Democrats?

Washington Examiner:


Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said on Sunday that he may send another criminal referral to the Justice Department.

During an interview on Fox News, Nunes said notes about a meeting between Trump dossier author Christopher Steele and a State Department official were withheld from the House Intelligence Committee during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election that wrapped up last year.
... It looks like the deep state will have to deal with its own obstruction of justice issues.

Phillip Klein:
Joe Biden's old comments about building a border fence are political gold for Trump

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"Folks, I voted for a fence, I voted, unlike most Democrats — and some of you won't like it — I voted for 700 miles of fence," Biden said. "But, let me tell you, we can build a fence 40 stories high — unless you change the dynamic in Mexico and — and you will not like this, and — punish American employers who knowingly violate the law when, in fact, they hire illegals. Unless you do those two things, all the rest is window dressing."

He went on: "Now, I know I'm not supposed to say it that bluntly, but they're the facts, they're the facts. And so everything else we do is in between here. Everything else we do is at the margins. And the reason why I add that parenthetically, why I believe the fence is needed does not have anything to do with immigration as much as drugs. And let me tell you something folks, people are driving across that bor…

streiff:
The plan had been simple. After a dramatic reading of the Mueller Report, Fat Jerry Nadler’s committee was set to hear from Robert Mueller himself. This was to be a counterpoint to the contempt citation the House Judiciary Committee had voted on Attorney General Bill Barr over the refusal of the Department of Justice to deliver up a complete copy of Mueller’s report and the refusal by the White House to allow former White House Counsel Don McGahn testify. The narrative was supposed to be: Candid Saint Robert Mueller vs. the duplicitous Trump administration.

The wheels began to come off this past Wednesday. Originally, it had been reported that Mueller would testify on that date (see Mueller Agrees To Testify Before Congress But What Can He Say That Isn’t In His Report?). There had been sturm und drang, as with anything involving President Trump. Trump had said he did not want Mueller to testify, but he’d leave the matter up to Barr. Earlier this week, Barr said he had no obje…

Washington Examiner:
The rocket that exploded Sunday outside the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is of a design trafficked by Iran and used by Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

While it is unclear who was responsible for firing or supplying the Katyusha rocket, weapons of the same type were seized by Yemeni authorities on an Iranian ship in 2013. Iran is known to support terrorist groups in the region both financially and with arms, and Iranian forces are known to field Katyusha rockets.

Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasoul said that the Iraqi military believed the rocket was fired from east Baghdad, where many Iran-backed Shiite militias are based.
... There were no casualties from the attack.  It appears to be the kind of think Iran and its proxies would do.   The attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf were also likely to have been by Iranian operatives.  Iran is too weak to make a direct attack.  It continues to uses proxies and avoids direct confrontations.

National Interest:
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... the less-well-known SM-6, which also is a Raytheon product, that could dominate the Navy's planning. Of the 10 major missiles that arm the Navy's 285-and-growing surface ships and submarines, only the SM-6 is capable of striking targets at sea, in the air and at the edge of the atmosphere.

The Navy plans to buy 1,800 SM-6s through 2026 at a total cost of $6.4 billion. The missile arms certain destroyers and cruisers equipped with the Aegis radar system. As of late 2018 the U.S. fleet included 38 Aegis warships that are compatible with the missile-defense interceptors such as the SM-6. The Navy wants to grow that number to 41 in 2019.

Only the SM-6 can sink ships, shoot down planes and intercept ballistic missiles. And with a few modifications, the SM-6 also could target enemy ground forces and even submarines. "A single missile in a single launch tube could thereby provide the warfighter with a range of effects," missile-expert Thomas Karak…

Roger Kimball:
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And a quick reality check on Orbán’s supposed anti-Semitism. What he is undeniably guilty of is anti-Sorosism, as in George Soros, the billionaire enemy of nations and the spirit of conservatism. At the same time, his government has passed a law against Holocaust denial (as Christopher Caldwell points out in an essay I will come to below), established a Holocaust Memorial Day, reopened Jewish cultural sites, and refused to cooperate with Jobbik, the leading opposition party, which had a history of anti-Semitic provocations. In fact, Orbán is anti-Semitic in the same sense that Donald Trump is anti-Semitic, which is to say, he is not anti-Semitic.

Then there is “The Illiberal Temptation,” Gabriel Schoenfeld’s essay in The American Interest. Schoenfeld, like Applebaum and Boot, is deeply exercised by the spectacle of Viktor Orbán sticking up for Hungary. And like both Applebaum and Boot, he is especially horrified that some conservatives have given aid and succor not …

Andrew McCarthy:
Here’s what you need to know: In rushing out their assessment of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, Obama-administration officials chose not to include the risible Steele-dossier allegations that they had put in their “VERIFIED APPLICATION” for warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) because . . . wait for it . . . the allegations weren’t verified.

And now, the officials are squabbling over who pushed the dossier. Why? Because the dossier — a Clinton-campaign opposition-research screed, based on anonymous Russian sources peddling farcical hearsay, compiled by a well-paid foreign operative (former British spy Christopher Steele) — is crumbling by the day.
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If dossier claims were still unverified when Comey testified to Congress in mid 2017 (and thereafter), then those claims could not have been verified when the Obama Justice Department and FBI submitted it to the FISC as a “VERIFIED APPLICATION” in October 2016. It also had to have…

Philadelphia Inquirer:
In Philly rally, Joe Biden offers unity to replace Trump’s ‘hatred' Biden is appealing to those who hate Trump and hate Trump's supporters.  That includes the media that writes these kinds of misleading stories.

Kyle Smith:
There is a reason you don’t let inmates run your asylum, allow your toddler to eat candy for dinner or tell the Labrador retriever sitting behind the wheel of your car, “OK, Duke, I guess you drive.” Those who are, mentally speaking, a few slices short of a loaf don’t get to make grown-up-people decisions. This brings me to Harvard undergraduates.

In the softest and most spoiled generation of humanity ever to exist (they feel threatened by Halloween costumes and the existence of Ben Shapiro; their forebears endured World War II and Vietnam and even riding bikes without helmets), the softest and most spoiled corner must be the Harvard student body, those little princelings and princesslings who have more expectations about how the world should accommodate their whims than Louis XIV. Last week, a handful of these toddler-brained undergrads got a distinguished Harvard dean fired for doing his job.

That dean, Ronald Sullivan, holds an outside job. He is something called a “law…

Daily Caller:
Dossier author Christopher Steele identified a former Russian spy chief and a top adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin as being involved in handling potentially compromising information about President Donald Trump, State Department notes show.

In her notes, State Department official Kathleen Kavalec also referred to the two Russians — former Russian foreign intelligence chief Vyacheslav Trubnikov and Putin aide Vladislav Surkov — as “sources.”

The references to Trubnikov and Surkov, which have not previously been reported, are not definitive proof that either were sources for Steele’s dossier or that they were involved in an effort to collect blackmail material on Trump.

But the notes are significant because they are the first government documents that show Steele discussing potential sources for the information in his dossier, which the former MI6 officer provided to the FBI.

Trubnikov also has links to Stefan Halper, an FBI informant who collected information f…

Washington Post:
The little-noticed surge across the U.S.-Mexico border: It’s Americans heading south


As the Mexican population in the United States shrinks, Americans are increasingly migrating to Mexico where they’re pouring money into local economies, renovating historic homes and changing the dynamics of Mexican classrooms. This is also happening in the Caribbean including islands that are part of the Central American countries where people have been migrating to the US.  If you watch HGTV they have shows on Americans looking for homes in Mexico and in the Caribbean.  It puts the lie to the suggestion that the migration is caused by "climate change."  Those headed south tend to be escaping harsh winters and looking for affordable luxury.

Real Clear Politics:
California's Botched Motor-Voter Rollout Hovers Over 2020

News of 2016 Russian hacking in Florida’s election system exploded in the headlines earlier this week, and fears that Kremlin agents or other foreign meddlers could do more of the same in 2020 has been a leading theme in news cycles for the last two years.

But a major foreign cyberattack on California’s new automated voter registration system during its glitch-filled rollout last spring flew mostly under the national media’s radar.

The California case is particularly vexing from election-integrity and voter-privacy perspectives because the hack targeted the motor-voter registration system just six days before its scheduled launch.

The state has had a motor-voter system up and running for years, but a new law required the Department of Motor Vehicles to electronically transmit information on drivers who are eligible to vote and who visit the Golden State’s DMV offices to the state’s voter rolls, unless t…

American Thinker:
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Why did the Trump administration cut Palestinian aid money? Because approximately half of foreign aid money the Palestinians received was paid as stipends to convicted terrorists and their families through the Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund! Interesting how The Washington Post conveniently leaves out relevant facts, leading to an unbalanced and biased view, during a fact-checking article. It is not unusual for their "fact checks" to omit material facts needed to show context.  Their fact checks too often tend to be briefs for the liberal point of view.

Richard Fernandez:
Australia's Labor party was supposed to have won yesterday's election handily. Their surefire formula for victory of increased taxes, heightened spending on climate change and engagement with China would bring in the votes. Then the unexpected happened: Labor lost.
Australia’s Liberal-National Coalition government has returned to power in the 2019 federal election, despite polls consistently predicting victory for the opposition Labor Party. The most surprising result for Labor came from the state of Queensland. Now, many people are comparing the shock result to the 2016 US election and the UK's Brexit referendum, which both defied opinion polls. Few if any of the pollsters predicted it. The resulting bafflement was expressed by one tweet: "How could polls, from every company, for months including exit polls taken on election day not just be wrong but spectacularly wrong?" It was a massive intelligence failure and one worthy of examination. All …

Washington Examiner:
Some of the migrant families arrested at the southern border weren't actually families.

In a pilot program, approximately 30% of rapid DNA tests of immigrant adults who were suspected of arriving at the southern border with children who weren't theirs revealed the adults were not related to the children, an official involved in the system's temporary rollout who asked to be anonymous in order to speak freely told the Washington Examiner Friday.

"There’s been some concern about, 'Are they stepfathers or adopted fathers?'" the official said. "Those were not the case. In these cases, they are misrepresented as family members."

In some incidents where Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the adults they would have to take a cheek swab to verify a relationship with a minor, several admitted the child was not related and did not take the DNA test, which was designed by a U.S. company.

The pilot lasted a few days earlier this m…

Washington Post:
Trump’s sanctions on Iran are hitting Hezbollah hard

The powerful Lebanese Hezbollah militia has thrived for decades on generous cash handouts from Iran, but U.S. sanctions are curtailing Iran’s ability to support its most powerful regional proxy. The Lebanese terror group is having trouble paying its army and even its leadership.  That is certainly a benefit of the Trump sanctions.  It is probably already saving lives.

Sterling Bernett:
From Alberta to Australia, from Finland to France, and beyond, voters are increasingly showing their displeasure with expensive energy policies imposed by politicians in an inane effort to purportedly fight human-caused climate change.

Skepticism over whether humans are causing dangerous climate change has always been higher in America than in most industrialized countries. As a result, governments in Europe, Canada, and other developed areas are much farther along the energy rationing path, cutting carbon dioxide emissions as required. However, residents in these countries have begun to revolt against the higher energy costs they suffer under due to high taxes on fossil fuels and mandates to use expensive renewable energy.

This is what originally prompted protesters in France to don yellow vests and take to the streets in 2018. They were protesting scheduled increases in fuel taxes, electricity prices, and stricter vehicle emissions controls, which French President …

Globe and Mail:
The U.S. Border Patrol said Friday that it would fly hundreds of migrant families from south Texas to San Diego for processing and that it was considering flights to Detroit, Miami and Buffalo, New York.

The flights are the latest sign of how the Border Patrol is struggling to keep up with large numbers of Central American families that are reaching the U.S. border with Mexico, especially in Texas. Moving migrants to less crowded places is expected to distribute the workload more evenly.

Flights from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley to San Diego were to begin Friday and continue indefinitely three times a week, with each flight carrying 120 to 135 people, said Douglas Harrison, the Border Patrol’s interim San Diego sector chief.

“We don’t have an end date,” Harrison told reporters. “This is a contingency operation. We’ve got to give the people in Rio Grande Valley some relief.”

Plans to fly from Rio Grande Valley to Detroit, Miami and Buffalo were preliminary, Harrison said. A…

Jeffrey Lord:
And there they go again.

Facebook has censored Michelle Malkin — for protesting censorship. Meanwhile, as noted in this space just last week, Facebook has no problem with the pro-fascist and deliberately misnamed “Antifa” — the pro-fascist group that pretends its use of hooded faces and clubs is somehow “anti-fascist.” Here is the link to AntifaUSA and their masked faces as they appear on Facebook. Take a good look at Antifa’s favored appearance of black ski masks and recall another leftist group — this one that historians describe as the “terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.”

Ahh, the more things change the more they stay the same — from the Klan to Antifa the far-left specializes in hiding its faces to enable its acts of hatred and violence.

And what specifically was Michelle Malkin censored for? Here, courtesy of Breitbart, is the tweet that got her censored:

These are two of my friends, Laura Loomer and Gavin McInnes. They are banned from Facebook and Instagram for…

Washington Examiner:
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"Bob Mueller knew the day that he walked in the door there was no evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with Russians," Nunes said, referring to the findings of the FBI's counterintelligence that began in the summer of 2016. Mueller was appointed to lead the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election in May 2017, eight days after President Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey.

Although Mueller completed his investigation in March, Nunes said the House Intelligence Committee, which conducted its own Russian interference investigation when he was chairman, determined there was no collusion by early 2018.

"I'm able to answer that because we looked at all the work. We looked at all the intelligence. We've known for — our report came out a year ago. There's zero evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with Russians — period," Nunes said.
... One of the ways it became obvious was that not one M…

Houston Chronicle:
The Texas unemployment rate fell back to its all-time low in April as the state economy continued to create jobs at a solid pace.

Texas employers added 29,000 jobs last month, and more than 280,000 over the year, an annual growth rate of 2.7 percent, the Texas Workforce Commission reported. It was the 108th consecutive month of year-over-year job growth, the agency said.

The unemployment rate fell to 3.7 percent, returning to the record low reached in November.
... The jobs ranged from construction to professional business services and healthcare.  Texas continues to attract new manufacturing business.  Petrochemical producers continue to announce new construction.

NY Times:
Venezuela’s Collapse Is the Worst Outside of War in Decades, Economists Say Butchers have stopped selling meat cuts in favor of offal, fat shavings and cow hooves, the only animal protein many of their customers can afford. It worse than the collapse of the Soviet Union and Cuba and is even worse than Zimbabwe.  Bernie Sanders no longer uses it as an example.

NY Post:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo just nixed a pipeline that would bring critical supplies of natural gas to the city and Long Island via New York Bay — not that he’s taking ownership of the veto.

No, the gov claims he had no part in the Department of Environmental Conservation decision late Wednesday to reject the Northeast Supply Enhancement project, a k a the Williams pipeline. But he appoints the DEC’s boss, and everyone on Team Cuomo takes their cues from the big guy.

That’s especially true on a call with such huge consequences. National Grid and Con Ed say that, absent new gas supplies, they’ll be unable to meet growing demand and will have to turn away new customers.

Con Ed already banned new hookups in much of Westchester thanks to a similar supply crunch. National Grid has warned of its own ban in the city and Long Island if this pipeline is aborted.

How are those areas supposed to grow — with no natural gas for heating, cooking and other uses? The city and state also want people to…

Thomas Lifson:
Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing reveal Brennan was the mastermind of the Russia hoax Brennan has recently been pointing the finger at Comey.  I suspect they both were eager to push that narrative because of their animus toward the President.

Forbes:
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The media’s focus on Trump’s Russian connections ignores the much more extensive and lucrative business relationships of top Democrats with Kremlin-associated oligarchs and companies. Thanks to the Panama Papers, we know that the Podesta Group (founded by John Podesta’s brother, Tony) lobbied for Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. “Sberbank is the Kremlin, they don’t do anything major without Putin’s go-ahead, and they don’t tell him ‘no’ either,” explained a retired senior U.S. intelligence official. According to a Reuters report, Tony Podesta was “among the high-profile lobbyists registered to represent organizations backing Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.” Among these was the European Center, which paid Podesta $900,000 for his lobbying.

That’s not all: The busy Podesta Group also represented Uranium One, a uranium company acquired by the Russian government which received approval from Hillary Clinton’s State Department to mine for uranium in the U.S. and gave Russ…

Hartford Courant:
Toolmaker Stanley Black & Decker plans to open a manufacturing plant in North Texas and create about 500 jobs.

The New Britain-based company said a groundbreaking will take place this summer on the CRAFTSMAN plant in Fort Worth.

A Stanley Black & Decker statement says the 425,000-square-foot (39483.46-square meter) complex should be completed by late 2020. The plant will make a variety of CRAFTSMAN mechanics tools, including sockets, ratchets, wrenches and general sets.

“When we purchased CRAFTSMAN in 2017 we were determined to revitalize this iconic U.S. brand and bring back its American manufacturing heritage,” said Stanley Black & Decker President and CEO Jim Loree, who was a member of Connecticut’s Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Growth.

“From the launch of CRAFTSMAN’s refreshed brand identity last year to our announcement of the first new manufacturing facility in many years, we’re demonstrating our continued commitment to grow the brand …

Carolyn Glick:
As Democratic congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD) rush to defend Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for inventing a bigoted, alternative, antisemitic history of the Holocaust, it is important to consider Tlaib’s actions in the context of anti-Jewish bigotry on the one hand, and the galloping transformation of the Democratic Party into an anti-Jewish party on the other.
But first, it is important to make clear just how mendacious Tlaib’s fake history of the Holocaust is.

Tlaib made three key claims in her podcast with Yahoo! News. First, she claimed that Israel was established because of the Holocaust. Second, she claimed that the Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine/the land of Israel provided “safe haven” for the Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust. And third, she claimed that the Jews repaid the Palestinian Arabs for their kindness by dispossessing and destroying them.

All of these claims are false from beginning to end. The Jews have had a …

Bloomberg:
U.S. crude is reaching new destinations around the world after Chinese buying slowed amid concern that the growing trade dispute between the countries could result in a tax on American oil.

America shipped 470.2 million barrels to 38 countries from October through March, compared with 359.3 million to 31 nations in the previous six months, according to Census Bureau data compiled by Bloomberg. The volumes increased even as shipments to China sank nearly 80%.

“China is a large buyer of crude oil, but the fact that they don’t buy from the U.S., doesn’t mean that the U.S. doesn’t have any place to sell it,” said Sandy Fielden, an analyst at Morningstar Inc. “It just changed the destination of that U.S. crude, since crude is fungible.”

Countries such as Canada and South Korea increased their purchases, while Chile took its first cargoes. China hasn’t turned completely away from the U.S., and the Asian nation’s overall imports hit a record in April. New refineries coming online …

NY Times:
Frustrated House Democrats Pin Their Hopes on Mueller Democrats, hitting a presidential stonewall in their efforts to stoke public anger, believe that testimony from Robert S. Mueller III is the only way to clear up certain ambiguities in his report. If they are left arguing ambiguities they have no case against the Trump campaign.  Since they have no underlying crime to argue about they are not going to be able to overthrow the government on ambiguities.   I suspect the Mueller's reluctance to testify may be based on the unethical way he went after Trump associates who were charged with process crimes or unrelated crimes in an attempt to extort testimony against the President.  Now with the unethical origins of the investigation coming to light, there are more reasons to avoid testifying.

NY Times:
Republicans’ Messaging on Abortion Puts Democrats on the Defensive The unusually forceful campaign has created challenges that Democrats did not expect as they struggle to combat misinformation and thwart further efforts to undercut access to abortion. When New York state and the Governor of Virginia appeared to defend the killing of a baby born alive from a failed abortion they set off a revulsion to what was seen as infanticide.  I think it also motivated conservative legislatures to propose and pass laws to make infanticide illegal and some states started pushing the Roe envelop to include babies in the womb who have a heartbeat.  Alabama appears to have gone a step further and not bothered with nuance.  I don't think there is any misinformation being used by opponents of abortion.  There probably is a difference of opinion on the viability of the baby in the womb.  Democrats now find themselves rejecting medical science on the babies they still want to abort.

Charmaine Yoest:
In multiple settings, we are seeing a trend toward narrowing the scope of opinions allowed in the public arena. Heading into high school and college commencement season, a rising tide of ideological censorship is drowning out diversity of opinion. And academia leads the way in defining acceptable thought.

This means that as the number of “disinvitations” for conservative speakers piles up, the idea that speech equates to violence is gaining purchase. Silencing different viewpoints is not only growing on campuses, it’s also spreading to the tech world and the corporate arena.

This week Google censored the Claremont Institute, a highly regarded conservative think tank with a 40-year track record of defending American founding principles such as freedom of speech and religion. Claremont recently launched a campaign to raise awareness of illiberal speech codes and their threat to freedom; at the same time, the institute started online advertising for its upcoming annive…

Seth Barron:
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But will Trump’s tax filings, once exposed, establish his bondage to foreign despots? It’s unlikely. Tax returns, like corporate statements, don’t provide a history of financial dealings or well-being. Their ambit is limited: They report income offset by allowable losses and deductions, with the goal of determining the amount of tax owed to the government.

While debts may be inferred from the listing of interest payments, filers have no obligation to reveal which bank holds their mortgage or to provide specifics of how deals were structured. Nor does the simple Form 1040 demand that you explain what you do at your job, or how well you perform, or why you lost it.

A common reporting theme regarding Trump and taxes is that, as with Al Capone, the president could be brought to justice for one of his lesser crimes — namely, tax evasion. But Capone paid no tax at the height of his ravages; he didn’t even file returns.

No evidence suggests that Trump ever failed to file ret…

NY Times:
Alabama Aims Squarely at Roe, but the Supreme Court May Prefer Glancing Blows The court’s conservative majority may prefer to chip away at abortion rights rather than overrule Roe outright.Roe v. Wade was one of the more poorly reasoned Supreme Court cases in history and it was done to reach a controversial result which still reverberates to this day.  Most of the supporters of the decision do so based on the results they wanted and not on the merits of the argument made to justify it.  It has been described as penumbra law.  That is because the opinion could cite nothing in the constitution to directly justify the results they sought and so the justices claimed that could bootstrap a perceived right of privacy to allow the killing of babies in the womb.  The decision remains controversial, to say the least.  The courts have been reluctant to overturn the decision despite its obvious defects.  That is why most states that oppose the decision have gone with the "chip away…

Washington Examiner:
Two former top Obama administration officials are working on behalf of Huawei, even as the Chinese telecom giant faces a Trump administration that increasingly sees it as a threat to national security.

President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday likely aimed at limiting the influence of Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese companies the U.S. intelligence community and law enforcement officials see as threats.

But Samir Jain, Obama’s senior director for cybersecurity policy for the National Security Council, registered as a lobbyist for Huawei in March 2019, and James Cole, who was Obama’s deputy attorney general from 2011 to 2015, has represented Huawei since 2017 as an attorney with law firm Sidley.

Jain, whose personal biography notes he “represented the DOJ in White House cybersecurity meetings and international negotiations, such as China's agreement not to engage in cyber-enabled intellectual property theft for commercial gain,” is now lobbying for Huaw…

Chriss Street:
The biggest damage from a renewed trade war with the United States will be China's swing from 25 years as a net domestic saver to a global net borrower. More than $1 trillion in stock value was wiped out on Monday due to the collapse of the expected U.S.-China trade deal.  The American government mostly ignored the 600-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and soybean futures hitting an 11-year low, but China's central bank was forced to inject $3.5 billion into the financial system after foreign investors dumped a record $1.6 billion's worth of mainland shares and its yuan currency fell to its lowest exchange rate to the dollar in four months. U.S. stock markets on Tuesday recaptured half of Monday's plunge as new data showed that tariffs on China have resulted in deflationary import prices, and President Trump backed his base by granting farmers another $15 billion in aid to offset China tariff retaliation. Standard economic analysis projects that…

Kevin Brock:
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... His own words do not instill confidence, as evidenced during his most recent media tour last week in which he catapulted stones at all who have offended him.

President Trump is “amoral,” a “chronic liar,” who “eats your soul in small bites,” according to Comey. He claims AG Barr and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein lack inner strength and character, respectively.

This seems to be a purposeful, if questionable, strategy. The Mueller report largely has undercut any assertion by Comey that the counterintelligence investigation initiated during Comey's directorship was founded on solid legal predication.

So now Comey's game plan seems to be an appeal to emotion: We had to investigate the Trump campaign because he is such a terrible person and, as articulated by his investigator, Peter Strzok, someone who had to be “stopped.”

There’s a problem with that. FBI agents are not allowed to investigate individuals based on emotion or because they don’t li…

Fox News:
House Democrats are "heading into a world of hurt" if they escalate their fight with Attorney General Bill Barr over access to the full Robert Mueller report, according to constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley.

Turley, a George Washington University law professor, issued the warning during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. As lawmakers grilled him and other legal scholars on issues having to do with executive privilege and congressional oversight, Turley stated that while he generally tends to give weight to congressional power, they are sure to lose if they go to court for the purpose of holding Barr in contempt for not releasing the full Mueller report.

"You are heading into a world of hurt if you go to the D.C. Circuit," Turley warned.

House Democrats recently voted at the committee level to hold Barr in contempt for refusing to release a fully unredacted version of the Mueller report and underlying materials. Turley poin…

Washington Post:
White House escalates fight against Facebook, Google and Twitter by asking users to share allegations of censorship

The unprecedented campaign marks a controversial escalation of President Trump’s claims that tech giants are biased against conservatives. I suspect the White House will be flooded with examples.  I can give them two easily.  Google signed me up for them to advertise my blog which is done on their software.  At some point, they just stopped paying me and it is impossible to contact them to get an answer as to why.  Facebook no longer allows me to post links to my blog after someone falsely accused me of being abusive.  One of the first posts they blocked was one I did praising the diverse staff of the hospital that saved my life.  While Twitter has had its share of controversial moves, I have not been involved in any of them.

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix:
Exports of the Permian Basin’s newest kind of oil are set to jump as production surges, exceeding the appetite of U.S. refiners.

Sales of the new grade, known as West Texas Light, began in September, as explorers sought to separate out increasingly lighter and less sulfurous crude bubbling up from wells in West Texas and New Mexico, so it wouldn’t lessen the quality of U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate. WTL supply has grown to over 500,000 barrels a day, a nearly four-fold rise from last year.

While some of that is staying close by, most will need to be exported. Even as ample shale barrels and tighter supplies of heavier crudes have encouraged U.S. refiners to process the lightest oil since 1990, that may reach a limit soon. But since many of the biggest refineries have invested billions of dollars in upgrades over the years and are set up to run the heaviest, dirtiest oil, there’s only a certain amount of light oil they can handle.

"I suspect that refin…

Jim Newell, Slate:
Dems' Defense of Rep. Tlaib Shows They're Getting Smarter Not even the Palestinian historians defend her ahistorical claims about the Palestinians and the Holocaust.  The move by the Democrat leadership to defend her nonsense is ridiculous.

Washington Examiner:
Israeli scholars have blasted Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan congresswoman and Democrat, for her comments that her Palestinian ancestors provided a “safe haven” for Jews during the Holocaust.

"Rashida Tlaib is either completely ignorant of the history or is a deliberate liar," professor Benny Morris, a leading scholar of British Mandatory Palestine and the formation of the country of Israel, told Haaretz.

He added that Palestinians "did nothing to alleviate the suffering of the Jews at Nazi hands. Rather the opposite: The Arabs of [British Mandatory] Palestine, during the whole period — and supported by the neighboring Arab states — did all they could to prevent Jews trying to escape Nazi hands from reaching the (relatively safe) shores of Palestine."

Morris noted that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini "called for the massacre of Jews in the Arab world on Nazi radio stations — an anti-Jewish 'jihad' — and helped the Nazi…

Daily Mail:
President Donald Trump's job approval rating surpassed the half way mark in a Zogby Analytics poll published Tuesday.

In the poll, Trump earned 51 per cent approval from likely voters and 48 per cent disapproval – 2 per cent say they are unsure.

Among younger millennials, those between 18-29, Trump received 51 per cent approval, but among older millennial voters, those between 25-35-years-old, 53 per cent approval of Trump's job as president.

Those likely middle-aged voters, between 35-54, are Trump's biggest supporters, and the president earned 59 per cent approval in that demographic.
...
Not unusual to this poll, 58 per cent of men approve of Trump's job as president, while on 44 per cent of women feel the same way.
... It looks like the Democrats' manufactured "constitutional crisis" is not working out for them.  Millennials have probably benefited the most from the Trump economy which has created millions of jobs.  Perhaps it has allowed …

John Solomon:
In all Washington investigations, the essential questions become who knew it and when did they know it.

In the case of FBI informant Christopher Steele and the credibility of his now-disproven Russia collusion allegations against Donald Trump, we have some important clarity: Government officials confirm that an October 2016 email revealing that Steele met with State Department officials — a breach of protocol for an informant if it was unauthorized — was sent to an FBI counterintelligence supervisor.

Multiple sources confirm to me that the recipient of the State Department email was Special Agent Stephen Laycock, then the FBI’s section chief for Eurasian counterintelligence and now one of the bureau’s top executives as the assistant director for intelligence under Director Christopher Wray.

The email to Laycock from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec arrived eight days before the FBI swore to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that it had no de…