PrairiePundit

Liz Peek:
Larry Summers is grumpy that President Trump is taking credit for the booming economy. Wait until the former mastermind of President Obama’s economic strategy sees the most recent IBD/TIPP Poll. That survey, according to Investor’s Business Daily, shows Americans giving President Trump an “A” for his handling of the economy.

The poll shows their “Economic Optimism” index climbing in August to 58, the second-highest mark since January 2004.

In addition, they note other indicators that the nation’s mood has brightened:
In August, respondents rated their “Quality of Life” at 64.2; the previous all-time high was 63.1, recorded in January 2004.The average under President Obama was 53.7.Similarly, the latest reading on “Direction of the Country” hit 50.3, up 13 percent from the prior month, and the highest recorded since 2005. That compares to a 17-year average of 41.6 and an average of 37 during President Obama’s time in office.The “Financial Stress Index,” which has averaged 59.4 si…

Republicans in Michigan nominated an outstanding candidate for the Senate

Lloyd Marcus:
White Republican Michigan Voters Chose a Black Guy

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John James is a combat veteran endorsed by President Trump. But wait a minute. According to fake news media and Democrats, Trump hates blacks. That's another hate-generating evil lie promoted by the American left.

It is extremely exciting and refreshing to see a fellow black American in the political arena evoking traditional principles, which lead to real empowerment and success – not just for blacks, but for all Americans. America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all who choose to go for it. And yet, evil leftists relentlessly seek to hide this truth from the masses, particularly minorities. Leftists want blacks believing that white America schemes 24-7 to keep blacks down and that blacks' only hope is to keep voting for Democrats. Disgusting.
... He is running against a Democrat incumbent who is polling below 50 percent. He has a real shot and deserves the support of the GOP.

Strzok was fired for lack of candor on FISA application?

Sara Carter:
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“Strzok was under oath before Congress and he made statements that appeared to be false and refused to answer some questions, but he was going to get just a slap on the wrist,” said a former supervisory special agent from OPR adjudication, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the nature of their work. “There is absolutely no wiggle room when it comes to lack of candor in the FBI…unless you’re an SES (Senior Executive Service). Strzok’s firing went well beyond texting about Trump. Strzok would have also been involved in the handling of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) application to the FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court)…” The agent noted that Strzok was “well aware that he was lying by deception when they did not include the information on who paid for the dossier and (that) Bruce Ohr was back-channeling information for a discredited source.”

“Strzok knew they were not putting the application in the right context,” the former FBI supe…

Where was this Op-ed when Obama was laying waste to the the US immigration laws?

NY Times Op-ed:
Trump’s Sabotage of Obamacare Is IllegalBy NICHOLAS BAGLEY and ABBE R. GLUCK A president doesn’t have the right to dispense with laws he dislikes. Trump is a piker when compared to Obama with his rule by pen and phone. Congress is at least doing some aspects of killing off one of the most hated laws in the history of the US. The only good think about Obamacare is that it led to a GOP Congress.

This is a funny story that appears to be entirely unintentional

streiff:
This WaPo Article Is Guaranteed To Lead To Trump’s Impeachment…Or His Reelection A reporter has an "expose" on a patch on a biker's vest at a gathering with the President. Who knew that some men like guns and boobs?

Source for Steele dossier was Russian living in US with ties to Fusion GPS?

J.E. Dyer:
Was Steele Dossier ‘Russian Intel Source’ In June 2016 Trump Tower Meeting?
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Solomon rightly points out that the notes are illuminating. There’s a lot to say about that. But in my view, none of the nuggets from Ohr’s notes is as illuminating as this one:

Simpson allegedly acknowledged that most of the information Fusion GPS and British intelligence operative Christopher Steele developed did not come from sources inside Moscow. “Much of the collection about the Trump campaign ties to Russia comes from a former Russian intelligence officer (? not entirely clear) who lives in the U.S.,” Ohr scribbled in his notes. ...
But there is one person in particular who is described by everyone who writes or speaks about him with a “question mark, not entirely clear” caveat slapped onto his characterization as a former Russian intelligence officer.

That person, who was in professional contact with Glenn Simpson since at least December 2015 (according to congressional testimony in Nov…

The flight of capital to the US

Monty L. Donohew:
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Turkey provides an excellent example of capital flight, and insight into Trump's economic and foreign policy strategy. The Turkish lira is plummeting. It is plummeting because the Trump administration announced that it would "review" Turkey’s duty-free access to the U.S. market, after Turkey hit the U.S. with tariffs on U.S. goods in response to American tariffs on steel and aluminum. President Trump also hit Turkey with sanctions over the country’s hostile detainment of an American pastor. The result is that capital is fleeing Turkey, because according to the Wall Street Journal, investors are alarmed by the amount of control Turkish president Erdogan holds over monetary policy. Analysts bluntly told the Journal that improving relations with the U.S. and raising interest rates would help stabilize the country’s currency. Turkey has refused to do either. Capital flees Turkey because Turkey is unsafe.
...
Some economist have struggled to underst…

It is time to blacklist the academic black listers of Trump officials

Daily Wire:
Harvard Professor Calls For Academic Blacklisting Of Trump Administration Members

"...there is the danger of normalizing and legitimizing what can only be described as an odious presidency." Rather than allowing these people to "normalize" their anti-administration bigotry, the appropriate response should be to cut off federal funding to any institution that participates in the blacklisting effort. The odious liberal education establishment should not be legitimized.

Trump administration on track to meet goal for reducing regulations

Washington Examiner:
Federal agencies, led by Labor and Health and Human Services, are cutting Obama-era regulations and saving money faster than demanded by President Trump, according to a new report.

And as a result, the administration is expected to easily meet the president’s order to cut at least two old regulations for every new one issued and cut the costs of regulations.

“With less than two months remaining in FY 2018, the Trump administration is well on its way to surpassing its regulatory budget goals,” said the new report from American Action Forum, which charts federal regulations.
... Twelve of 200 agencies have already met or surpassed the saving target. The leading regulation cutter is the Labor Department followed by Health and Human Services. What I find remarkable is how few stories there are suggesting that the lack of regulation has been harmful. In fact, it is part of the net positive that has resulted in the growth of the economy.

Does the media have the unredacted FISA application?

Conservative Tree House:
The Media Are Hiding Their Knowledge and Duplicity – Buzzfeed, WaPo and New York Times Had Unredacted FISA Application For Over A Year… The writer relies on the indictment of James Wolfe who is accused of passing on the FISA application to reporters. The theory makes some sense. I suspect that the media is using its protected status to cover up for those accused in the leaks.

Climate change crowd willfully ignorant when it comes to forest management to prevent fires

Washington Times:
Here in the town dubbed the “gateway to the Sierras,” the haze from the Ferguson Fire is fading as Yosemite National Park prepares to reopen, but the debate over how to stop wildfires from razing the state again next year continues to smolder.

California’s catastrophic wildfire season has illuminated the yearslong stalemate between those who want to cut back the overgrown, beetle-infested national forests and environmentalists who have axed efforts to fell more trees, blaming the destructive fires on climate change.

Now the Trump administration is moving to break the logjam. As he tours one California fire site after another this summer, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has pressed for more active forest management while throwing cold water on the climate-first approach.

“I’ve heard the climate change argument back and forth,” Mr. Zinke told KCRA3 in Sacramento on Sunday. “This has nothing to do with climate change. This has to do with active forest management.”

His com…

Trump says he never insulted blacks because of race

Washington Examiner:
Trump: 'Apprentice' producer called to say there are no N-word tapes I do not think Trump is a racist. He treats blacks who attack him the same way he treats any other political opponent. If you attack Trump he is unlikely to turn the other cheek. I think those who are complaining about his treatment are acting like they have a protected status because of their race. That they are treated like any other Trump opponent seems to be a shock to them and they respond with the race card.

Lindsay Graham was one of the first to point out this phenomenon. He was spot on. If you attack Trump, you should expect a counterattack. In that regard, Trump is the opposite of a racist.

Discounts on US crude exports result in fewer sales to China

Fuel Fix:
ew Chinese tariffs are set to affect a wide array of refined products and plastics exports from Houston, but for now crude oil and liquefied natural gas exports are exempted.

Still, crude exports from Texas to China have fallen sharply this summer in part due to fears over President Trump's ongoing trade war and also because of shrinking discounts on U.S. crude oil, said Sandy Fielden, director of oil and products research at Morningstar.

Instead, China, which surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest crude importer last year, is buying more oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia.

U.S. energy companies are learning they need to build better long-term relationships with Asian nations, especially China, to sell crude, LNG and other petroleum products, Fielden argued. About 75 percent of U.S. crude exports come from the Texas Gulf Coast.

"The industry is figuring out there is more to export markets than delivering crude to Houston or Corpus Christi docks by pipeline and …

The economy is 25 percent weaker because of regulations since 1980

Mercatus:
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Economic growth in the United States has, on average, been slowed by 0.8 percent per year since 1980 owing to the cumulative effects of regulation:

If regulation had been held constant at levels observed in 1980, the US economy would have been about 25 percent larger than it actually was as of 2012.This means that in 2012, the economy was $4 trillion smaller than it would have been in the absence of regulatory growth since 1980.This amounts to a loss of approximately $13,000 per capita, a significant amount of money for most American workers.
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Endogenous growth theory builds on the idea that economic growth is primarily dependent on decisions made by actors in the economy—firms and individuals—rather than on external factors.

Economic growth is dependent on investment. Economic growth in a particular industry is determined by investment in knowledge creation, such as research and development, and the way that such investment leads to innovation and increases in producti…

Trump administration not micromanaging drone strikes against terrorist

Defense One:
President Donald Trump has dramatically expanded the war on terror. But you—and perhaps he—would never know it.

Since he came into office, Trump has reportedly abandoned Obama-era rules governing the use of drones in non-combat theaters such as Somalia and Libya. Whereas Obama operationally expanded but bureaucratically constrained drones’ use, from what we can tell, Trump’s new rules instead vest strike decisions with military commanders, without requiring approval from the White House.

Superficially, this approach may have some logic to it. Use of drones, like most all counterterrorism efforts, is complex and multifaceted, requiring a careful balancing of military necessity with concepts of morality, legality, and fair play in war-making. Behind closed doors, the Bush and Obama administrations spent a great deal of time learning critical lessons on their employment as these newer platforms were tested on battlefields unlike any the United States had fought on before (as w…

Manipulation out in the open by the anti-Trump media

Thomas Lifson:
This week, leading wordsmiths at two of the nation’s major newspapers openly propounded the need for the media to work together (also known as “conspire”) to defeat Donald Trump. The age of metropolitan dailies pretending to be unbiased sources of news officially is over.
At the New York Times, Thomas Friedman called on the media to defeat Trump in 2020 by targeting specific demographic slices of the electorate. He thereby moves from columnist to campaign consultant.
In a close election it doesn’t take many uncomfortable moderate Republicans to just stay home to make a big difference. He calls on his colleagues to focus on random people whom show up at Trump rallies wearing shorts or signs that Friedman doesn’t like:
Yes, I want every American to know that two Trump supporters were spotted at the president’s last rally, in Ohio, wearing T-shirts that read, “I’d rather be Russian than a Democrat.”Two supporters out of thousands. Would Friedman suggest collectively publiciz…

The curious timing of Nellie Ohr's ham radio activity

George Parry:
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Recall that, in early 2016, NSA head Admiral Mike Rogers became aware of “ongoing” and “intentional” violations and abuse of FISA surveillance, which he subsequently exposed in testimony before Congress. Thereafter, pressure mounted within the Obama administration to fire him.

The week after the presidential election, when he was facing removal from his post, Rogers visited the president-elect at Trump Tower. On November 19, 2016, Reuters reported that Rogers’ decision “to travel to New York to meet with Trump on Thursday without notifying superiors caused consternation at senior levels of the [Obama] administration.”

The day following Rogers’ visit, the president-elect’s transition team vacated Trump Tower and moved its operations to New Jersey. Was this because Rogers had warned Trump that he and his transition team were being subjected to illegal government surveillance? While that is unknown, it is clear that Rogers was not and had never been an Obama team player,…

Making it harder for Democrats to cheat in elections

NY Times:
Shifting Its Stance on Voting Rights, U.S. Embraces Limits
The Obama Justice Department fought voter-ID laws, aggressive purges of voter rolls and dilution of minority votes.Under President Trump, the department often does the opposite. Voter ID laws are common sense to most voters regardless of party.

The main opposition comes from Democrat activists who have a racist concept of some of their own voters. They argue that some blacks and Hispanics are so low functioning that they are incapable of getting an ID. My experience suggests that is absurd. Both blacks and Hispanics are perfectly capable of getting an ID and in fact, most of them already have one.

The scrubbing of voter rolls to find double registrations and people who are no longer voting also makes sense. When you consider that dead people on the rolls and no ID requirement is an invitation for election fraud, it makes sense to stop it.

Media begins orchestrated whining attack on Trump

Power Line:
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First, the Boston Globe organizes a media protest against the Trump administration’s “assault on the press.”
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Personally, I am more unhappy about the press’s assault on President Trump than about President Trump’s assault on the press. To listen to our heroic journalists, you might think that Trump is sending secret policemen to cart them off to prison. No such thing, of course. Rather, Trump is saying things about left-wing press outlets that are nowhere near as nasty as what they have been saying about him since before his inauguration. Democratic Party journalists declared war on the president, and they now pretend that his fighting back is somehow an infringement of their rights. Boo freaking hoo. Next, on a similar theme, we hear from Dani Rodrik, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Rodrik is concerned lest educational institutions “normalize” historically low unemployment, steady wage increases and a pro-America foreign policy: The Trump administration confront…

The Clinton campaign's inside job at DOJ

Washington Examiner:
Devin Nunes: Clinton campaign colluded with 'nearly every' top official at the DOJ and FBI

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Ohr's wife, Nellie, was employed by Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier in an effort that was funded in part by Democrats, to assist in the cultivation of research on then-candidate Trump. Nunes stressed the need to have her testify too.

"She also was working for Fusion GPS, working for the Clinton campaign," he said. "So here you have information flowing from the Clinton campaign from the Russians, likely I believe was handed directly from Russian propaganda arms to the Clinton campaign, fed into the top levels of the FBI and Department of Justice to open up a counter intelligence investigation into a political campaign that has now colluded [with] nearly every top official at the DOJ and FBI over the course of the last couple years. Absolutely amazing."

Nunes and fellow GOP chairmen Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., …

Democrats in Maryland try to run against Trump in attempt to defeat popular GOP governor--It is not working

Washington Times:
Maryland Democrats are hoping voters are so dismayed by what is happening across the border in the District of Columbia that they will take it out on Gov. Larry Hogan in this year’s elections.

Mr. Hogan is among the most popular governors in the country despite being a Republican in deep-blue Maryland, and Democrats are desperate to try to ruin the relationship. One of their chief weapons is President Trump.

In one line of attack, Democrats are demanding that Mr. Hogan take a stand on Mr. Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court and say the fate of abortion rights hangs on the next justice.

Democrats also have accused Mr. Hogan of joining Mr. Trump to undermine the legitimacy of the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Mr. Hogan said those issues aren’t relevant to his job, and voters so far seem to be OK with that.

“Sticking Trump to Hogan has really just not worked,” said Todd Eberly, a political science profess…

Exxon joins Kinder-Morgan in gas pipeline from Permian Basin to connect with regional pipelines Southwest of Houston

Fuel Fix:
Exxon Mobil is signing on as a major customer on Kinder Morgan's planned, $2 billion Permian Highway Pipeline to carry natural gas from West Texas to the Houston region.

Irving-based Exxon Mobil is looking for more outlets to transport its natural gas from its rapidly increasing Permian Basin production. While crude oil is the main focus of production, there's a lot of still-valuable associated gas that comes out of the Permian wells too.

Houston-based pipeline giant Kinder Morgan proposed the Permian Highway Pipeline project in June in a partnership with Midland-based EagleClaw Midstream. EagleClaw is financially backed by the New York private equity giant Blackstone Group.

Kinder Morgan and EagleClaw also are partnered with Houston-based oil and gas producer Apache Corp., which which has the option to buy a one-third stake in the pipeline. Apache announced earlier this week that it's forming its own Permian-focused pipeline company called Altus Midstream, which…

Because they lack the capacity to give informed consent?

Washington Post Op-ed:
Why are nursing homes drugging dementia patients without their consent? I would think they would talk to a spouse or other close relatives like a child of the patient to get consent for the meds.

The overrated threat of 'white nationalism'

NY Times:
Rally by White Nationalists Was Over Almost Before It Began
A year after violence in Charlottesville, Va., a group of white nationalists marched through downtown Washington on their way to a rally in front of the White House.They were far outnumbered along their route and at the rally site by thousands of counterdemonstrators denouncing racism and white supremacy. I live in Texas and to my knowledge, I have never met a "white nationalist." I have been under the impression that to the extent there are people who claim to be one, there really are not many of them and this gathering appears to confirm that point. They do appear to be a convenient foil for the left to call people racists and demonstrate their abilities at virtue signaling.

Whataboutism is a phrase used by liberals to excuse hypocrisy

Washington Post Editorial:
Don’t fall for Trump’s latest whataboutism Liberals find their hypocrisy inconvenient to their arguments. Media criticism of Trump is mainly preaching to the liberal choir. That is why things like the story below will be largely ignored.
‘Not the enemy of the people’: At least 70 news organizations will blast Trump’s attacks on the media The editorial board of the Boston Globe is proposing that newspapers across the nation express their disdain for the president’s rhetoric on Aug. 16 with the best weapon they have: their collective voice. The media got that label when they decided that Trump was so bad he did not deserve to be treated fairly. Even since then the media has gone 90 to 95 percent negative in its stories about Trump and his supporters are tuning them out. Meanwhile conservative voices at Fox and shows like Rush Limbaugh are more popular than ever and the liberal media remains in a funk.

The 'Steele Dossier' was a compilation of several people from Fusion GPS and people with links to those who were with Fusion GPS

The Mechanics of Deception:
Much has been said and written about Christopher Steele’s authorship of the notorious document that alleges Russia-Trump collusion. According to Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS (who plead the Fifth and only spoke through his lawyers), Steele was hired by them in June 2016 to gather information about “links between Russia and [then-presidential candidate] Donald Trump.” Pursuant to that business arrangement, Steele prepared a series of reports styled as intelligence briefings, some of which were later compiled into a collection of documents and published by a number of media outlets and later become known as the “Trump dossier.” On the face of the dossier, it appears that Steele gathered his data from multiple sources in Russia, former Soviet union (FSU) countries, and the US. He then edited the raw intelligence—which seems to be a combination of conversations and notes—organized it in a summarized brief format, and published/leaked it in parts or in its entirety …

The art of the perjury trap

Andrew McCarthy:
Studies will someday be done on the deleterious effect Donald Trump has had on the brains of people who loathe him. It drives them to say things that are as palpably foolish as some of the president’s own doozies. This week’s winner: There is no such thing as a “perjury trap.”

Because some of the people making this nonsensical claim are very smart, let’s stipulate that the heated moment we find ourselves in is driven by politics, not law or logic.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller wants to interview President Trump. President Trump’s legal team is taking the public position that, although the president wants bigly to answer Mueller’s questions, the lawyers are discouraging this because it could be a “perjury trap.” That is, Mueller’s prosecutors could be plotting to trip the president up, to dazzle him into saying something inaccurate that could be grist for a false-statements prosecution.

Of course, this drives Trump antagonists to distraction. They point out that the p…

Blue wave could hit the rocks in Minnesota House races

AP:
For all the talk of a blue wave sweeping Democrats back into the House majority this fall, their efforts could be thwarted in one of the nation's bluest states.

Voters in the sprawling farm country south of Minneapolis and in the economically struggling Iron Range along the Canadian border give Republicans in those two congressional districts perhaps their best chance anywhere for flipping Democratic seats. Democrats need to pick up 23 seats in November to retake the House, but the odds grow long if they lose districts they currently hold.

Democratic incumbents in both Minnesota districts are leaving office, and the races to replace them are widely rated as tossups. President Donald Trump carried both by about 15 points in 2016, even as Hillary Clinton narrowly won Minnesota.

"Minnesota is going to be ground zero for control of the House," said Corry Bliss, director of the Conservative Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Former U.S. Rep…

Turkey's hostage extortion backfires and economy craters

Washington Times:
Erdogan: U.S. waging 'economic war' against Turkey Erdogan started this tailspin by taking an American minister hostage in an attempt to get a Turkish national extradited. However, he failed to file proper extradition papers are offering any evidence that the may he wanted was involved in the coup attempt against him.

He later failed to deliver the minister when there was a deal for his release. Trump retaliated with sanctions on a couple of Turkish ministers and Erdogan attempted to do the same. That is when Trump imposed sanctions on Turkish steel and aluminum. That put the Turkish economy in a tailspin.

Erdogan is an Islamist despot who thinks God will bail him out. It looks like God is not on his side in this fight. He needs to get smart and release his hostage.

Critics who said Trump would destroy economy, now credit Obama for Trump's economic growth

IBD:
The stronger the economy gets under President Trump, the more desperate his critics are to hand credit over to Obama. Even if that entails changing the past.

A recent New York Times story says it all: "An Economic Upturn Begun Under Obama Is Now Trump's To Tout."

The article begins by admitting that "by nearly every standard measure, the American economy is doing well," then spends the next 1,400 words arguing that the current good times have nothing to do with Trump's economic agenda.

The economy, reporter Patricia Cohen declares, "is following the upward trajectory begun under President Barack Obama."

Upward trajectory?

We seem to recall that the economy was stagnating in 2016 after the weakest recovery from a recession since the Great Depression.

In fact, The New York Times itself described Obama's economy this way in August 2016: "For three quarters in a row, the growth rate of the economy has hovered around a mere 1%. In the las…

Trump Tower meeting is actual evidence that there was no collusion with the Russians by the Trump campaign

Peter Wallison:
President Trump’s media and congressional opponents continue to see great significance in the now-famous June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. Since the meeting was revealed, over year ago, it has provoked Trump’s opponents to feats of overstatement previously achieved only by Trump himself. Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate, called it “treason” and the New York Times and other media critics of the president have warned darkly that the meeting is evidence of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia.

This is odd. If anything, the circumstances surrounding the meeting demonstrate that, at least in June 2016—less than two months before the FBI opened its investigation of the Trump campaign—there had been no collusion. And logic dictates there was none afterward, as noted below.
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Although this is not the inference the Times wanted its readers to draw, if the Mueller investigation is in fact looking closely at the Trump Towe…

A misleading headline leads story where Trump condemned all racism

NY Times:
Before Rally, Trump Does Not Condemn White Supremacists
As white nationalists planned to gather in front of the White House on Sunday, President Trump denounced “all types of racism” but did not specifically condemn the supremacists. This is another example of media bias. This is from a paper that recently hired an anti-white racist who also is an anti-male bigot. It ignores the obvious that if you condemn all racism you are also condemning white supremacists. The Times is just being obtuse. They keep going out of their way to misleadingly claim Trump is racist.

Democrats have created the nation's worst cities

Patheos:
Where Democrats rule, cities crumble. The worst four cities are all run by Democrats, and it’s been this way by decades.

All of the worst-run cities are run by Democrats with the exception of Gulfport, Mississippi.

CBS has the story:

Washington D.C. may be the nation’s capitol, but a new survey is also calling it the “worst-run” city in America.

Personal finance website WalletHub has released its rankings for the worst big cities in the country and found that several high-profile places are at the bottom of the list when it comes to city management and operating efficiency.

The article goes on to list the cities that bear this dubious honor:

Washington D.C.Detroit, Mich.New York City, N.Y.San Francisco, Calif.Gulfport, Miss.Oakland, Calif.Chattanooga, Tenn.Flint, Mich.Cleveland, OhioHartford, Conn.
I probably don’t have to tell you this, but I will just for the sake of clarity. The District of Columbia earned the sash which reads, “Worst City when It Comes to Budget per Capi…

Chinese leaders criticized for their handling of trade war with Trump

CNBC:
A growing trade war with the United States is causing rifts within China's Communist Party, with some critics saying that an overly nationalistic Chinese stance may have hardened the U.S. position, according to four sources close to the government.

President Xi Jinping still has a firm grip on power, but an unusual surge of criticism about economic policy and how the government has handled the trade war has revealed rare cracks in the ruling Communist Party.

A backlash is being felt at the highest levels of the government, possibly hitting a close aide to Xi, his ideology chief and strategist Wang Huning, according to two sources familiar with discussions in leadership circles.

A prominent and influential academic whose views have found favor in some party quarters has also come under attack for his strident views on Chinese power.

Wang, who was the architect of the "China Dream", Xi's vision for China to become a strong and prosperous nation, has been taken to…

Texas dominates cities with most growth

Breitbart:
Magnify Money, a consumer finance website, released a new study this week that found Texas dominated the list of U.S. “boomtowns” and Austin scored the top spot.

“Americans are flocking to and prospering in Texas,” wrote Kali McFadden, a Magnify Money senior analyst. She said Lone Star State metros represented one-third of the top 15 spots on their rankings. Five of the six Texas cities on the list placed in the top 11.

“We wanted to find out where Americans are gathering now to take advantage of growing prosperity and improved lifestyles to achieve the American dream,” said McFadden.

Magnify Money researchers examined the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) over the five year period from 2011 to 2016 using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and County Business Patterns. Researchers focused on business growth, population and housing, and workforce and earnings. Boomtowns saw the biggest influx of people, work opportunities, and bu…

What a strange example of Twitter banning decision