Fire Hydrant of Freedom

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-executive-privilege-recordings-robert-hur-interview-edward-siskel-265ab86b?mod=opinion_lead_pos2
------------
Isn't this a total admission his I don't recall testimony won't hold up to public scrutiny?

We have the transcript but can't listen for credibility in his voice?  Among the things he couldn't remember was when he was Vice President.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/full-text-robert-hur-biden-classified-documents-interview-pdf-rcna142956

Testimony that led prosecutor to conclude he was too old and senile to be held accountable for same crime his opponent is charged multiple felonies, real prison time for.
-------
WSJ:

"The privilege claim is bogus on two grounds. First, once a President waives a privilege right, it can’t be reclaimed. Mr. Biden conceded that the interview wasn’t privileged, and there’s no legal basis to say that a recording is different from a transcript.

Even if Mr. Biden had first claimed privilege over the interview, that wouldn’t pass legal muster because the interview subject didn’t concern his presidential duties or White House deliberations. It concerned his handling of documents while in the Senate, as Vice President, or as a private citizen.

Mr. Siskel’s claim that the goal is to protect the Justice Department’s “law enforcement investigations” also doesn’t work. Such a claim of law-enforcement privilege typically attends to a continuing investigation, but Mr. Hur’s work is complete. He has filed his report and closed up shop.

Mr. Siskel complains in his letter that the transcript should be sufficient and the “absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal—to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.” No doubt partisanship is at play, as it was for Democrats on Capitol Hill against Mr. Trump.

But Republicans want the audio to judge the tenor and credibility of Mr. Biden’s responses and Mr. Hur’s conclusion that the President’s faulty memory was cause not to bring an indictment in the case. The White House claim of privilege over the recordings isn’t intended to protect executive power. It’s intended to avoid presidential embarrassment.

That’s a political goal, not a legitimate legal justification."

https://instapundit.com/647805/

What happens in California - comes quickly to other states and to the nation.

Why wouldn't we have state-run refineries, we have state-closed one, don't we?

Begs the question, in what circumstance would an oil refinery not be able to turn a profit - with people paying $7/gal for gasoline?  They used to make a profit when gas was 29.9 cents.

[Answer:  Being regulated out of business.]

https://www.10news.com/news/fact-or-fiction/fact-or-fiction-california-gas-station-charging-7-per-gallon

911 Dispatch:  We'll have an ambulance right out to you ma'am, right as soon as he finds a charging station.

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-trial-against-trump-will-throw

The Trial Against Trump Will Throw the Election into Chaos
The former president has been dragged into court on a flimsy charge that rests on the testimony of a convicted liar.


By Eli Lake

May 15, 2024

When Donald Trump was indicted last year by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, I was skeptical. The indictment alleged that the 45th president had falsified payments to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, by classifying them as legal fees when in fact it was reimbursement for hush money to the porn star known as Stormy Daniels.

As the trial has unfolded over the past two months, Daniels has testified that Trump had sex with her at Lake Tahoe in 2006 and didn’t wear a condom or display much sexual endurance. Cohen testified that he dutifully made the payments to Daniels on Trump’s behalf because he was “knee-deep in the cult of Trump.” Former senior Trump aide Hope Hicks has testified to the lengths the 2016 campaign and Trump White House went to suppress stories of the former president’s past sexual scandals.

The resistance commentariat insists that Trump is going down. Republican Never Trump lawyer George Conway writes in The Atlantic that Bragg’s case is “kind of perfect.” MSNBC host and former Republican operative Nicole Wallace assures viewers that Trump’s lawyers “bombed” their cross-examination of Cohen. Former Justice Department official Andrew Weissman praises Bragg’s “crackerjack team of experienced attorneys” for building an airtight case.

But missing from this wall-to-wall coverage is any mention of the underlying crime that Trump falsified business records to advance his campaign. And that is a fatal flaw in the case, because New York law stipulates that falsifying business records can only be charged as felonies (as Bragg has done) if it’s done to further another crime. Trump has not been charged with another crime, though Bragg has floated the theory that the business records were falsified to deprive 2016 voters of information about his tryst with Daniels.

There are other flaws as well. Robert Costello, one of the lawyers who worked closely with Cohen at the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the Southern District of New York, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that his old office declined to prosecute the hush money case against Trump because Cohen was “totally unworthy of belief.”

Cohen is Bragg’s star witness. And according to Costello, Cohen told the U.S. attorney’s office in 2018 that the “payment to Daniels was his own idea, designed to try and get him back into the inner circle of Trump people in Washington.”

That is damning testimony from a far more credible source than Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress and served two and a half years in prison.

It’s still quite possible that the Manhattan jury will convict Trump on the 34 felony charges Bragg has brought. But there is no chance the conviction will withstand appeal, particularly given that it relies so heavily on Cohen’s testimony.

At best the anti-Trump “resistance” will win a Pyrrhic victory. They may get their headline: “Trump Convicted in Hush Money Trial.” But the charge will not stick.

In the meantime, Alvin Bragg has thrown the 2024 election into chaos by dragging the presumptive Republican presidential nominee into court to defend himself against an untested legal theory premised on the testimony of a convicted liar.

Trump already has proven that he will not recognize the results of elections that he doesn’t win. Bragg’s prosecution gives Trump and his supporters a ready-made excuse not to accept the results of the 2024 election should President Joe Biden prevail.

The hush money trial also gives permission and incentive to ambitious Republican prosecutors to repay Democrats in kind. Our legal system will soon be dominated by the whims of those in power as opposed to the rule of law.

Costello on Wednesday summed up the dangers of Bragg’s folly. “In the Trump case, they are seeking a conviction by any means necessary,” he said. “They do not care if it is overturned on appeal because that will likely not happen until after the election. In the meantime, they will have effectively interfered with the 2024 presidential election and perhaps influenced some voters because of an ill-gotten conviction.”

In other words, Alvin Bragg is destroying our democratic system in order to save it.

The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion has resulted in a massive increase in federal Medicaid improper payments, which soared from an estimated $14.4 billion in 2013 to $98.7 billion in 2021 as shown in this week’s Paragon Pic. The primary reason for the increase: millions of people were enrolled in Medicaid without proper eligibility reviews.

A poorly run Medicaid program harms the truly vulnerable by misallocating resources. Because of the ACA, Washington pays a much greater share of expenses for non-disabled, working-age enrollees than traditional Medicaid enrollees like low-income children, pregnant women, seniors, and individuals with disabilities. This ACA expansion elevated rate creates a large incentive for states to enroll people under the expansion criteria.

https://paragoninstitute.org/paragon-pic/the-affordable-care-acts-medicaid-expansion-caused-improper-payments-to-soar/

"An overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel in its war against Hamas over the militant group running the Gaza Strip, according to a new poll.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris survey shared with The Hill showed 80 percent of registered voters said they support Israel more in the war, while 20 percent said they support Hamas more."

https://thehill.com/policy/international/4629597-americans-israel-hamas-gaza-student-protests-poll/
-------------

[Doug]  As far as I know, Joe Biden has been a supporter of Israel his entire career. Yet he hedges on support of this operation, existential to Israel. How would we like it if some other power put constraints on our ability to fight our enemy in any of our conflicts, iraq, Afghanistan, even World War II?

Look at this politically since that's what President Biden is doing. 80% support Israel but the percentage that support this military operation is way smaller, a slight majority. Of the 20% that support hamas, let's assume all of them are Democrat or at least Left leaning.

That means 40 to 50% of the Democrat Party doesn't even support Israel to win, much less this military operation.

Politically, we look for 60/40 issues and keep finding 80/20 issues. Not to get off topic but 80% support some restriction on abortion and the Democratic party is pursuing no restrictions.  They obviously see this election as a base turnout election.

2.4% of the US is Jewish. 70% of those are Democrat. In rough numbers, 4% of Biden's base is Jewish. In a close election that is also a group he cannot afford to lose,

I wouldn't want to be Joe Biden right now or his advisors, deciding life and death and strategic policies based on which way the political winds are blowing, absent principles or convictions.

The majority of ardent Israel supporters in this country I believe are white, Christian, conservative voters who won't vote for Biden under any circumstances either.

Democrats invented this political box they live in and it has worked for them to some degree so far. Now they have to live with it. Support Israel and live with the media lies about the civilian casualties, or come to the rescue of Hamas and leave the Middle East In perpetual war.

Impossible decision if you have no backbone.

Oh no!

https://www.horvathfuneralservice.com/obituaries/stephen-browne

He had a beautiful way of writing, and very important points he was making.

If I have this right, 72 years old.  Way too young...

http://www.stephenwbrowne.com/

I hope that his writings live on.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/guess-which-huge-biden-lie-cnn-refused-fact-check

"Inflation was 9% when I came into office"

  - Oops it was 1.4%, a 6-fold lie.

"Trump lost jobs" when it was the covid closings in blue states that lost jobs.

Is anybody alive at these fact check operations?

but our sh*t doesn't stink.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240427033735/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/us/politics/yellen-us-china-trade.html

"Yellen Says China Trade Deal Has ‘Hurt American Consumers’ "
That was then.
--------------

But Biden's tariffs are "targeted".  They will do amazing good and you won't feel a thing, said the lady who brought us the worst inflation since Jimmy Carter.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/treasury-secretary-yellen-on-why-biden-is-targeting-chinese-manufacturing-with-new-tariffs

Again, the lying 'tell' is the lips moving.

It might be a good policy. It might be a bad policy. But don't tell us a major tax doesn't have a cost to it.

They sold us slow Joe as a "moderate" compromise candidate. They told us Merrick Garland would be a moderate independent voice on the Supreme Court. And what a coup it was to get a chairwoman of the independent Federal Reserve to serve in the executive branch.

Why can't they just be honest and tell us they've chosen political hacks for these positions?

They say Trump only chooses "loyalists".  What do they call these appointees who check their morals, ethics and common sense at the door when they come in?

Very interesting, Anti-Trust issues are very tricky.  The Clinton administration went after Microsoft and brought a crash on the entire tech sector.  Free market writers like Steve Moore oppose today's government actions against US tech giants like Google and Apple while these companies dominance grows.

China is a unique case.  They are an enemy and a competitor, and a supplier and a potential market.

I saw Trump's China tariffs as a tactic in support of free trade.  The end game was to break down tariffs and barriers in pursuit of free trade.  It was all interrupted by covid and US regime change.

Selling below cost isn't China's main tactic in trade (IMHO).  They also steal technology and close their market to us.  They aren't deserving of free trade, but an import tax costs us as much as it hurts them.

Now consider the idea the US under Biden is switching to a centrally planned economy with EVs in particular, also chips, solar panels and so on.

So what is our motive here:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-to-announce-new-100-tariffs-on-chinese-evs/
"Biden administration announces new tariffs on Chinese EVs, semiconductors, solar cells and more"

Is it because they are competing unfairly or because we want to be more like them?

I see a distinction between trying to break down barriers with retaliation, and us adopting their system.

It used to be that freedom beat central control every time it was tried.

The irony of it is that by banning cheaper imports we are locking ordinary Americans out of the EVs our government wants us in so badly. We are also making our own manufacturing more expensive and less competitive with the cost increases.

We ban and block our manufacturers from sourcing locally (cf. mining bans on rare earth elements) then try to protect them with tariffs to equalize the cost.

What could go wrong?

She needs profanity to get a post.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/05/13/unprecedented_use_of_public_profanity_by_vp_kamala_harris_kick_that_fg_door_down.html

This is from Dec. 2022, WSJ, (sorry I don't have access to quote more of it). 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-turns-the-us-into-a-shadow-member-of-opec-supply-profit-taxes-domestic-production-cartel-energy-11670966873

"President Biden has urged the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to increase production of oil and criticized the cartel harshly when it declines to do so—most recently on Dec. 4. But actions speak louder than words. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. has been acting as shadow member of the cartel.

America has committed itself to constrain its own supply through regulations and legislation, which has enabled OPEC to achieve record profits. The White House response to higher cartel profits was to double down by proposing a profit tax that would further limit U.S. supply. The new House Republican majority could help consumers by blocking further cartel-enabling policies."
-----------------------------

What I'm looking for is a recent quote where Biden criticizes/attacks OPEC for curtailing supply, driving up oil prices, hurting the American economy (and his chances of reelection), but the above will do.  Still true.

Curtailing supply is his policy, starting with canceling the Keystone XL pipeline his first hour in office.  Curtailing supply drives up prices, he accidentally spoke truth.  That was the point, make it harder to produce gas and oil across the land.
 Trying to get Americans to choose some other form of energy such as EVs, which also run on the fossil fuels that power our grid was a waste of good money since he hasn't done jack to replace fossil fuel grid energy with carbon free nuclear, even though it was finally in the Dem platform in 2020 after being AWOL for 48 years.

This admission is an Econ 101 breakthrough for Democrats led slow sleepy Joe.  Curtailing supply drives up prices.  Who bleeping knew, and it's exactly what he has done, and everyone knows that result, or at least the 80% who disapprove of prices of everything increasing under Biden.

He did it.  He knows it, and he tried to cover it up with his massive release of the Strategic Midterm Petroleum Reserve, but how many times can he release what he never replenished?  He's running out of tools to cover up the damage he's done to the economy, consumers, voters and the energy sector.

The only way he could fix it (ironically) would be to adopt Republican policies and it's late in the game for that.

It isn't that one gallon of gas went up $1.50.  It's the number on the credit card bill accumulating every time you fill up - if you work for a living or have any other reason to require mobility.  It's costing you thousands more per year when you figure in all of the impact.  Thousands you don't have for other spending and thousands you're not adding to your savings.  Thousands on carry forward credit card debt for millions, plus 24% compounding interest.

The amount you pay over and above true energy cost is a tax.  A tax on people making less than 400k per year, exposing a lie.  All for what??  We constrain our consuming on a path to going broke while China and India build and open more coal plants.  Total emissions are UP.

Did anyone notice cheap flights are mostly gone as well, and rich Democrats like to travel while the rest of us work.  He's hurting his own people.

Someone tell what we gained from all the unnecessary pain.  Pricing us out of energy is not how you clean the planet.  Prosperity is.  When you have more abundance and more prosperity you can work on higher pursuits.  Richer countries have always been cleaner.  cf. the mess we found in East Germany during reunification and the plastic flowing through the rivers of Africa and Asia today.

If we had abundant nuclear energy, the push for electrifying transportation might have worked.  Instead it's just one more costly, unpopular Dem failure.

Under Obama Biden, we are a state sponsor of terror and a de facto member of OPEC.  And like Putin we frame and jail our opponents.  And call it "democracy".

https://www.realclearpolling.com/latest-polls/election

I warned that early polls are irrelevant but,

Some polls are too remarkable to not remark.

Incumbent president is polling at 30% in Nevada, a state he won 4 years ago. Down by double digits.

This is not a 'rematch'. This is a race based on a new set of facts.  Democrat policies suck.

Yes, strong piece.  Persecuting good people.  Murderers get representation but Republicans don't.

"Americans used to go to a local polling place such as a neighborhood community room at the library or the local church to vote, ...."

  - There were problems then but far fewer.

One idea to end mail voting, defund the usps.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor:  “I’m not sure I understand the distinction why the states would have the power [to institute a mandate such as  OSHA’s], but the federal government wouldn’t,”

Tenth Amendment: “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/justice-sotomayor-claims-not-to-understand-the-distinction-between-state-and-federal-powers/

https://www.aol.com/news/rick-scott-using-cheap-old-205628042.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

Miami Herald attacks Sen Rick Scott for his reachout to Hispanics. 
[Doug: Are Republicans not supposed to reach out to Hispanics??
Or are they not supposed to call out Dem lies and failures?]

"Scott has shown that he will fear-monger his way to reelection by claiming Democrats are trying to turn America into a socialist country — or that “socialist teachers” may teach children that a “man can become a woman” instead of math or English, as he says in Spanish in a new ad."

Miami Herald continues:

"Republican after Republican has beaten Democrats in South Florida by evoking one thing many voters with roots in Cuba, Venezuela and other countries fear deeply: a socialist take over.

Democrats might advocate for greater government involvement in things like taxes or the rights of workers. Many voters may dislike things like welfare or higher taxes on the wealthy. But the standard definition of socialism is something different: “the collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods,” according to Merriam Webster dictionary."


[Doug]  They go on to say both sides mis-use the terms. In fact, Democrats have proposals in place to have the majority of what some earn go to the government.
 Isn't that closer to socialism than to 'free enterprise'?

But if "socialism" is only when government owns the means of production, and communism is when they do that by force and threat of government force, the only way it can happen, then what is the term for leaving ownership private but having all major decisions production decisions, like what kind of car to make, under central control? 

The correct term is Fascism.

'Fascism is an economic system that combines elements of capitalism and socialism, with a strong emphasis on state intervention and control over the economy.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism

Hey Miami Herald, stick that definition in your pipe and smoke it.

"Socialism", "Communism" and "Fascism" all (rightfully) evoke fear of government tyranny in the minds of people who lived under and escaped government tyranny. 

Florida, with all it's immigrants and true refugees, has gone Republican.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1786394088503152782

Excellent - in so many ways!!

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/surf-legend-bethany-hamilton-rips-california-officials-competition-reverses-stance-trans-athletes
---'--------

My ongoing question about this, when do women recognize that the Democratic party and the Democratic elected officials are their enemy? Girls and women's sports are important and valuable and this new ideology is destroying them. Conservatives and Republicans have their best interests in mind. When will the so-called soccer moms recognize that?

"The title sez it all"


  - Fed Chair J. Powell said, paraphrasing, we can't criticize Congress, they're our boss.

What a crock.  How can they give an honest, accurate assessment of what's happening without attacking excess spending?  It IS the problem.

Maybe they're all connected like aspen trees.
https://lifesciences.byu.edu/shared-roots-and-survival-in-the-quaking-aspen#:~:text=When%20looking%20at%20a%20forest,the%20growth%20of%20baby%20aspens.

Seriously, if we put them everywhere to eliminate "climate change", they will change wind patterns,  cause "climate change".

https://protos.com/protonmail-hands-info-to-government-but-says-its-not-google/
----------------

Protonmail hands over the info per subpoena.

I don't know if they did the right or the wrong thing but this doesn't seem as private and secure as presented.

What do others think?

Protonmail is Swiss and the subpoena was from Spain.  (Nothing to do with American laws.)

Government spending IS the campaign.

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2024/biden-trillion-dollar-spending-tracker/

https://confoundedinterest.net/2024/05/08/thats-bidenomics-us-mortgage-purchase-demand-applications-rise-2-over-past-week-but-remain-down-17-since-last-year-and-down-57-under-biden/
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(Doug)  Housing is now unaffordable.  Try spinning that in a positive way.  People can't sell.  People can't buy. Higher interest rates are only part of it.  The people who need housing the most don't have full time jobs. 

But mostly, the nation's most highly taxed and highly regulated industry is dysfunctional. Who could have seen this coming?  What is the plan to fix it?  There is no plan to fix it. 

This is a good example of why the majority have no confidence in this President to manage the economy.  Much of the problem comes from blue cities and blue state's having bad policies, but the the leadership stinks from the head.

Shortage of houses?  I have empty houses I would happily trade for cash.  But not if a third or half the proceeds go to the government on a "capital gain" that is really just inflation.

My property taxes cumulatively are now at roughly twice what I paid for the home. How much of that goes to DEI and wasteful social programs and how much goes to finance funding of essential government, roads and classrooms?  It all goes to making housing more expensive, less affordable.
----------
Here's more:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html

"For US renters, the chance of owning a home is going from bad to worse."

Mortgage rates over 7.2%, going to 9%, then going over 10%.
This is CNN.

(Doug) A lesson from history, Jimmy Carter had one term only.

Second lesson from history.  Voters gave Reagan a Democrat House, and the recession that followed inflation was painful.  Don't do that with Trump 2024 if you want policies and solutions.

Rent is also getting less affordable. The CNN article goes on to say or imply, my words, the worst this gets the more government will do to make it worse yet.

Confidence in a president running for reelection to fix the economy is the lowest under Biden since Gallup first tracked the metric, according to the pollster.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/2992228/historically-low-confidence-biden-fed-economy/

"The decline in reported crimes is a function of less reporting, not less crime) "

  - This is right. People don't report crimes when they know there will be no investigation, no arrest, no prosecution. For survival in the city, it is safer to just look the other way.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/unscientific-american