90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, April 26, 2019

US economy surges at the start of 2019 to 3.2 percent GDP!!

The US economy kicked into high gear in the first three months of the year, quashing fears of a slowdown, the government reported Friday.

The unexpected surge will be welcome news for President Donald Trump, whose policies have jump-started the economy with lower taxes and pro-growth policies.

GDP expanded at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the January-March period, smashing economists' expectations and surpassing the 2.2 percent growth in the final quarter of 2018, the Commerce Department said it its initial estimate.

The hotter growth was driven by a dip in imports, a bump in spending by state and local governments, faster inventory building by companies and some recovery in home sales.

And officials said it would likely have been even stronger without the government shutdown because dip in spending by government workers likely shaved 0.3 percentage points off growth in the quarter.

It was the strongest performance for a first quarter in four years, the growth estimate will be revised in May and June as more data come in. The revision trend has been positive since President Trump took office.

The White House rejected concerns about a slowdown amid signs of declining retail sales and manufacturing, and remained steadfast in its predictions that the boost from tax cuts would continue to drive growth.

As the broad field of Democratic presidential candidates begin honing their messages ahead of next year's elections, resilient US growth gives them little but identity politics to hold on to.

Spending on by the federal government was unchanged as a result but state and local government outlays rose 3.9 percent, the largest increase in three years, as states and cities spent more on improving America's infrastructure by building highways and streets.

Imports, which subtract from GDP growth, also fell by the largest amount in almost 10 years, as Americans bought fewer foreign cars and took fewer overseas vacations.

This article was edited by Mike Miles to correct leftist bias. See the original article at link below.

Executions aren’t this cold-blooded, or clear, in mob movies.

Over five tense minutes caught on a video camera secretly installed in a Miami parking garage, a one-time member of a notorious Latin gang methodically preps and hides his handgun, then chats with his friend before pulling the weapon. His victims begs for his life, at times with the two men face to face, before the shooter once known as Psycho blasts away at close range.

Brutal video evidence aside, it might rank as a typical South Florida murder except that accused gunman, David Paneque, was supposed to have been deported nearly two years ago. But immigration authorities had to release him to the streets.

The reason: Paneque is Cuban. Even under renewed diplomatic relations established under former President Barack Obama, the island accepts back relatively few of its criminal citizens. Deportations to Cuba have risen under the aggressive policies pursued by President Donald Trump but still number only in the hundreds.

“Where are they going to send me? Cuba doesn’t want me,” Paneque joked during questioning by Miami-Dade police just before his latest arrest. “They don’t want me here. They don’t want me there.”

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office on Wednesday formally charged Paneque, 29, with the murder of Leandro Lopez. Police say the motive of the murder remains unclear.

Paneque, who remains jailed while awaiting trial, pleaded not guilty. His attorney declined to comment.

David Paneque, 29, is accused of murdering Leandro Lopez, 31, on March 24, 2019, at a West Miami-Dade strip mall.

The Miami murder case could add to a national immigration debate that has become highly politicized, with the White House elevating border walls and crackdowns on illegal immigration into a signature policy. Undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America implicated in high-profile crimes have become social media lightning rods for the president and many supporters. But Cuban Americans, generally seen as important political allies for Republicans, have enjoyed a special status owing to more lenient immigration policies for people escaping the Communist government.

Former Miami U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, who last year introduced an immigration reform bill that failed, said his proposal would have addressed dangerous felons like Paneque, allowing for their indefinite detention if they could not be deported.

“This illustrates a major flaw in our immigration laws. Even though this individual is an undocumented immigrant with a history of violent crime, by law, he had to be released,” said Curbelo, a Republican who lost his seat to Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

Paneque was 17 when he was first arrested for a violent crime.

According to police, he robbed a man at knifepoint outside a West Kendall restaurant in November 2007. During the “violent struggle,” the man was stabbed multiple times and airlifted to a hospital trauma center, according to an arrest report. Paneque, whose listed street name at the time was “Psycho,” was later caught trying to cash the man’s checks. At the time, he was also on probation on a conviction for... (video at link)

On Wednesday night’s Ingraham Angle, there was a magnificent discussion about the sham Trump investigation with Rudy Giuliani, Joe diGenova and former Whitewater independent counsel Robert Ray that absolutely must not be missed. And I say that not because I was subbing for Laura Ingraham at the time.

After being on defense — with his hands legally tied — for the first two years of his Presidency, President Trump is finally able to go on offense, as he can no longer be accused of “interfering with the Russia investigation.”

But something else is afoot as well. According to diGenova, and here is the tremendous breaking news: The FISA court has been looking into abuses of the FISA system and has communicated with the Justice Department about its findings. Their chief judge has already determined that for more than four years before the election of Donald Trump, there was an illegal spying operation (yes, spying — and, yes, illegal) going on by four FBI contractors to break the law to steal personal electronic information about American citizens and to use it against the Republican Party.

It might be good to go back and read that last sentence again, slowly, and let it sink in.

Bombshell Reports

The people heading up the Justice Department at that time — including Attorney General (AG) Sally Yates and Assistant AG John Carlin — apparently knew about it and lied to the FISA court. It seems that by the time they withheld the political origins of Christopher Steele’s Trump “dossier” to the court, it was already business as usual to deceive those judges, who no doubt have steam coming out of their ears.

There will be grand juries and indictments, according to diGenova, who knows how this works because he happens to have been one of the original lawyers on the FISA court. He said, “John Brennan isn’t going to need one lawyer — he’s going to need five.”

So, if the Obama FBI was conducting these kinds of abuses all that time, we’ve got a serious violation of civil liberties on our hands. As I pointed out on the show, this revelation brings home what Jared Kushner was saying the other day about the investigation into Trump causing more damage than the Russians did.

Civil libertarians should be enraged. “I think the investigation is going to end up being very, very intense,” Giuliani said. He added, “I agree that Attorney General Barr is exactly the right guy to do it. He’s got a great sense of justice … What they did with this court is an outrage, and it’s got to be corrected because we all can be invaded like this.”

DiGenova said that in addition to Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, which is expected out in May or early June, there’s another big one scheduled to drop in two weeks: the one just on James Comey. This one will be “a bombshell,” he said (and, unlike the hacks at CNN and MSNBC, he doesn’t throw that word around lightly). “It’s going to open up the investigation on a very high note, and there will be criminal referrals in it.”

Abusing the FISA Process

Keep in mind, the misuse of the FISA court is central to this entire governmental abuse of power. It can be weaponized to go after political enemies, as happened with Trump, and it can also be used to gather information on you and me. This investigation could lead far beyond the uncovering of political hanky-panky, although that is tremendously important. It could lead to an entire refiguring of the FISA process, maybe even an end to...