WINNING.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Wow! John Kerry on the Ukraine Prosecutor
Wow! John Kerry on the Ukraine Prosecutor— TheSharpEdge (@TheSharpEdge1) February 4, 2020
As Sec of State I was deeply involved in this. ALL of us in the administration were trying to get rid of that prosecutor, from Obama to the Sec of State to the VP. ALL of us were working on that...the ambassador. https://t.co/fFj5zx8BPs pic.twitter.com/GYwJp6K1EY
Seems Like Whenever One One These Corrupt Kleptocrats Sense Trouble, They Threaten To Run For President...
John Kerry Overheard Discussing a Run for President as Democratic Angst Over Sanders Comes to a Boil
The 5 Biggest News Media Lies During Impeachment
Throughout the impeachment process, the news media echoed constant lies from Democrats. Thankfully, it didn't work.
There is no shortage of blame to go around for the impeachment follies that wasted America’s time for the past five months. To be fair, congressional Democrats own the lion’s share of this blame, but they could not have done it alone. This ridiculous effort would never have gotten off the ground had Democrats not been confident that a compliant news media would play lap dog for them, licking up lies at every turn.
It was bad enough that most of the news media trumped up minor developments as major revelations throughout the process. In many cases, they simply failed to apply the slightest bit of incredulity when House Democrats made demonstrably false assertions. Five incidents stood out over this impeachment process, but there were many, many more.
1. Republicans Aren’t Arguing the Facts
Over and over during the House impeachment process we heard from the left that Republicans were not arguing the facts but instead just harping on what they called an unfair process. Did the GOP say the process was unfair? Yes. Was the process unfair? Yes. But the Republicans in the House were also arguing the facts, and arguing them pretty well.
This is a consistent theme in all of this. Confronted with several arguments from the president’s supporters, the mainstream media always selected only the ones they thought helped Democrats. The House Republicans made a simple argument based on four facts that never change. 1. There is no quid pro quo in the transcript. 2. Both Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky said there was no pressure. 3. Zelensky did not know U.S. aid was held up. 4. The aid was released with no announcement of investigations.
Those are not process arguments.
2. Gordon Sondland Did Not Say He Knew a Quid pro Quo Happened
European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland caused a stir when he changed his testimony in the secret House hearings. He said there was no quid pro quo linking military aid to investigations, then said there was in open testimony. Surely this was the final straw that would break Trump. But when pressed by Republicans, Sondland admitted that he was just presuming this was why the aid was held up. He had no actual knowledge from anyone to back that up.
But this of course did not stop the news media from pointing at Sondland as the next big domino falling towards Trump’s demise. Sondland’s presumption somehow became a fact.
3. Alan Dershowitz Didn’t Say the President Could Do Anything
The news media bungled Alan Dershowitz’s presentation for the president in myriad ways, but none more awful than their misrepresentation of his remarks during questions from senators. There Dershowitz said that...
Please Get Better Rush, We Need You...
I Freaking Love Rush Limbaugh.
More Rush:
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Rush Limbaugh Celebrates 30 Years of Syndication
Over Half Of China Shut Down In Bid to Halt Spread Of Coronavirus; U.S. Readies For 'Pandemic'
It appears as though the coronavirus is spiraling out of control.
From CNBC, "More than half of China extends shutdown over virus":
The majority of China’s growth hubs have delayed the resumption of business by at least a week as the country tries to control the spread of a new coronavirus that has killed more than 200 people.
As of Monday morning, at least 24 provinces, municipalities and other regions in China have told businesses not to resume work before Feb. 10 at the earliest. That’s according to publicly available statements from the governments.
Last year, those parts of China accounted for more than 80% of national GDP, and 90% of exports, according to CNBC calculations of data accessed through Wind Information. As a result, these delays in getting back to work could have a significant impact on the growth and international trade of what is now the world’s second-largest economy.
Drone footage shared by ABC News shows the streets in Wuhan are nearly empty:
Drone footage shows almost empty streets in typically bustling Wuhan, China, amid a citywide lockdown over the deadly coronavirus outbreak.— ABC News (@ABC) February 4, 2020
The viral outbreak has infected more than 20,600 people globally. https://t.co/K9g7lCir38 pic.twitter.com/ZctumKNM1Q
A Russian expat shared video from inside of Wuhan amidst the quarantine:
There's at least 24,503 confirmed cases of the coronavirus worldwide and 492 deaths according to the official numbers.
Note: you can ignore the last marker on Johns Hopkin's chart above which makes it look like it's slowing down, that's just a programming bug which happens when they do partial updates in between days, so far every night when the...
What You Need to Know About Trump’s Policy Proposals in State of the Union
President Donald Trump delivered his third State of the Union address Tuesday night. The Heritage Foundation’s policy experts weighed in with reaction and analysis.
Economy
Tax Cuts Continue to Boost Jobs and Wages
Thanks to the 2017 tax cuts and other pro-growth economic reforms, like deregulation, the U.S. economy has outstripped expectations. The president touted the economic success of slashing “job-killing regulations” and “enacting historic and record-setting tax cuts.”He is right, and the proof is in the numbers.
Unemployment is at a 50-year low of 3.5%. Businesses have added jobs for 111 straight months, the longest streak on record, and there are more jobs available than people looking for them.
Wages have also been increasing. Wage growth for the median worker was 4% over the past year. What’s most impressive is that the lowest-income workers in the U.S. have benefited the most from the strong labor market, seeing some of the fastest wage growth of any workers.
Minority and lower-skilled workers have also seen some of the largest drops in unemployment and largest wage gains in recent years. For example, the median black female worker benefited from an 11% wage increase over the last year. Our strong economy is truly benefiting all Americans.
This isn’t happenstance. The 2017 tax cuts made American workers globally competitive again by lowering punitive business taxes to levels similar to most European countries. Coupled with sweeping reforms to outdated and unnecessary regulations, tax cuts have made the U.S. an easier place to do business and hire American workers.
—Adam N. Michel, senior policy analyst, Hermann Center for the Federal Budget
Lifting Americans Off Welfare
The president rightly noted that millions of Americans have risen out of poverty—and have been lifted off welfare—and that 7 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps since the 2016 election.
The best and necessary foundation for reducing poverty: a strong economy, as the president has delivered.
Congress and the president should build on this foundation by reforming welfare programs to promote marriage and work as the key long-term pathways out of poverty. Specifically, Congress should reform the $1.1 trillion spent on the means-tested welfare state by reducing welfare penalties against marriage and requiring able-bodied recipients to work or prepare for work as a condition for receiving assistance.
Additionally, in programs designed to improve behavior, Congress should pay only for outcomes rather than ineffective services—e.g., pay when someone gets and stays off drugs, rather than just paying for treatment that didn’t work.
Finally, Congress should accurately measure benefits. When the government measures poverty, it excludes all welfare benefits. This is unfair to the taxpayer and produces exaggerated, inaccurate figures on poverty in the U.S. Policymakers should fix this by insisting that all welfare benefits are correctly counted when estimating poverty. (For more, see Robert Rector’s paper “Understanding the Hidden 1.1 Trillion Welfare System and How to Reform It.”)
—Marie Fishpaw, director, domestic policy studies
Slashing Regulations
In recounting the strong performance of the economy, the president noted his record of regulatory reform. Indeed, within days of taking office, the president issued Executive Order 13771, which requires federal departments and agencies to take two deregulatory actions for each new regulatory action, as well as to not exceed annual regulatory budgets.
According to the latest status report from the White House, the administration has eliminated $50.9 billion in regulatory costs since 2017. In the coming year, additional savings of $51.6 billion are forecast, including easing automotive fuel economy standards.
Most recently, the White House Council on Environmental Quality issued revised guidelines for the National Environmental Policy Act, which imposes some of the worst regulatory barriers to modern and safer roads, bridges, airports, and railways.
Dozens of regulations have been targeted for elimination, but regulatory reform has been stymied at every turn by lawsuits and other administrative hurdles devised by those who benefit from the status quo.
But there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of new regulations. In the 37 months of the Trump presidency, the administration has issued 73% fewer significant regulations than President Barack Obama (in the same period) and 63% fewer than President George H.W. Bush.
—Diane Katz, senior research fellow, regulatory policy
Paid Parental Leave for Federal Workers
The president applauded Congress for providing federal employees with 12 weeks of paid parental leave and called on lawmakers to provide some form of national benefit for private-sector workers.
The provision of taxpayer-provided parental leave to federal workers makes sense in this case, because the government is the employer. But the addition of this new benefit should have been coupled with more comprehensive federal employee compensation reform.
In addition to receiving significantly higher compensation than their private-sector counterparts, federal employees already had a de facto paid family leave and short-term disability insurance allowance through a very generous sick leave policy. Adding this new benefit on top without reforming the existing (and arguably less efficient) system allows federal employees who are new parents to take at least 20 weeks and up to a full year of paid leave.
—Rachel Greszler research fellow, Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at The Heritage Foundation
A New Federal Paid Family Leave Entitlement
The president is right that providing paid parental leave is a model for the rest of the country, but it is a model to be implemented by companies as they are able and on their own terms. It is not a model the federal government should impose through a new national paid parental or paid family leave entitlement.
Instead of a federal program, the president should promote more of the rapid growth that’s already occurring among employer-provided paid family leave programs across the U.S. Employer-provided policies can be flexible and accommodating (and are usually more generous), but one-size-fits-all government policies are rigid, burdensome, and impersonal.
Government programs also have higher costs and consequences, and they are extremely regressive, taxing everyone while primarily only benefitting middle- and upper-income earners.
While most Americans support a national paid family leave program, their support drops precipitously when asked about the costs and trade-offs. Democrats support a program they say would only cost “a cup of coffee a week,” but without government rationing, a national program would cost about seven times as much—closer to a tank of gas instead.
Even at the modest “cup of coffee a week” cost, support for a national program drops below 50%. And only 29% of workers support a national program if it were to mean lower benefits for them or fewer promotions for women. But that has been the consequence with government paid leave programs abroad.
And despite the argument that paid family leave increases women’s labor force attachment and earnings, California’s program was found to have the opposite effect, reducing the employment, earnings, and even fertility rates of new mothers who used the program.
Although access to paid family leave is valuable (and employers are responding by increasingly offering it), there are many other things that are more important to working families. When asked which of six factors would best allow workers to balance work and family, 34% said “more flexible work schedules” and 25% said “ability to work remotely/telecommuting,” while only 6% said “more paid maternity or paternity leave.”
The Working Families Flexibility Act would give lower-wage workers the option to accumulate paid time off. Universal savings accounts would help families save for all kinds of life events, and fewer regulations would free up business resources to help employers provide paid family leave. And none of these would create another unfunded middle-class entitlement.
—Rachel Greszler, research fellow, Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget
Failure to Mention America’s Spending-Driven Debt Problem
One issue that the president failed to address Tuesday night is the nation’s looming spending-driven debt crisis.
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released its budget and economic projections for the next 10 years. The budget office estimates that the national debt held by the public will increase to nearly 100% of gross domestic product by 2030, driven by entitlement spending and growing interest payments on the national debt.
Moreover, these projections could be optimistic, assuming that lower interest rates slow the growth of interest payments on the debt and that Congress approves no major disaster and emergency spending.
The good news is there is still time to change course and avert a debt crisis, but the president must take the lead in this effort.
The first opportunity to initiate reforms is the release of the president’s fiscal year 2021 budget next week. The president’s first three budgets pledged to cut spending and fundamentally reform the role of the federal government.
President Donald Trump must continue to push for bolder reforms that focus the responsibilities of national government back to its constitutional roots. Current and future generations cannot afford for Washington’s reckless pattern of spending to continue.
—Justin Bogie, senior policy analyst in fiscal affairs, Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity
The president declared that “our military is completely rebuilt.”
The last three years have indeed been good for...
Wages have also been increasing. Wage growth for the median worker was 4% over the past year. What’s most impressive is that the lowest-income workers in the U.S. have benefited the most from the strong labor market, seeing some of the fastest wage growth of any workers.
Minority and lower-skilled workers have also seen some of the largest drops in unemployment and largest wage gains in recent years. For example, the median black female worker benefited from an 11% wage increase over the last year. Our strong economy is truly benefiting all Americans.
This isn’t happenstance. The 2017 tax cuts made American workers globally competitive again by lowering punitive business taxes to levels similar to most European countries. Coupled with sweeping reforms to outdated and unnecessary regulations, tax cuts have made the U.S. an easier place to do business and hire American workers.
—Adam N. Michel, senior policy analyst, Hermann Center for the Federal Budget
Lifting Americans Off Welfare
The president rightly noted that millions of Americans have risen out of poverty—and have been lifted off welfare—and that 7 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps since the 2016 election.
The best and necessary foundation for reducing poverty: a strong economy, as the president has delivered.
Congress and the president should build on this foundation by reforming welfare programs to promote marriage and work as the key long-term pathways out of poverty. Specifically, Congress should reform the $1.1 trillion spent on the means-tested welfare state by reducing welfare penalties against marriage and requiring able-bodied recipients to work or prepare for work as a condition for receiving assistance.
Additionally, in programs designed to improve behavior, Congress should pay only for outcomes rather than ineffective services—e.g., pay when someone gets and stays off drugs, rather than just paying for treatment that didn’t work.
Finally, Congress should accurately measure benefits. When the government measures poverty, it excludes all welfare benefits. This is unfair to the taxpayer and produces exaggerated, inaccurate figures on poverty in the U.S. Policymakers should fix this by insisting that all welfare benefits are correctly counted when estimating poverty. (For more, see Robert Rector’s paper “Understanding the Hidden 1.1 Trillion Welfare System and How to Reform It.”)
—Marie Fishpaw, director, domestic policy studies
Slashing Regulations
In recounting the strong performance of the economy, the president noted his record of regulatory reform. Indeed, within days of taking office, the president issued Executive Order 13771, which requires federal departments and agencies to take two deregulatory actions for each new regulatory action, as well as to not exceed annual regulatory budgets.
According to the latest status report from the White House, the administration has eliminated $50.9 billion in regulatory costs since 2017. In the coming year, additional savings of $51.6 billion are forecast, including easing automotive fuel economy standards.
Most recently, the White House Council on Environmental Quality issued revised guidelines for the National Environmental Policy Act, which imposes some of the worst regulatory barriers to modern and safer roads, bridges, airports, and railways.
Dozens of regulations have been targeted for elimination, but regulatory reform has been stymied at every turn by lawsuits and other administrative hurdles devised by those who benefit from the status quo.
But there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of new regulations. In the 37 months of the Trump presidency, the administration has issued 73% fewer significant regulations than President Barack Obama (in the same period) and 63% fewer than President George H.W. Bush.
—Diane Katz, senior research fellow, regulatory policy
Paid Parental Leave for Federal Workers
The president applauded Congress for providing federal employees with 12 weeks of paid parental leave and called on lawmakers to provide some form of national benefit for private-sector workers.
The provision of taxpayer-provided parental leave to federal workers makes sense in this case, because the government is the employer. But the addition of this new benefit should have been coupled with more comprehensive federal employee compensation reform.
In addition to receiving significantly higher compensation than their private-sector counterparts, federal employees already had a de facto paid family leave and short-term disability insurance allowance through a very generous sick leave policy. Adding this new benefit on top without reforming the existing (and arguably less efficient) system allows federal employees who are new parents to take at least 20 weeks and up to a full year of paid leave.
—Rachel Greszler research fellow, Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at The Heritage Foundation
A New Federal Paid Family Leave Entitlement
The president is right that providing paid parental leave is a model for the rest of the country, but it is a model to be implemented by companies as they are able and on their own terms. It is not a model the federal government should impose through a new national paid parental or paid family leave entitlement.
Instead of a federal program, the president should promote more of the rapid growth that’s already occurring among employer-provided paid family leave programs across the U.S. Employer-provided policies can be flexible and accommodating (and are usually more generous), but one-size-fits-all government policies are rigid, burdensome, and impersonal.
Government programs also have higher costs and consequences, and they are extremely regressive, taxing everyone while primarily only benefitting middle- and upper-income earners.
While most Americans support a national paid family leave program, their support drops precipitously when asked about the costs and trade-offs. Democrats support a program they say would only cost “a cup of coffee a week,” but without government rationing, a national program would cost about seven times as much—closer to a tank of gas instead.
Even at the modest “cup of coffee a week” cost, support for a national program drops below 50%. And only 29% of workers support a national program if it were to mean lower benefits for them or fewer promotions for women. But that has been the consequence with government paid leave programs abroad.
And despite the argument that paid family leave increases women’s labor force attachment and earnings, California’s program was found to have the opposite effect, reducing the employment, earnings, and even fertility rates of new mothers who used the program.
Although access to paid family leave is valuable (and employers are responding by increasingly offering it), there are many other things that are more important to working families. When asked which of six factors would best allow workers to balance work and family, 34% said “more flexible work schedules” and 25% said “ability to work remotely/telecommuting,” while only 6% said “more paid maternity or paternity leave.”
The Working Families Flexibility Act would give lower-wage workers the option to accumulate paid time off. Universal savings accounts would help families save for all kinds of life events, and fewer regulations would free up business resources to help employers provide paid family leave. And none of these would create another unfunded middle-class entitlement.
—Rachel Greszler, research fellow, Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget
Failure to Mention America’s Spending-Driven Debt Problem
One issue that the president failed to address Tuesday night is the nation’s looming spending-driven debt crisis.
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office released its budget and economic projections for the next 10 years. The budget office estimates that the national debt held by the public will increase to nearly 100% of gross domestic product by 2030, driven by entitlement spending and growing interest payments on the national debt.
Moreover, these projections could be optimistic, assuming that lower interest rates slow the growth of interest payments on the debt and that Congress approves no major disaster and emergency spending.
The good news is there is still time to change course and avert a debt crisis, but the president must take the lead in this effort.
The first opportunity to initiate reforms is the release of the president’s fiscal year 2021 budget next week. The president’s first three budgets pledged to cut spending and fundamentally reform the role of the federal government.
President Donald Trump must continue to push for bolder reforms that focus the responsibilities of national government back to its constitutional roots. Current and future generations cannot afford for Washington’s reckless pattern of spending to continue.
—Justin Bogie, senior policy analyst in fiscal affairs, Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity
Defense & Foreign Policy
Progress in Rebuilding Military
The president declared that “our military is completely rebuilt.”
The last three years have indeed been good for...
The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #190
Before You Click On The "Read More" Link,
Please Only Do So If You Are Over 21 Years Old.
If You are Easily Upset, Triggered Or Offended, This Is Not The Place For You.
Please Leave Silently Into The Night......
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #888
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
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