Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Mueller may not be getting any closer to proving collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, but he’s definitely making progress on weaponizing American legal institutions. That’s bad for the nation.
Mueller’s team seized client records belonging to Mark Cohen, Trump’s attorney. Now Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, has given client records to CNN. In the olden days, a lawyer who voluntarily revealed a client confidence would have been disbarred and shunned by the entire legal community, right and left. Nowadays, Cohen and Davis are celebrated as heroes for making Trump look bad in the press.
That change would be bad enough, if I believed attorney-client confidences were gone. But I suspect it’s a one-way change, same as Hillary skating away from consequences for mishandling classified material. I suspect that in the new attorney-client confidentiality rules, the roles of the participants won’t matter, only their politics will matter.
If a Liberal makes a Conservative look bad, it’ll be grounds for a reward; if a Conservative makes a Liberal look bad, it’ll be a hanging offense.
That’s the long-term damage Mueller is doing to America. He’s undermining confidence in our basic institutions that hold society together. That’s dangerous because when ordinary people come to believe they have no recourse to justice through the legal system, they’ll start seeking justice outside the law. And when the people who believe that are also the people bitterly clinging to their guns . . . .
Joe Doakes
But that plays into the protagonists’ hands, too
This is a pattern, Joe.
When leftists seek to foist some nasty new social agenda on the general population, one of their first retorts is “How does this effect you?”. Don’t want an abortion, don’t get one. Don’t like gay wedding dress up day? Don’t have one. Don’t like dress wearing men in the girls bathroom? Don’t go in one.
But it’s more than that. I’ve always observed the corrosive effect these things have on society. Is abortion responsible for nutcases shooting up schools? No, but the cheapening of life has certainly enured us to horrific, bloody death. And the defense of infanticide has certainly played a part in turning women on the left into the nasty, screeching skaanks we see marching around in twaat suits and posting comments that reach levels of offensive language even I can’t get to.
Muh gay wedding has caused more division than any issue concerning 3% of the population has ever started. And while marriage has been declining for awhile, the 3 ring circuses that pass for families would never have passed muster while the nuclear family was the only acceptable option.
It has also allowed sexual deviants to include children into their chaos, which, while it *may* not entice them into sexual deviancy, certainly guarantees they will be faithful defenders of unhealthy, dehumanizing behaviors of all types.
Now, all these things have been going on among human beings since a monkey picked up a jaw bone to chase off other monkeys from the watering hole. Passing laws won’t stop it; but that’s not the point.
Knowing people do nasty things is one thing. Endorsing, nay, celebrating them is another. When all morality is finally swept aside, the only thing that keeps us from one another’s throats, is a nominally functioning legal system…and as you say, it’s time is coming.
I’m as well positioned to live in Mad Max’s wasteland as anyone can be. And since I don’t expect that to occur in my lifetime, I’ll be leaving my family well positioned to live in it. So it’s not survival I’m concerned with; it’s the loss of thousands of years of culture and human progress the bums me out.
PS:
While proofreading the preceding comment for typos I can’t correct, it occurred to me that my Corvette is gonna look real damn sweet with an M2 Browning sticking out through the T-top.
It strikes me that Cohen and David need to be disbarred–one for revealing his client’s records, one for participating. And I’m going to have to guess that Michael Avenatti ought to be disbarred for this kind of shenanigan as well. Like Swiftee said, civilization.
Swifter- sticking out, our mounted to?
SMH, I think it will need to be mounted to the floor and reinforced. MaDeuce is a beast!
Aaaaaand, BREAKING:
The EU has buckled under Trump’s tariffs! The stock market is going to go wild, and precious metals will plummet…time to call my gold broker; buy man, buy!
Maybe I can afford one of those surplus HMMV’s and keep the ‘Vette stock.
https://www.govplanet.com/Humvees
Just checked. Metals headed towards their 52 week low!
If we were winning the trade war we wouldn’t have to tax Americans just to get farmers back to where they were before the trade war started.
I think it would be cheaper for Trump to simply pay all the Republican voters in the Midwest states directly for their vote this November.
Not sure if Trump Nation will be fooled by this.
Fuck you and who ever you copied that though from, Emery.
In a Rose Garden announcement, Trump said the EU had also agreed to buy U.S. soybeans, a day after he announced a $12 billion bailout package for farmers hit by retaliatory tariffs.
Sit on that and spin, dimwit.
Maybe if you spent less time surfing leftist outhouses for things to cut and paste, and more time reading news, you’d be less of a blithering idiot…probably not, but could happen.
“Let’s implement bad economic policy and then subsidize those who are hurt by it to make sure we keep their votes.” ~ Donald Trump
So we as consumers will pay more for imported goods and as taxpayers we pay for bailing out anyone hurt by tariffs. Is this what “winning” looks like?
This kind of window dressing was predictable.
The US LNG export terminals have been in the works since Russia tried to hold Europe hostage over natural gas years ago.
China imports 7 times more soybeans than the whole EU. The EU was already redirecting soybean imports from Brazil, which is now selling their soybeans to China to replace lost US exports.
Juncker is in his job for a reason. He offered nothing at all except talks, and if the North Korean negotiations are anything to go by, nothing tangible will come of this meeting. Of course, EU businesses (not the EU) will import cheap soybeans from the US now that prices have fallen, and, of course, EU businesses (not the EU) will buy LNG as long as it is economical to do so.
Trump and his supporters don’t seem to understand that neither the US nor the EU are businesses buying from and selling to each other. But as long as the Fox News crowd buys another Trump “win” we might have dodged the bullet of a Trump trade war.
Of the thousands of subsidy programs Liberals have foisted on Americans over the decades, and the market distortions each one has caused and then exacerbated, Emery is furious about one. For today – ag subsidies were fine before and will be fine later (more than fine, they’ll be mandatory and increasing), but for today, the sky is falling.
Swiftee – I think you’d be better off keeping the Vette stock. I don’t think there’s enough space in there to get a solid base for the .50. You might be able to rig up something for a M 2249 SAW though.
JD: Got it! Create a problem, tweet about it, have a meeting, reverse course, then have a photo op claiming you fixed the problem — that wasn’t a problem until you created it. Rinse and repeat….
Emery, either you are deliberately being obtuse or you are legitimately that ignorant. Farmers have been subsidized for decades. You know, after the Democrats sought to buy their votes forever by hading them out.
But hey, got it. In your mind; Democrats do it, awesome! Republicans do it, the sky is falling.
BB, you must be confused. The GOP, bastion of small government and free capitalism, advocates huge welfare for the people hit by their own policies.
Swiftee, Keep the vette as is and go with a modified Yukon instead. You could go with the M134 or your M-2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atHYe9qiz6w
It looks like the new issue of The Economist has arrived at Emery’s house!
My criticism of The Economist stands. The editors of The Economist believe that 21st century bourgeois values are universal human values.
This is not true.
This is a fault they share with establishment politicians of the Left and the Right.
So far it looks as though Trump’s “trade war” with the EU will result in freer trade between the US and Europe while it grinds a thumb in Putin’s eye.
The Chinese, I imagine, are scrambling for a way to replace the soy beans they used to import from the US.
Poor, poor America! So weak before its enemies! Maybe the Canadians can show us the path forward to strength and international respect?
I wonder who people are referring to when they make statements about “the Republicans.” Republicans aren’t like Democrats — there is much more diversity of thought on the Right than on the Left. You have your open borders, quasi-Libertarian, US Chamber of Commerce types, and your social conservatives, and your redneck “America First” types.
The public policy goals of these groups are at odds.
This is hard to understand for most people on the Left, where ideological orthodoxy is rigidly enforced.
So you see ridiculous bigotry on the Left. A film produced by the Left will feature a villain who is a hard core capitalist, but also a racist religious fanatic. This is bizzare. Or, to use a real-world example, the television series “The handmaid’s Tale,” which is based on Islamic treatment of women, but because you aren’t allowed to criticize Islamic cultural norms on the Left, the world ofThe Handmaid’s Tale takes place in an America that never has never could exist — a theocratic military dictatorship run by a corrupt elite.
You can find places like this in the Islamic world, but not in Europe or the US. The “Gilead” of Margaret Atwood is a phantasm, it is not perception. Phantasms tell you more about the people who see them then whatever it is they have “seen.”
It’s getting more confusing every day, trying to distinguish the differences between the US and Chinese economies. Both seem to be centrally controlled, with winners and losers chosen by the government.
When you wake up at 6:30, already drunk and ready to deploy 1/4 wit twaddle, everything is confusing. QED
And we had 4.1% GDP growth in the second semester.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-gdp-growth-hits-4-1-percent-in-the-second-quarter/
Lol, smart people, or at least non-ideologues, make adjustments when reality keeps spitting in their faces. Not Trump haters though. GOP or D doesn’t seem to matter, the only thing that you need to do to be a member of the reality based community is to NOT hate Donald J. Trump.
Trump is primarily following the Obama trend-line up. The actual question is how Trump has achieved this. The economy grew by 4.1% and Federal spending grew by 3.5%. Easy to increase short term growth when you do it with borrowed money. You give somebody sick and frail enough meth and a gun, they’ll zip around pretty good, too.
“Exports rose 9.3 percent, driven in part by a surge in soybean shipments tied to President Trump’s trade policies. The trend is particularly clear in exports of soybeans, which were up more than 50 percent in May from a year earlier. Those buyers presumably didn’t want more soybeans than usual — they just wanted them sooner. Exports will almost certainly slump in the third and fourth quarters, and will turn into a drag on overall G.D.P. growth.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/business/economy/economy-gdp.html
The NY Times is not a credible source on anything regarding Trump or his presidency. Your quotes are ‘commentary’, and have nothing to do with the science of economics (such as it is). When you are an ideologue, every fact must be made to conform to your ideology.
Like you, the staff of the NY times — all of them — are afflicted with an insane hatred of Trump. If the GDP report was sub par, there is no question that the NY Times would have blamed that on Trump
It appears you are challenged by objective reality.
Debt fueled growth. The 2018 US Federal budget deficit is projected to be roughly 33 – 35 % over and above the receipts. (P.117 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/budget-fy2019.pdf), (https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/trump-budget-deficits-growing-big-spending-fiscal-irresponsibility/)
Coupled with increasing personal and corporate debts, should we be surprised at the 4% growth?
“Trump is primarily following the Obama trend-line up.”
What a PUTZ!!!!!!!!!!!
This is why I won’t read beyond the first of any of your screed!!!!!!!!!
The tariffs are forcing business and it’s customers to front load purchases. The air is going to come out of that GDP number real quick, especially if customers stop buying because of fear and big price increases. The tariffs are just starting to kick in and will take time to ripple through the economy. Let’s see where we are at the end of the year.
Check me on this, Emery. Tariffs are forcing business to front-load soybean purchases. Tariffs will cause soybean shortages once they occur, punishing those least able to afford it.
So it’s like Cash for Clunkers?
The economy is going strong, however, part of the 4.1% growth is a sugar rush caused by one off benefits of Trump’s tax plan and pre-emptive purchases of soy beans.
Any fool can screw down the pressure valve and keep shoveling coal into the firebox — it’s a few minutes down the track that all the fun starts. Anyway, his base will inevitably blame somebody else when it all blows up and it certainly won’t be the Trump.
Obama attempted to screw down the pressure valve & shovel coal into the firebox, but it didn’t work. I suppose that this was because his dislike for the businessman class was so obvious.
In real economics — not the kind you read about in The economist — there are forward lookers and backward lookers. Forward lookers see that the current stimulus spending or tax cuts is a game, and salt away their wealth rather than use it to create more wealth. The problem of forward lookers stymied J.M. Keynes. How do you convince the forward lookers to invest and spend when they know the gravy train will stop in a few years, and they will have to pay the bill for it?
Obama did not make overall economic growth a priority after he figured out that it worked against the interests of constituencies important to him (like the environmentalist groups). Obama also seemed unable to understand that making people pay more for gasoline and other energy tended to dampen economic growth. The man was an idiot; I have yet to meet a liberal who can tell me whether or not Obama took so much as a single college-level course in economics. Yet they still believe that in 2009 Obama “saved us from depression” by enacting some run-of-the-mill policies that Sarah Palin would have done just as well.
Your failure to grasp objective reality and ODS syndrome — get help before it’s too late.
Top US economic growth quarters since 2008 financial crisis:
5.1% Q2 ‘14 > Who was president in 2014?
4.9% Q3 ‘14
4.7% Q4 ‘11
4.5% Q4 ‘09
4.1% Q2 ’18
Top 20 GDP Quarters since 2000
Real GDP, Annualized Rate
GDP Year Quarter President
1 7.5% 2000 Q2 Clinton
2 7.0% 2003 Q3 G.W.Bush
3 5.4% 2006 Q1 G.W.Bush
4 5.1% 2014 Q2 Obama
5 4.9% 2014 Q3 Obama
6 4.7% 2011 Q4 Obama
7 4.7% 2003 Q4 G.W.Bush
8 4.5% 2005 Q1 G.W.Bush
9 4.5% 2009 Q4 Obama
10 4.1% 2004 Q4 G.W.Bush
11 4.1% 2018 Q2 Trump <
12 3.8% 2004 Q3 G.W.Bush
13 3.7% 2010 Q2 Obama
14 3.6% 2005 Q3 G.W.Bush
15 3.6% 2013 Q1 Obama
16 3.5% 2002 Q1 G.W.Bush
17 3.5% 2003 Q2 G.W.Bush
18 3.4% 2006 Q4 G.W.Bush
19 3.3% 2015 Q2 Obama
20 3.3% 2015 Q1 Obama
21 3.2% 2013 Q4 Obama
22 3.2% 2013 Q3 Obama
23 3.2% 2012 Q1 Obama
24 3.1% 2004 Q2 G.W.Bush
25 3.0% 2017 Q2 Trump
https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2018/07/top-twenty-five-gdp-quarters-since-2000.htmD