The caravan rolls on.
Photo © 2016 Paul L. Gleiser
Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 4/27/18
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Since the morning of November 9, 2016, when the soaring inevitability of Hillary Clinton’s election came crashing to Earth, efforts have been underway by angry Democrats and the top echelons of the accurately labeled “Deep State,” to discredit the election of Donald Trump by any means possible.
Searching for any remotely plausible explanation for the inexplicable, the defeated and angry Clinton campaign immediately settled on the idea of Russian “collusion.” There was an existing predicate. It flowed from a piece of fabricated oppo research funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign and undertaken by a former British spy named Christopher Steele. Mr. Steele’s product has come to be called the “Steele Dossier” and it is filled with lurid details of bizarre sexual escapades by Donald Trump while he was in Russia. None of those details have stood up to investigative rigor.
Nevertheless, the Steele Dossier was presented by the FBI to a FISA court as validly obtained intelligence in order to obtain a warrant to surveil the Donald Trump campaign.
Since then, clinging to that thin reed, Democrats, Deep Staters, Never Trumpers and nearly every member of the liberal national media have beat the Russia, Russia, Russia drum incessantly.
The beating of that drum fuels the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation. Given that 15 months later Mueller has come up with bupkis, the now desperate Democratic National Committee has filed a ridiculous lawsuit against the Trump campaign that will, of course, be in the discovery phase all through the midterm elections later this year.
The entirety of this effort has been undertaken in the fervent hope that you won’t notice that Donald Trump is having a very successful presidency so far.
GDP growth stands at an average 3.1 percent for Mr. Trump’s first three full quarters in office. “Experts” like Clinton administration Treasury secretary and Barack Obama acolyte Larry Summers likened believing in three percent GDP growth to believing “in tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics.” Yet here it is.
Real personal and household incomes are up after nearly two decades of stagnation. Companies are reporting record earnings.
The Labor Department reports that the fewest people are receiving unemployment benefits since 1974. So robust is the labor market that, according to the National Federation of Independent Business, the biggest challenge facing companies today is not taxes or regulations, it’s finding good people to fill open jobs.
Again according to the NFIB, business optimism as reported in their March survey stands at a 45-year high.
A rollback of some of the more crippling regulations under the Dodd-Frank banking law has resulted in increased availability of debt capital for business expansion.
The United States is now, for all intents, energy independent, greatly enhancing U.S. leverage in executing foreign policy. On that front, there are multiple policy successes — grist for a future column.
All of this to say that with respect to Democrat attempts to discredit or destroy the Trump presidency, the dogs bark, but the caravan rolls on.
Wow, there is so much here that needs addressing. I’ll start with energy independence. In 2017, the United States produced an average of 9.3 million barrels of oil per day, but we consumed an average of 19.8 million barrels per day.
Re-read the piece. With respect to energy independence you missed the part where I said, “for all intents.” From Forbes in November 2017:
“The U.S. became a net exporter of finished products (e.g., diesel, gasoline, etc.) in 2011 for the first time since 1949. Today, the U.S. still imports about 8 million BPD of oil, but we also export approximately 2 million BPD of crude oil and natural gas liquids, as well as more than 3 million BPD of finished products.
The overall effect is that net U.S. imports of crude oil and finished products fell from a high of 12.5 million BPD in 2005 to less than 5 million BPD in 2015. U.S. energy security is at its highest level since the 1980s…”
Yes, the U.S. continues to import crude in order to meed demand. But those imports are now available from friendly nation producers and the net amount being imported continues to fall. Our dependence upon the petro-tyrants of the Middle East is now all but gone. (Notice how nice and friendly and reasonable Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has become.) Thus, for all intents, those intents being the execution of foreign policy, the U.S. is de facto energy-independent.
The Russian investigation is the result of the sum total of the fixation by Trump’s opponents on Russia that includes, in very large measure, the Steele Dossier. I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say here.
The “Nunes Memo” goes into considerable detail through four very detailed paragraphs as to the presentation by the FBI of the Steele Dossier in seeking a FISA warrant. The memo mentions Papadopoulos only in passing and only in the last paragraph. It makes no mention of Papadopoulos’s state of intoxication.
According to the Nunes memo, the Russia investigation was spawned by the comments of a drunk Papadopoulos … not a Steele dossier, nor a FISA warrant, nor some beating drum.
Yep, the caravan rolls on, and I for one am glad to have a wagon in this market growth parade. We are hiring like mad, in part thanks to Trump policies. But even in this tight labor market we are getting good employees because many of the entry level jobs we offer require no special skill or experience while being a lot more fun than flipping hamburgers. Thanks to our president, a lot more jobs and a lot more opportunity is out there for those willing to work.
Thing is, the more of this we hear, is not helping the left. They are too blinded by hate to see they are digging their own grave. What done in darkness WILL come to full light. People who have been on the fence are watching closely. When it is all said and done, the left will have done what they do best and that is shooting themselves in the foot or being bitten on the hind side! You just can not fix STUPID!