GREAT — ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE, NOW THERE’S THIS TO WORRY ABOUT: You’ve been stirring your tea all wrong, according to a royal butler — here’s how to do it right.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
April 9, 2018
SHE STILL HOLDS THE BAY AREA PURSESTRINGS: Crowley unlikely to challenge Pelosi as Speaker if Dems take House.
ALLIES: Erdoğan to the West: ‘You can go to hell.’
Ataturk wept.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): To be honest, I think Ataturk would be plotting a coup.
OH: China Installed Military Jamming Equipment on Spratly Islands, U.S. Says.
The move strengthens China’s ability to assert its extensive territorial claims and hinder U.S. military operations in a contested region that includes some of the world’s busiest shipping routes.
The disclosure comes as the Chinese military is conducting what U.S. officials describe as its largest military exercise to date in the South China Sea, maneuvers that include China’s first aircraft carrier as well as air force and ground units.
A U.S. Defense Department official, describing the finding, said: “China has deployed military jamming equipment to its Spratly Island outposts.”
The U.S. assessment is supported by a photo taken last month by the commercial satellite company DigitalGlobe and provided to The Wall Street Journal. It shows a suspected jammer system with its antenna extended on Mischief Reef, one of seven Spratly outcrops where China has built fortified artificial islands since 2014, moving sand onto rocks and reefs and paving them over with concrete.
China’s Defense Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.
They’ve said pretty much all they need to through their actions.
NARRATOR VOICE: “IT WON’T.” Venezuela: Petro’s Impact Will Be Felt Within “Three to Six Months.”
SADIQ KHAN’S LONDON: London’s Mayor Declares Intense New ‘Knife Control’ Policies To Stop Epidemic Of Stabbings.
The “tough, immediate” measures involve an incredible police crackdown, a ban on home deliveries of knives and acid, and expanding law enforcement stop-and-search powers so that police may stop anyone they believe to be a threat, or planning a knife or acid attack.
Khan announced Friday that the city has created a “violent crime taskforce of 120 officers” tasked with rooting out knife-wielding individuals in public spaces, and is pumping nearly $50 million dollars into the Metropolitan Police department, so that they can better arm themselves against knife attacks. He’s also empowering the Met Police to introduce “targeted patrols with extra stop and search powers for areas worst-affected,” according to a statement.
One of my fondest memories is the two weeks I spent in London back in 2005, but with roving packs of male “Asians” and bans on hoodies and ever-present surveillance, and the like, you could see the writing on the wall even then.
THE MOVE: What’s going on with US embassy move to Israel’s capital?
Jerusalem was founded by the Jews, by King David, 3,000 years ago. It never was the capital of any other country or any other people, and it is central to the Jewish faith.
President Trump’s decision and desire to make the move official by Israel’s 70th anniversary in May, has forced a mad dash, with efforts to repurpose an already existing U.S. consulate building on this Jerusalem hillside, into a temporary embassy.
Much of the focus back in the United States has been about the moving of this embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but many of the folks we talk to here in Israel will tell you that there is a bigger, more important story to tell.
That by gaining an embassy in Jerusalem, the US could also be losing its seat at the negotiating table. Veteran Palestinian diplomat and negotiator Nabil Shaath says that era of America as a peace broker is over.
Recognition of Israel’s right to exist and to recognize that its ancient capital is still its capital ought to be the price the Palestinians must pay to earn a seat at the negotiating table.
Anything less nurtures their genocidal fantasy of driving the Jews into the sea.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Did Israel Respond to ‘Animal Assad’ and Much, Much More. “War-friendly Senator Lindsay Graham had a message for the President.”
KATHY GILSINAN: The Terrible Cost of Obama’s Failure in Syria.
Four years ago, it almost looked as if chemical attacks on Syrian civilians would stop. “We struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out,” declared then-Secretary of State John Kerry on Meet the Press in 2014. Kerry was referring to Bashar al-Assad’s declared stockpiles of chemical weapons which, under a 2013 deal struck by the Obama administration following a sarin nerve gas attack that brought the U.S. to the brink of striking Syrian government forces, were dismantled and shipped out of the country.
But there were two important and deadly loopholes. The first was that Assad did not declare everything—a reality that Kerry acknowledged in a farewell memo to staff, in which he wrote that “unfortunately other undeclared chemical weapons continue to be used ruthlessly against the Syrian people.” The second was that chlorine gas, which has legitimate civilian uses, was not part of the deal. The Syrian American Medical Society and the White Helmets civil-defense group have documented 200 chemical attacks in Syria since 2012, many involving chlorine.
Nobody paying attention ever believed that the Obama-Kerry deal “almost looked” as though it had actually disarmed Assad’s chemical arsenal. Assad gave up enough to look like he was complying, and Obama and Kerry got to look like they were doing something.
WALL OF GREEN: Mattis Approves 4,000 Guard Troops for Mexican Border.
A Defense Department memo said the Guard members will not perform law enforcement functions or “interact with migrants or other persons detained” without Mattis’s approval. It said “arming will be limited to circumstances that might require self-defense,” but it did not further define that.
In a joint statement, Mattis and homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the decision came after their departments “identified security vulnerabilities that could be addressed by the National Guard.
“Together, the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense are committed to using every lever of power to support the men and women of law enforcement defending our nation’s sovereignty and protecting the American people.
“We will continue to work with the governors to deploy the necessary resources until our nation’s borders are secure.”
SALENA ZITO: History proves that Americans can unite even when torn in two.
The Civil War was over.
“As the sun rose that morning neither man would know by mid-afternoon the war, for all intents and purposes, would end that day,” explained Ernie Price, a park ranger and director of education at Appomattox National Park.
But by mid-morning, Lee knew the Confederate cause was finished. He sent a message to Grant to meet for the purpose of surrender, and the Appomattox home of grocer Wilmer McLean was chosen for the moment.
When they met, Grant was poorly dressed, his uniform rumpled and covered in mud from the ride the night before. Years later in his memoirs, he admitted that he had no idea what he was going to ask from Lee in the surrender.
Yet, once he sat down at a small spindle desk in McLean’s front parlor, words of reconciliation poured out.
“Grant knew that the Confederate soldiers from that moment on were going to be US citizens again,” said Price. “Instead of placing them in prisons in the North he sends them home. His reasoning is: The sooner the South’s economy rebounds, the sooner the country can reconcile, so he paroles them.”
Grant also allowed Lee’s men to keep their personal sidearms and animals, knowing they would desperately need rations to survive.
This of course was back when Americans enjoyed leaders capable of seeing past the next news cycle or major poll.
But do read the whole thing.
To be clear, that’s “former” Democratic operative George Stephanopoulos.
And I’m so old, I can remember when Sandberg was hired to be Facebook’s “grownup.”
BLUE WAVE? Paul Ryan-Linked PAC Sets Up Shop in Toss-Up Washington District Held by Republicans for Decades.
Washington’s 8th congressional district, which is located in the suburbs of Seattle and boasts a population of nearly 700,000 residents, is now up for grabs after Rep. Dave Reichert (R.) said he will not seek reelection. Reichert, who announced his retirement shortly after turning 67, has represented the district since 2004.
Reichert found a way to comfortably win the district even as it has swung to Democratic presidential candidates. The seven-term congressman defeated his opponent, Democrat Tony Ventrella, by nearly 21 points during the 2016 elections despite Hillary Clinton garnering 3 percent more of the vote than President Donald Trump. George H.W. Bush was the most recent Republican presidential candidate to carry the district, in 1988.
Republicans, however, have held the seat on the congressional level since the district’s creation in 1980.
Democrats only need to flip 24 seats to win back the House of Representatives and now sense an opportunity to topple Republicans at the congressional level in the 8th for the first time. Eleven Democrats entered the primary—eight remain—and the Nancy Pelosi-affiliated House Majority PAC has already purchased airtime in the district.
As Glenn has been saying for a while now: If you want to make a difference, spend less time on the internet and more time volunteering for a local campaign.
SUSTAINABILITY: CBO Projections Will Show Trillion Dollar Deficits as Far as the Eye Can See.
It gets worse:
The official CBO projections are likely to be lower than the budget deficits that actually occur. CBO’s report is based on current law and makes no political judgements about what Congress and the president will do in the future. That means the deficit projections will be based on the presumption that the tax cuts enacted last year that currently phase out will in fact end. That means the CBO forecast will assume that future revenues will be higher and the deficit lower compared to what is likely to occur.
The same is true for spending. For this report, the Congressional Budget Office doesn’t presume that any of the reductions proposed in the Trump 2019 budget will be enacted. That will increase the deficit outlook compared to what the White House will say it will be.
And this from the CBO:
The federal budget deficit was $598 billion for the first half of fiscal year 2018, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, $71 billion more than the shortfall recorded during the same period last year. Revenues and outlays were higher, by 2 percent and 5 percent, respectively, than they were during the first half of fiscal year 2017.
Revenues continue to climb, but at less than half the rate that spending goes up — increases which are driven almost entirely by entitlements and the ever-increasing interest payment on the ever-growing debt.
April 6, 2018
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: When Omar Mateen Said He Killed 49 People for ISIS, He Meant It.
HE WAS MORE FLEXIBLE AFTER HIS REELECTION: New Russia Sanctions Are ‘What Obama Should Have Done in 2014.’
ONCE IS ACCIDENT, TWICE IS HAPPENSTANCE, THREE TIMES IS ENEMY ACTION: The Journolist Goes to War Against Scott Pruitt.
WHAT BLUFF? China Has the Cards to Call Trump’s Bluff.
Related: The Saudi Crown Prince Thinks He Can Transform the Middle East. Should We Believe Him?
Bin Salman has taken enough concrete steps to have earned some trust, so the real question is whether he can survive the attempt.
BECAUSE THEY CAN: Why Does The Left Get A Pass On Anti-Semitism?
INVESTING: Investment Giant Offers New Funds that Exclude Gun Manufacturers, Retailers.
Every now and then you read about one of these “ethically” minded mutual funds starting up, but I can’t recall ever reading about any of them doing particularly well.