Tag Archives: Fake News

Oct 29 2018

Sunday Talks: Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady Discusses Economy and Tax Proposals…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on October 28, 2018 by

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady discusses the current economic growth and the GOP policy initiatives behind tax proposals.

Chairman Brady emphasizes an intent to make the current middle-class tax cuts permanent in the next legislative session if Republicans can do well in the midterm election.  One of the benefits from previously ‘unexpected’ (by CBO) MAGAnomic growth is the baseline calculations for ‘revenue neutral’ did not factor in the current GDP growth rate.  [All previous Congressional Budget Office forecasts were underestimated.]

As Rep Brady outlines President Trump is committed to empowering Main Street, not Wall Street, as the driving force behind U.S. economic growth. [The essence of MAGAnomics.]  Every.Single.Trump.Policy targets support to Main Street. Period.

The Commerce Department, Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), has released the first estimate of the third quarter GDP growth for June, July and August 2018 (full pdf below).  The rate of economic growth in Q3 is estimated at 3.5%, exceeding most forecasts of slightly more than three percent.  The second quarter growth was 4.2%.

“Defying ‘conventional wisdom’ once again, 3.5 percent growth is the latest sign that the Trump economy continues to surge,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “The President’s actions from deregulation to tax reform have supercharged the American economy, driving it to new heights.”

Overall the 3.5% growth is exceptionally strong. To see the data bolstering a positive future forecast I would draw attention to Table 2 (lines 43 through 49) and the analysis for net impact over Exports/Imports. The heavy import number delivered a net subtraction of 1.78% from GDP growth; that’s a result of a large increase in imported durable goods [likely anticipatory holiday inventory buildup].

As you can imagine from your own shopping experiences, durable goods inventories generally climb in the third quarter as companies increase inventory in preparation for holiday sales in quarter four. The growth in the buildup of this inventory is significantly higher than historic trend; this means companies are forecasting strong consumer demand for goods in Q4, the holiday season.

The value of imported goods are deducted from GDP at the time they are acquired.  The Commerce Department (BEA) does not track purchase ‘orders’, they track purchase ‘payments’. The majority of contracted terms for goods, depending on company and industry, are “net 30 days”; meaning the full purchase cost for the product is due to the manufacturer or wholesaler 30 days from delivery.  However, when the deducted inventory cost turns into sales, consumer spending then drives domestic economic activity (GDP growth) at the time the product is sold.

Further support for a booming Q4 purchase prediction can be found in the current 4% growth of consumer spending. With wages growing (3.8% avg), and with an incredibly strong jobs market, people are making large purchases with confidence. Additionally, price data in the current GDP report shows inflation at a 1.6 percent annualized pace.

Add it all up and you can see the reason for companies to boost inventory ahead of a very strong holiday season. The middle class drives the MAGAnomic economy. Workers are getting paid more and being taxed less; our paychecks are bigger.

Simultaneously inflation is low (prices not increasing), so the net is more disposable income to make purchases, combined with confidence in wages/jobs allowing people to spend more.

Bloomberg – The U.S. economy expanded at a 3.5 percent pace in the third quarter as consumers opened their wallets, businesses restocked inventories and governments boosted spending, marking the strongest back-to-back quarters of growth since 2014.

The annualized rate of gains in gross domestic product compared with the 3.3 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey and followed a 4.2 percent advance in the prior three months, according to Friday’s report from the Commerce Department.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, unexpectedly accelerated to a 4 percent increase — the best since 2014 — while the 0.8 percent gain in nonresidential business investment was the weakest in almost two years. In two volatile categories, inventories provided the biggest contribution since early 2015, while the drag from trade was the largest in 33 years. Government spending rose by the most since 2016. (read more)

Here’s the full BEA report. [Table 2 is on page 8]

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/391694088/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-K7yFuGnWDXmWLDJ5Zuaa

.

Keep in mind, none of the revamped trade deals have come into play yet….

Oct 29 2018

Sunday Talks: Representative John Ratcliffe Discusses Mail Bomber, Migrant Caravan and Rod Rosenstein…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on October 28, 2018 by

Representative John Ratcliffe appears on Sunday Morning with Maria Bartiromo to discuss current events including: the mail bomb threats, and the looming central American  migration swarm at the southern U.S. border.

At the 07:00 mark in the video the subject shifts to the joint committee interview with George Papadopoulos.   Mr. Ratcliffe outlines that he has personally seen information within the classified documents that would have been considered “brady material“, evidence the U.S. Government withheld that exonerates Papadopoulos of accusations around ‘Spygate’.  Additionally, at 10:12 Ratcliffe outlines the reason why DAG Rod Rosenstein ‘backed-out’ of his scheduled testimony; and other weasel maneuvers .

Defending the Institutions

Oct 29 2018

Ground Reports – 2018 Mid Term Election…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on October 28, 2018 by

In the past several election cycles CTH has posted ‘Ground Report- Open Discussion’ threads to review perspectives of ground reports from your state, city and neighborhood. ‘Ground Reports’ are a valuable resource to gauge the non-quantifiable elements around elections; they are often quite insightful.

Many states are currently in the process of early voting. If you have a ground report you would like to share, please use the comment section below to provide your perspective.

Additionally, there are often obscure events that can help identify voting trends and possibilities; so don’t limit your review to traditional perspectives. Sentiments and senses are also very useful. What do you sense? What is going on in/around your town and location? Good or bad; positive or negative; what do you see happening?

Oct 29 2018

Europe & Risk of Revolution


Armstrong Economics Blog/Civil Unrest

Re-Posted Oct 29, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr Armstrong, for your lifetime work. mindblowing as always.
I picture Europe now as Greece during the Roman Republic (before its conquest). isolated, corrupted to the core. And the US as the new Roman Republic. Will it become an empire after 2032?
Marius was the man of the people and in the end, he was defeated by Sylla (Senate if I m correct). But Marius’ idea was carried on by Cesar. Was he a socialist before the hour?
as a European, which side is the safest to pick when we will be dragged in the conflict???
thanks again!

best regards from France

ANSWER: Ironically, people may think history is just the past. The next time you watch Star Wars, look closer. It is about this very struggle of the people versus the Empire. Instead of swords, they fight with laser swords. If you look at the royal guard, they had cloaks and helmets much as the Romans were dressed. This is actually a saga that is repeated time and again throughout history. Pericles in Athens was charged and put on trial as they are trying to do with Trump. Today, we call it the Deep States. In Roman times, Caesar fought against the corrupt Senate who was the political party known as the Optimates.

You are correct, Marius lost. His coins refected the anti-establishment. You can see the female head of Italia, for which he was fighting. Caesar’s reputation has been distorted by the corrupt Optimates such as Cato and Cicero. Caesar was a man of the people, not a socialist, just an anti-establishment from the perspective of corruption. He too had to flee Rome under the dictatorship of Sulla who would have killed him much as Stalin killed anyone who might oppose him.

The aspect of Europe is the total failure to really integrate the 28 member states. It is effectively a dictatorship without accepting the responsibilities. The EU dictates what the budgets should be of each member under the pretense of maintaining the Euro. The USA does not have that structure. The Feds, nor the Federal Reserve, care about the budgets of each 50 state. This is what I mean that the failure to consolidate the debts from the outset has created a dictatorship. The good news is that the EU has no central power as of yet to militarily invade a member who refuses to comply. In the case of Europe, it is extremely vulnerable to a complete collapse because the member states still retained even their own central banks. The EU could call upon some states to provide it with troops to invade another. But that is tenuous at best as the lack of confidence in the central EU government is gradually collapsing.

Oct 29 2018

Hesse German Election – Merkel’s CDU Loses Significantly


Armstrong Economics Blog/Germany

Re-Posted Oct 29, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

 

Both the SPD and the CDU have suffered serious major losses in the state elections in Hesse. The CDU and SPD have accepted the expected clear defeat where they lost some 10% of the votes compared to the last election and it is really all about the Refugee issue. The Greens have won sharply as many people also were afraid of the AfD. But they had to vote for someone and they turned to the Greens. The AfD, meanwhile, gained 12.6% of the votes in Hesse, which is a state that is home to six million people and the German capital of finance, Frankfurt am Main. The polls look to be as follows:

  • CDU: 27.8%  down from  38.3% (2013)
  • SPD: 19.9% down from 30.7% (2013)
  • Green: 19.8% up from 11.1% (2013)
  • AfD: 12.6% up from 4% (2013)
  • FDP: 7.6% up from 5.0% (2013)
  • Left Party: 6.6% up from  5.2% (2013)

This is confirming that the Trump Revolution is still in play. That does not mean others are supporting Trump. It simply means that whoever is in power is being thrown out of office. Unfortunately, the way German politics works, they can form a coalition to rule despite the fact that what they stand for are completely opposite positions. So a coalition of the black-green coalition and an alliance with the CDU is possible, but this would be extremely vulnerable and narrow. A CDU and Greens coalition would produce 56 seats out of 110. They really need a coalition of the Greens with both the CDU and SPD making it a black-green-red government with 63 seats out of 125.

What is very clear is that the rising discontent with the entire refugee crisis may yet bring Merkel down and the entire EU, if they do not wake up and admit a serious mistake, has been made

Oct 29 2018

Sociopathy & Politics


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics

Re-Posted Oct 29, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: What you discuss in “Are we Rewriting Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf” and “Hillary Advocates Violence Unless Democrats Win” are the ice people described in “The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout.” These are people with no conscience. Because your blog reminded me of the book, I am re-reading it. As the author says:

“Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task.”

“If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100 percent that you are dealing with a sociopath.”
There are clearly those who fit this profile in your two blogs. I recall, many decades ago, where some complained that making certain groups “other” made it easy to harm them because they weren’t then seen as human. Making groups “other” is clearly a deliberate strategy being used here.

I believe there are also troubled others whose consciences have been numbed by indoctrination and propaganda from such leaders to believe the violence they do by eliminating or silencing “others” serves a greater good. Nowadays, many of their leaders call out openly for these zombies to act.

Having worked with a sociopath, I initially fell for her pity party on how she was abused earlier in life, I fell for her sweetness and vulnerability and became friends. Then I saw her engineer a complaint to ruin a man to achieve her business goal. She also tried to ruin me, but the details are not important now.

It was only luck that I saw the author being interviewed at the time and realized immediately what type of person I was actually dealing with: a velvet-covered razor blade who uses and abuses people’s genuine sympathy and concern to achieve an end.

I share your concern over the future: will we have freedom or totalitarianism? There are many strategies beyond abuse complaints to destroy others and achieve political or business goals. I believe that if more people of good heart read this book, it would help them recognize the ice people before getting conned by their pity party.

REPLY: This is the way true sociopathic politicians create hatred to gain power in politics. It is actually a sign of the Decline & Fall of an empire, nation, or city-state. It is the division of the country which pits one side against another and in the process, a portion of each side will resort to violence justified in their mind because they see the opposition as evil. This was the hallmark of Hillary, but the interesting aspect is that she most likely was not engaged in deliberately adopting this strategy to turn people to hatred, she was doing this simply because it came naturally to her.

Hillary deliberately engaged in this tactic by lumping everyone who voted for Trump as “deplorables”.  She basically engaged in hate speech and continues to engage in this tactic saying that civil unrest is warranted whenever you disagree with these deplorables and they are not in control. Civility will return, she says, ONLY when they dictate the world to everyone else. These are the words of a dictator, not someone who is civil and believes in freedom. At the core of what she is saying is that they have a right to subjugate everyone to compel them to work for their benefit. This is EXACTLY what Ayn Rand fought against.

A poll by the Rand Corporation which was taken several months before the election revealed that voters who viewed themselves as neglected overwhelmingly favored Donald Trump above any other candidate.  Derek Thompson at The Atlantic wrote on March 1st, 2016:

“Voters who agreed with the statement ‘people like me don’t have any say about what the government does’ were 86.5 percent more likely to prefer Trump. This feeling of powerlessness and voicelessness was a much better predictor of Trump support than age, race, college attainment, [or] income.”

The left has the media on their side. They are doing EVERYTHING possible to destroy the very foundation of freedom upon which this country was born. I get a lot of emails from people who will vote for Trump, NOT BECAUSE they think he is the greatest thing since the invention of sliced bread, but because they view this hatred and feel that they are indeed neglected, exploited, and abused for the benefit of others. Consequently, they have to be CLOSET Trump supporters for they fear they cannot even display a Trump sticker for it makes them a target.

What our model is showing is the craziest period in American politics begins here in 2018. We have NOTHING but Directional Changes and Panic Cycles in politics from here into 2021. So buckle up – we are just embarking on absolute insanity and the markets are reflecting this deep-seated fear of the left which is rising with their motto – our way or no way!
The majority of people supporting Trump just want to be left alone – the Constitutional right to pursue their own happiness, provide for their family, and let them decide their own future. Ironically, women did not need the right to vote before Socialism because it was an INDIRECT political system of government that was the very essence of freedom. The Greek Democracy was NOT that only men voted, it was ONLY the head of the household voted as if that person was the Congressman representing everyone in the household. Once Socialism began, then every individual was entitled to vote because now every individual had to pay an income tax and there was an endless supply of laws to dictate your behavior. The famous case of Griswold v Connecticut is where the right to privacy was established because the state passed a law based upon religious beliefs that birth control was against the Bible teachings so it was illegal to have a condom. The Supreme Court asked how was such a law to be enforced? Would a state official be there in the bedroom to inspect before anything took place? This is what happens under Socialism. They believe they have the power to regulate everything you do down to the most private decision. If that is the political system, them ABSOLUTELY everyone has the right to vote when it concerns a law that impacts them. It was wrong to draft boys for Vietnam as soon as they turned 18 but had no right to vote on the issue of war or even to vote before they were drafted. They were also denied the right to go to a bar but were old enough to die for a politician.

Oct 28 2018

Why Everyone Should Vote Republican


Published on Oct 26, 2018

With millions of votes already cast in the Congressional elections, Bill Whittle explains why you should vote — and vote Republican — even if you’re… – a never-Trumper who still can’t stand the president, – an Independent who wants to do the right thing, – a frustrated American who’s sick of the partisan division, or – a devoted Democrat

 

Oct 28 2018

George Papadopoulos Considering Withdrawal From Mueller Plea Deal…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on October 27, 2018 by

There’s an interesting dynamic around George Papadopoulos.  For some reason it appears he has only recently understood the scope, scale and totality of Operation “Spygate”; the corrupt enterprise within DOJ/FBI operation “Crossfire Hurricane”.

As he realizes the intentional and manufactured set-ups by John Brennan (CIA); Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Bill Priestap (FBI Co-Intel); along with Sally Yates, John Carlin, Mary McCord (DOJ-NSD); and the Robert Mueller crew, writ large; George Papadopoulos is now considering a withdrawal from his plea deal with Robert Mueller.

Oct 28 2018

President Trump MAGA Rally, Murphysboro, Illinois – 5:30pm EST Livestream…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on October 27, 2018 by

Today President Donald Trump is holding another MAGA campaign rally at Southern Illinois Airport Hangar 6 in Murphysboro, IL. President Trump is expected to speak at 4:30pm CST / 5:30pm EST

UPDATE: Video Added

RSBN Livestream Link – Fox News Livestream Link – Alternate Livestream Link

Oct 28 2018

President Trump Speech to Future Farmers of America Convention – 2:45pm Livestream….


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on October 27, 2018 by

President Trump is delivering remarks today at the 91st Annual Future Farmers of America Convention and Expo in Indiana, following a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that has left an unknown number of victims.

UPDATE: Video Added

WH Livestream Link – NBC Livestream Link – Alternate Livestream Link