London (CNN)It's more than a week in and we still know very little about the poisonings in the cathedral city of Salisbury in southern England. Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, 33, remain hospitalized in "very serious condition."
Here are four big questions that remain unanswered.
#2
The larger question is: "What does it take to become embarassing and inconvenient to these people?"
Is it reserved for their own compatriots, or can anyone get on the list? If so, has it been going on and nobody picked up on it?
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/12/2018 11:18 Comments ||
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#3
May is stamping her foot and making a donkey face. "How dare you derail my Brexit sabotage, Vlad!"
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/12/2018 14:05 Comments ||
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#4
A ZH comment claiming Skripal is linked to Christopher Steele via his recruiter and handler Pablo Miller.
Payrolls rose 313,000 in February, compared with the 205,000 median estimate in a survey of economists, and the two prior months were revised higher by 54,000, Labor Department figures showed Friday.
Women and minorities hardest hit!
Black, Hispanic unemployment hit historic lows:
Just 6.9 percent of black adults were unemployed in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the second-lowest such ratio since the agency has been keeping track.
Hispanic workers, too, are currently enjoying historically low rates of unemployment. At 4.9 percent in February, Hispanic unemployment is just a tenth of a percentage point above the historic low. [I presume we’re talking about legal Hispanic employment]
Not only that, but we’ve finally reversed the downward spiral of the labor participation rate:
An increase in the labor force participation rate to its highest level since September helped keep the headline unemployment number steady, as the number of those counted as not in the workforce tumbled by 653,000 to just over 95 million.
The total counted as "employed" in the household survey surged by 785,000 to a record 155.2 million.
Will this national nightmare never end!?! It’s all good news for America which means it’s all bad news for progressives.
#1
So building a strong middle class is bad according to Progressives? I guess the Progs don't like power being decentralized and moved out of Washington.
[Breitbart] American workers whose lives were uprooted by multinational free trade deals are thanking President Trump for signing into law tariffs on imported steel and aluminum to protect U.S. jobs.
In a series of videos by the White House, American workers thanked Trump for putting into place a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum, two moves that are designed to counteract decades of U.S. jobs readily moving overseas and displacement of U.S. workers due to multinational free trade deals. The video explains:
"Two years ago, we had to shut down 60 percent of our capacity," Dusty Stevens, the superintendent of Century Aluminum says in the video. "My father worked in the industry."
"My brother was also affected by the downturn of us having to shut down the lines," Stevens said. "He lost his job and he had a wife and family and a small child at home."
"With the tariffs being put on, we will benefit greatly from this and hopefully give our plant some longevity," Stevens continued. "Now this is giving us the capability of going back to full capacity. It’s the difference between losing 500 jobs and adding 300. So for my family, it gives us total confidence that I will be employed for many years to come versus only having a year or two left."
Scott Sauritch, a maintenance worker with U.S. steel said his father was in the steel industry and lost his job in the 1980’s due to imports, noting the toll it took on him and his five siblings whom his father had to support:
#1
US steel workers don't understand that they are just pawns for a bigger game.
And Europe shouldn't play it. My advice for the EU would be not to retaliate. Europe should enact safeguard duties to ensure it doesn't get flooded with cheap Asian steel. When George W. Bush instituted tariffs on steel imports in 2002, EU safeguards fully mitigated the risk of redirected imports and supported gradual but robust growth in the EU steel industry.
Trump wants to bully Europe into concessions and we should simply ignore it. Ignoring him is what Trump hates most.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
03/12/2018 7:56 Comments ||
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#2
DC-3's offloading more "bullying" at Flughafen Berlin-Tempelhoff, 1948.
#10
EC, I dont like the idea you ascribe to that elites rule and plebs do as theyre told. You may enjoy that in your "old world" but here in the "new world", we dont ascribe to outdated systems
#13
Look how far gone we are. The idea that we should change the rules that benefit the rich to benefit our own workers instead is taken as some sort of insult. Wow.
The Europeans are scared shitless. They've profited handsomely from trade for decades. That plus the free US security enables them to fund a lavish welfare state. When this free money from the sweat of American workers dries up, Europe is going to be in real trouble. Hence all the hysterics. They can't imagine a world in which they have to pay their own way.
It's like a spoiled child who became a spoiled adult, and is now 30 years old and getting kicked out of his parents' basement. The concept of going it alone is terrifying.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
03/12/2018 16:09 Comments ||
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#14
Well said HM.
We finally empowered someone that speaks 'business bully'. I hope he can hold out.
#15
No. Trump is buying votes from rust belt states. The cost is high and paid by the rest of us. It's election politics, not economics.
Uh...NO. He is pushing the reset button. Some peoples pet paradigms are going to be changing. For too long this nation has taken it up the bung hole on trade. Time to change a few things.
Posted by: Chesney Oppressor of the Geats3318 ||
03/12/2018 19:02 Comments ||
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#16
Nobody is "scared shitless" here if the U.S. charges tariffs on steel. We'll cope with that.
What really worries us (and I might say most economists in the U.S. as well) is that Trump may kill the WTO, which would be truly catastrophic for global trade. And unfortunately many Trump supporters don't realize that this will hit America just as hard as it will hit the rest of the world.
That's why I recommend to keep calm and do nothing in order not to escalate the situation.
Trump has threatened to charge a 25% (or higher) tariff on European cars. This would be a flagrant violation of WTO rules because the Most Favored Nation principle means that you must charge the same amount of tariff to all countries with MFN status. So if you charge a 2.5% tariff on Japanese or Korean cars, you MUST (by WTO rules the U.S. signed) charge the same tariff on German or French cars. There is absolutely no justifiable reason to put a 25% tariff on Mercedes or BMW cars.
Trump may try his schtick with his national emergency nonsense, but this would certainly not work with cars.
He would simply kill the WTO which would lead to an explosion of protectionism and retaliatory tariffs all over the world.
The result? Global depression.
Multinational trade deals may kill jobs but they also create new ones. The thing is that they create more than they kill. And that includes jobs in the U.S.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
03/12/2018 19:13 Comments ||
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#17
For ~150 years we did not have an income tax and funded our govt by tariffs and duties.
#18
European Conservative, if the WTO is so great why would everyone drop out just because the US did? Why wouldn't they keep going as the US self-destructed?
#19
Good question. Pascal Lamy, former Secretary-General of the WTO and EU Trade Commissioner actually thinks that a "Plan B" would work.
From an interview in the German Zeit (my translation)
Lamy: The big issue for the meetings with the Chinese is the subsidies granted by the government to their producers. The big issue with the Americans is that they are causing too much damage to the WTO, that they are boycotting the proceedings there. On the other hand, European politicians should build alliances with Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Switzerland, Norway, Australia and New Zealand. There are plenty of countries that want a sensible middle way and that all have a problem when the United States destabilizes the WTO. The USA can then be explained in peace and quiet: We have a plan B.
ZEIT: A plan B?
Lamy: Yes, a WTO without the USA. So think twice about it, Mr Trump, before you smash the World Trade Organisation! Because if we have a WTO without the United States, you are sitting outside in the cold.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
03/12/2018 22:53 Comments ||
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#20
Btw this is quite a balanced interview (quite critical about China) and worth reading.
Could do a translation tomorrow
Posted by: European Conservative ||
03/12/2018 22:56 Comments ||
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#21
That would be lovely, European Conservative. Submit it as an article under International-UN-NGOs on Page 3:Non-WoT, if you would be so kind.
[Right Scoop] So according to a new book coming out soon, the Obama administration knew that there was Putin hacking on our election in 2018, but when our sooper-smart counter-hackers mounted an attack against their Siberian krokodil-addicted doping keyboard-jockeys, they were told to STAND DOWN.
Skipping the Susan Rice "Stand Down' order insert which we've already read.
Now the book is Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, who is a foul wretched liberal. So I think we should take it with a grain of salt. But on the other hand I could totally see it being accurate ‐ as a conservative, my best known principle is that government is utterly incompetent. And if that’s the case, then I could definitely see them backing down because they honestly thought Hillary had it in the bag and they didn’t need to push back against Putin. Just another perfect storm ending in a s-storm...
(1.) It was the 'no-cost' strategic "insurance" necessary to validate the Trump electronic monitoring effort and gain the assistance of foreign intelligence services.
(2.) In the unlikely event of a Trump victory, discredit and invalidate a potential Trump win and bring charges of Russian collusion agains key Trump staff members and possibly Trump himself.
(3.) Provide political projection as a cover for action for their own Uranium One misdeeds.
Classic counterintelligence exploitation, and a strategy well beyond the planning and capabilities of the DNC or the scatter brained Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Because I care, I hate to see the service mismanaged the way it was during the years of ObamaNation. It can be put back on a better and firmer foundation but sometimes that vision needs to be a bit 'wider'.
#1
"The US developed the generally useless (but said to be very 'progressive') Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). It can't defend itself; it's very accoustically 'loud' and is dangerous to use for special warfare/SEAL operations for that reason; it has a very short operational range; there are manning issues because the crew it carries are not adequate for sustained high intensity operations; many of the modular suites of sensors and weapons haven't become available ten years later and may never be because of massive cost overruns, etc. "
Also mentions the half useless trillion dollar airplane.
#2
LCS, the NetworkCentric Transformationalists illegitimate child. Naval warships are not airplanes that you can drop a new pilot and hang a different pod then 'Voila! New Mission!' They are a Team that grows more proficient with practice. Secondly, in a world with budget limits where are you going to stockpile this supply of expert crews that you will switch in and out like USB peripherals? Finally, where are the stupid modules?!? The module hardware should have been developed First and the ship second...
#3
The A-35... What happens when you try to design a program by committee and everyone gets what they want in. Like a Swiss Army Knife, the more it does the less efficient it does it...
The design strikes me as a helicopter fleet 'bunker' ship. Like the PT boats, useful for control of Pacific atolls. Too bad they ended up more technologically complex than the capability of their builders or operators.
[Townhall] It’s obvious that the central tenet of the Democrat Party platform is now hatred and contempt for Normal Americans. Taking their cue from the elites in Europe and Canada who are stripping dissenters of their free speech rights and religious freedoms, the leftist elite is moving to solidify its hold on power here with the eager assistance of tech companies and the moral support of the Fredocons who yearn to return to pseudo-relevance as the ruling class’s slobberingly loyal opposition. In California, the leftist government is practically firing on Fort Sumter. And nationally, these aspiring fascists are especially eager to disarm Normal Americans ‐ doing so would be an object lesson in who’s the boss, as well as solving that frustrating problem of the Normals having the ability to resist.
Probably because I’ve spent time where they actually had a civil war, many people ask me ‐ people whose names you know ‐ whether I think this turmoil will all end in a Second Civil War. They are seriously concerned, and not without cause ‐ the left’s hatred for Normal Americans and its dedication to totally stripping the people who are the backbone of this country of their ability to participate in their own governance is threatening to rip the country apart.
#1
And there it is. I am reminded of Condoleeza Rice’s father and a number of the neighbuoring menfolk patrolling their street with rifles when things got interesting, and how the local KKK mob chose to pass on and engage elsewhere.
#2
No longer bound by the Mason-Dixon Line, I’m afraid regional conflicts will be engaged at the regional neighborhood level, like the Katrina looter militias.
#3
The Katrina Looter Militia hasn't fared well in Houston. Stupid Texans keep shooting them. Seems there's 2-3 reports a week about a permit holding taking out the trash.
#4
No longer bound by the Mason-Dixon Line, I’m afraid regional conflicts will be engaged at the regional neighborhood level, like the Katrina looter militias.
Yep, every "red" state has a university town that's a vector for Lefty insanity.
[Daily Caller] Gerber Baby company chose a Down syndrome child for the new face of its 2018 campaign in early February, inspiring a number of states to create, push or pass legislation protecting unborn babies who will be born with Down syndrome.
"Every year, we choose the baby who best exemplifies Gerber’s longstanding heritage of recognizing that every baby is a Gerber baby," Gerber president Bill Partyka said, announcing Lucas Warren as the 2018 Gerber baby, according to TODAY. "We’re hoping this will impact everyone ‐ that it will shed a little bit of light on the special needs community and help more individuals with special needs be accepted and not limited," father Jason Warren told the Today Show.
#1
This is from my contact in Iceland. Nice people and a country of 300,000. They had a murder there that they said had never happened in their country in contemporary times. Down Syndrome is currently a big issue there. Then this from Iceland;
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[MODUS A.D.] Employment up! Unemployment down! (Unexpectedly.)
[Daily Caller] Gerber Baby company chose a Down syndrome child for the new face of its 2018 campaign in early February, inspiring a number of states to create, push or pass legislation protecting unborn babies who will be born with Down syndrome.
