Bumper64

🧐🍺

Thank you Adam! 🍺

Welcome back TD

The people of Venezuela took to the streets today to demand their freedom from the violent, authoritarian, and socialist regime of Nicolas Maduro. President Donald J. Trump has been monitoring the situation minute-by-minute throughout the day. Earlier this year, President Trump officially recognized Juan Guaido, President of Venezuela’s democratically elected National Assembly, as the country’s legitimate president. Speaking outside the White House today, National Security Adviser John Bolton was clear on where America stands: “The President wants to see a peaceful transfer of power from Maduro to Guaido. 🎬 Watch: This is the Maduro regime in action [Warning: Disturbing images] Aboard the USS Harry S. Truman, Vice President Mike Pence echoed President Trump’s words. “As we stand here today aboard this ship, the people of Venezuela are seeking to reclaim freedom and democracy in their nation—a nation impoverished by dictatorship, socialism, and oppression. And so we say to President Juan Guaido, to all the freedom-loving people of Venezuela: Estamos con ustedes—we are with you.” The United States has imposed tough sanctions on Maduro and his henchmen. The Trump Administration has blocked more than 100 individuals, entities, and aircraft controlled by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, depriving Maduro’s cronies from needed revenue sources while preserving critical assets for the future of Venezuela. More than 3 million people have fled Venezuela since 2015, and the United Nations estimates that number may swell to more than 5.3 million by the end of 2019. Nine out of 10 Venezuelans now live in poverty, with thousands of children starving. Under President Trump, America continues to provide humanitarian assistance to the Venezuelan people, and food and medicine remain exempt from U.S. sanctions. In January, Venezuela’s National Assembly invoked the country’s constitution to declare Nicolas Maduro illegitimate and the presidency vacant. It is time for Maduro to honor that constitution and step aside, returning the future of Venezuela to its people. https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600daily/

I agree 100% with you on this

Video John Solomon on the post-Mueller questions that could turn the tables on collusion investigators The Hill executive vice president John Solomon and 'The Russia Hoax' author Gregg Jarrett discuss their Mueller report predictions. As partisan Democrats and the liberal media hyperventilate over Attorney General William Barr’s release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report Thursday, they’re willfully ignoring the fact that they already know what the report concludes: Two years and $35 million was spent investigating a lie. Barr has already informed us that the report states categorically that there was no collusion between the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and the government of Russia to elect Donald Trump president. The report finally puts to bed the main allegation that the left has been consumed with for nearly three years. Much to their chagrin, the lie that they pushed for the entire Trump presidency has been completely dismissed by Mueller. Barr told us that last month. On the issue of obstruction of justice, we know the report says Mueller left the decision on possible obstruction by Trump up to Barr. But by not filing obstruction charges, Mueller did decide that there was no obstruction of justice. Regardless, Barr – as we already know – wrote in his summary letter to Congress that he found there was no obstruction of justice. So no mystery there either. The political reality is that the release of the redacted Mueller report just gives the left an opportunity to attack President Trump one more time. The biased media will scour the 400-page report to use it as a political weapon against the president going into the 2020 election, just like they did with the phony dossier prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele in 2016. Democrats in Congress will look for inflammatory sentences in the report that they can take out of context to push more false narratives and more partisan taxpayer-funded investigations that will turn up more nothing burgers. The sad display that we will now see unfold will confirm to the American people that the Democrats are obsessed with investigating President Trump because they have no positive agenda for the American people. As the liberal media try to keep the American people fooled into focusing on the old news that makes up Mueller’s investigative report, there is one investigation that must be conducted in a thorough and impartial manner. President Trump has called for a much- needed “investigation of the investigators.” To be sure, we’ve learned a lot over the past three years about the special treatment afforded to Hillary Clinton by the Obama Justice Department and FBI, as well as the sinister activities that were set in motion in an attempt to derail the Trump candidacy and presidency. What else do we know after three years? We know that former FBI Director James Comey was operating under the assumption that Hillary Clinton was going to be elected president and therefore would soon become his boss. This clearly impacted his decision-making. We know that disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok was plotting to stop Trump from being elected president with his “insurance policy.” We know that former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s wife was taking campaign cash from Clinton allies. Yet McCabe was supervising the Hillary Clinton email investigation. We know that former Obama CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper behave more like political hacks than senior intelligence officials. We know that the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid Fusion GPS to investigate Trump and pay Christopher Steele to create the phony Russian dossier. We know that Steele appears to have had carte blanche to peddle his stack of lies to top officials at the Obama Justice Department, FBI, State Department and intelligence community. We know that the Steele dossier was nothing more than an unverified political opposition research document that somehow made it into applications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that paved the way for our government to spy on the Trump campaign and launch a counterintelligence investigation into a political candidate they didn’t agree with. And we know that President Obama wanted to “know everything” Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page were doing. The American people have a right to know what Obama knew and when he knew it. It’s certainly a good sign that Attorney General Barr is taking these allegations involving the Justice Department, FBI and other agencies seriously and is assembling a team to look at them. I’m also pleased that Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., is sending referrals to the Justice Department that will outline alleged criminal activity that he discovered during his investigation into the activities of senior Obama administration officials during the 2016 presidential campaign. As an added step toward transparency, President Trump should declassify information related to the Mueller investigation so the American people can see with their own eyes exactly what the deep state did in 2016. Additionally – and just as importantly – we’ll soon find out what Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has discovered in his year-long investigation into the aforementioned alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses. But the Horowitz investigation isn’t adequate. The inspector general doesn’t have prosecutorial power and this investigation needs a grand jury to question witnesses. The American people deserve answers. And the best way to resolve this once and for all is to appoint an impartial special counsel to investigate the investigators who conducted the Russia probe. This would be news worth our attention https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/david-bossie-mueller-probe-was-a-waste-of-time-and-money-no-collusion-no-obstruction

More workers expect job offers, higher salaries, NY Fed poll shows Just because the U.S. economy has slowed doesn’t mean companies have stopped hiring or people have given up looking for work. Far from it. Americans still think plenty of jobs are available and companies are offering better pay as they compete for a shrinking pool of available labor, new study by the New York Federal Reserve shows. The Fed study is the latest proof the jobs market continues to sizzle. The rate of layoffs each week — known as jobless claims — fell below 200,000 earlier this month for the first time since 1969. The economy also added almost 200,000 new jobs in March after a feeble 33,000 gain in February, keeping the unemployment rate at 3.8%. The New York Fed has regularly questioned 1,000 people nationally over a one-year period — both those with and without jobs — to get a sense of their employment status and search for work. Some new participants are added each month and others rotated out. A little over 24% said they had looked for a job in March, up from 22.6% last fall. One-quarter of the respondents (25.7%) said they expected to receive at least one job offer in the next four months — the highest level since the survey began in 2014. “The increase was most pronounced for respondents without a college degree,” the Fed said. Adding to the evidence of strong demand for labor, the average full-time salary offer jumped 14% to $66,415 in March from $58,035 last November. The increase should be viewed with some caution since it’s a particularly up-and-down number, but it is the highest number the regional Fed bank has recorded. The upshot: The U.S. labor market hasn’t cooled off much, if at all. Companies are still willing to hire and don’t want to get caught short-handed if sales pick up in the spring as many economists predict. Another side-effect of the strong labor market is a steadily increasing stock prices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.01% and S&P 500 SPX, -0.23%are closing in again on record highs — just several months after a huge beatdown in December. “President Obama used to stir Americans with his powerful calls for national unity. It looks like he has, after all these years, finally forged agreement among leaders in both parties that his health care law made things worse and should be replaced. Bipartisanship blooms in Washington,” Scott Jennings writes in the Courier-Journal. “Voters in both parties know they were duped by Obama’s health care promises. Private insurance customers saw their premiums and deductibles jump to pay for someone else’s health care, but not their own.” “How’s this for unexpected irony: As New York pols move to choke their own economy by nixing new natural-gas supplies, President Trump is racing to the rescue,” the New York Post editorial board writes. “Trump last week signed two executive orders to help ease the way for new oil and gas pipelines and other energy projects. One, seemingly aimed squarely at New York, requires the Environmental Protection Agency to look for ways to make it harder for states to use the Clean Water Act to block pipelines”—a common tactic of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), the editors add. “An Arizona mayor on Tuesday declared an emergency in the city he represents due to what he said was the strain caused by the incoming flow of migrants,” Elizabeth Zwirz reports for Fox News. “Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls shared the news on Facebook, explaining that he ‘proclaimed a local emergency’ in the city ‘due to the migrant family releases overwhelming the local shelter system.’” https://www.whitehouse.gov/westwingreads/ https://www.marketwatch.com/story/lots-of-job-offers-bigger-salary-bumps-offer-2019-04-16?mod=economy-politics

Great post Adam, I always love reading your thoughts on what's going on with this investment.

Play Nice!!!

😀😀😀 luv it

Growth in hourly pay slows a bit after reaching a 10-year high Employees take a break, but not for long. The U.S. added 196,000 new jobs in March, showing the labor market still has plenty of punch even though the economy has slowed. The numbers: The U.S. created 196,000 new jobs last month after a swoon in February, an encouraging gain that hints growth in the economy is ready for a revival. Hiring increased in most major segments of the economy, most notably health care and white-collar firms. The flush of new jobs kept the unemployment rate near a 50-year low of 3.8%, the Labor Department said. The rebound in hiring might temper unease about the economy after a rocky start in 2019. Although a spate of large companies have announced layoffs recently, most firms are still looking to hire. One of their chronic complaints: A shortage of skilled labor. The increase exceeded the 179,000 forecast of economists surveyed by MarketWatch. What happened: Health-care providers led the way again, adding 49,000 jobs. The industry has boosted hiring by almost 400,000 in the past year. Professional and technical firms hired 34,000 workers, restaurants increased staff by 27,000 and construction companies took on 16,000 new workers. A month earlier, builders cut employment by the most in a year and a half during a spell of severe cold and heavy snowfall. Pockets of weakness were found in manufacturing and retail. Manufacturers trimmed 6,000 jobs after barely any gain in February. And retailers eliminated 12,000 jobs. The amount of money the average worker earns rose 4 cents to $27.70 an hour last month. The increase in pay in the past 12 months slowed to 3.2% from 3.4%. Still, wages are rising near the fastest pace in a decade. Most economists think yearly pay will soon move closer to the 4% mark, underscoring just how tight the labor market is. The increase in jobs in February was revised up to 33,000 from 20,000. January job gains were little changed at 312,000. The U.S. added an average of 180,000 jobs in the first three months of 2019 — a solid if somewhat slower pace compared to the tail end of last year. Big picture: The boomerang in hiring in March should ease lingering worries about the economy after a sluggish start to the beginning of the year. The U.S. is growing more slowly, it’s clear, and the companies aren’t hiring as rapidly. Yet wages are rising while layoffs and unemployment remain near the lowest levels in a half century. The combination of stable growth and inflation is expected to keep the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates anytime soon. What are they saying?: “Markets can breathe a sigh of relief as the employment data show that the economy continues to expand, reducing recession fears,” economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch told clients. “The labor market is certainly strong enough to keep the economy moving forward, but it isn’t generating the sort of inflationary pressure that would push the Fed off of its patient stance,” said senior economist Eric Winograd of the investment-research firm AllianceBernstein. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hiring-speeds-up-as-economy-adds-196000-jobs-in-march-unemployment-flat-at-38-2019-04-05

A broken asylum system all but guarantees entry if you bring children. By The Editorial Board March 31, 2019 3:54 p.m. ET In this photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, migrants are seen inside an enclosure in El Paso after crossing the border between Mexico and the United States illegally and turning themselves in to request asylum. PHOTO: MANI ALBRECHT/U.S. CUSTOMS AND B/ZUMA PRESS Immigration politics is so polarized that right and left have a veto over any constructive policy. Yet a genuine crisis is building at the southern border as the perverse incentives of U.S. asylum law invite a surge of migrants that is overwhelming border security. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said last week that the border has hit “a breaking point” amid a rush of families from Central America. More than a strong U.S. economy is driving this influx. Between 2000 and 2017, apprehensions dropped 80% as Mexico’s economy improved and border security tightened. But immigration has picked up over the last year as word has spread that parents with children who claim asylum can stay for years and perhaps forever. More than 76,000 immigrants illegally crossed the border in February and about half came with families, a 10-fold increase over the past two years. Border apprehensions in March probably exceeded 100,000, the highest monthly total in a decade. At the current rate, border apprehensions will exceed one million this year—the most since 2006—as human smugglers become more ambitious and reduce prices to entice more migrants. Mr. Trump’s solution is to build a wall along the 1,900-mile border, and on Friday he said he may even close the legal points of entry with Mexico. He has also ordered U.S. aid cut to the Central American countries that are the source of the migrant waves. None of this will deter migrants increasingly drawn by the porous U.S. asylum system. Congress needs to build stronger legal barriers that migrants and judges can’t evade or bulldoze. One problem is that asylum claimants may avoid immediate deportation simply by convincing an immigration officer that they have a “credible fear” that they will be persecuted if they return to their home country. The Immigration and Nationality Act conditions asylum on a “well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” But immigrants complaining about abusive spouses and economic hardship have been waved through. Due to a shortage of detention beds, they are usually released and allowed to work in the U.S. while awaiting another hearing to determine if they qualify for asylum. The average hearing wait time is two years. Many disappear and don’t report for their hearing. The Trump Administration last year tried to make it harder to pass the credible-fear test by barring those fleeing social and economic unrest. Immigration law allows the President to “establish additional limitations and conditions, consistent with this section, under which an alien shall be ineligible for asylum” and temporarily “impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem” are in the national interest. But federal Judge Emmet Sullivan last year blocked the Administration from imposing asylum conditions. Last month the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals extended habeas corpus to asylum claimants, which means even those who fail the initial screening will have recourse in federal court. Almost anyone who claims asylum will now be able to avoid immediate deportation. The Ninth Circuit in 2016 created other opportunities for asylum arbitrage by extending to families the 1997 Flores settlement, which limits the time unaccompanied children may be detained to 20 days. This has encouraged parents to bring their children on a perilous journey in hopes of expediting their release into the U.S. A father of an eight-year-old boy who died in government custody last December while waiting to be processed had heard rumors that children are a fast-track entry ticket to the U.S. Border agents have identified 2,400 “false families” over the last year as smugglers pair adults with unrelated children. To relieve overburdened detention facilities and nonprofits, the Trump Administration has tried to steer more immigrants to ports of entry where they can wait in Mexico while their claims are processed. The Administration last year tried to limit asylum eligibility to immigrants who present themselves at ports of entry, but the Ninth Circuit blocked that too. Thus, the border chaos. Most migrants don’t want to wait years in Mexico so they pay smugglers thousands of dollars to bus them to the border. Some have been ambushed by gunmen. Many cross the border and surrender to government agents because they know they will be quickly released into the U.S. All of this promotes the perception that the border is out of control and increases support for more restrictionist immigration policies, which should give Democrats a political incentive to fix the asylum loopholes. Start by clarifying that migrants who aren’t being persecuted aren’t eligible for asylum. Lawmakers should also overrule unfounded court rulings including the Ninth Circuit’s expansion of Flores. More immigration judges are needed to reduce the backlog. Ditto detention beds to house immigrants while claims are processed. Democrats don’t want to make any concessions to Mr. Trump on immigration, but if they refuse to act they will be more to blame for the growing humanitarian and security crisis than the Administration. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-border-asylum-crisis-11554062066

The news that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III “did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” has left a lot of people in Washington with a lot of explaining to do. Put aside the rogues’ gallery of reporters and pundits who assured us that Donald Trump had conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the presidency. What is most insidious are those who did have access to classified intelligence and led Americans to believe that they had seen what we could not: actual evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. Recall that in 2016, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) released a letter to FBI Director James B. Comey claiming the FBI had proof of Trump-Russia collusion. “In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government,” Reid declared. When asked what information Reid was referring to, a spokesman said, “There have been classified briefings on this topic. That is all I can say.” Trump has called for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) to resign. He is absolutely correct. Schiff repeatedly said that his committee had dug up “plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy.” In March 2017, he said on “Meet the Press,” “I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now” and last May he told ABC that Trump’s Russia conspiracy is of “a size and scope probably beyond Watergate.” Schiff is a disgrace. But he is not alone. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said, “In our investigation, we saw strong evidence of collusion” and declared Trump an agent “working on behalf of the Russians.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) claimed, “It’s clear that the campaign colluded, and there’s a lot of evidence of that.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, assured us last year that “the evidence is pretty clear that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said, “There is no longer a question of whether this campaign sought to collude with a hostile foreign power to subvert America’s democracy.” And recently, the committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), declared that “enormous amounts of evidence” exist of collusion between Trump and Russia and that “there’s no one that could factually say there’s not plenty of evidence of collaboration or communications between Trump Organization and Russians.” Except for Mueller, of course. These comments by people with access to intelligence were shameful. But the most sinister of all is John Brennan, who used his authority as former CIA director to suggest that Trump was a traitor and a compromised Russian asset. After Trump’s Helsinki summit, Brennan declared “he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.” When challenged by Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press,” Brennan stood by his assessment. “I called [Trump’s] behavior treasonous, which is to betray one’s trust and aid and abet the enemy, and I stand very much by that claim.” Former CIA director John Brennan on Capitol Hill on May 23, 2017. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) This month, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell told Brennan this investigation was “developing while you were still on the job” and asked, “Did you see enough at that stage to believe . . . that that would result in indictments?” Brennan replied, “I thought at the time there was going to be individuals who were going to have issues with the Department of Justice. Yes.” In a New York Times op-ed, he wrote that “Trump’s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash.” Now, Brennan feigns contrition. “I don’t know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was,” he said, adding, “I am relieved that it’s been determined there was not a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government over our election.” Hogwash. He wanted it to be true, and he relied on his CIA credentials to convince Americans that it was. That is a violation of the public trust. Trump was right to revoke Brennan’s security clearance. He is among the worst of the worst, the Trump-Russia collusion hall of shame. We have long since passed the point where Americans expect objectivity from the press. But we should hold our elected and appointed officials handling sensitive national security issues to a higher standard. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-russia-collusion-hall-of-shame/2019/03/28/306b5168-5173-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html?utm_term=.9dcd2bc3f0ee