BloggeRhythms

Anthony Watts @wattsupwiththat.com via Drudge, headlined his article today: “No April Fools Joke – Arctic blast for Northeast USA to give snow, 10’s and 20’s to New York, Boston.”

The reason is a deep “trough,” coupled with cold, making it “look like winter wonderland for much of the northeast in the first week of April.” 

Just as a reminder, in early March of this year, the POTUS delivered the payment of the first $500,000 of a $3-billion, four-year pledge to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, whose aim is to help developing countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to phenomena blamed on climate change.

Interestingly, as reported by Patrick Goodenough @cnsnews.com, on March 14th, the U.N. Green Climate Fund’s governing board approved a proposal to hike the number of permanent staff at the body’s secretariat by 150 percent by the end of next year – from the current 56 positions to 140.” 

So, it seems that more bodies are needed to handle all the new funds deriving from the largess of American taxpayers. Naturally. however, that money comes from only those in the U.S. that currently have jobs. Roughly 62% of the workforce. The rest are being supported by government programs, which also depend on the same U.S. workers for funding.

As far as the thoughtlessness of the $3 billion pledge itself is concerned, yesterday Fed Chair Janet Yellen, all but specifically acknowledged that her previously implied four interest rate hikes will not occur this year. That's because of the dismal state of the nation’s economy.  

Jeff Cox, finance editor @CNBC.com, writes: “Indeed, Yellen's blockbuster speech Tuesday assuring that the central bank would go slowly on future adjustments to monetary policy only caught some of the market by surprise. Others realized there was virtually no chance of a hawkish Fed in 2016.” 

Yellen’s remarks came amid a deteriorating economic picture, “though a U.S. recession still is considered unlikely by most economists. The Atlanta Fed now expects gross domestic product to gain just 0.6 percent in the first quarter, down from about 2.7 percent in early February. The Atlanta Fed's GDP-based recession indicator shows just a 10 percent chance of recession, though that has not been updated since Feb. 4.”

Euro Pacific's Peter Schiff said: "If anything, I would say the global problems have subsided since December. The real problem is the U.S. economy. The U.S. economy is weakening," 

“Schiff said he thinks the Fed may attempt a rate hike this year, but any efforts at tightening won't last. 

"The economy already is in recession," he said. "The question is, when is the Fed going to acknowledge it." 

Yet, as mentioned earlier, to this POTUS another $3 billion given away on an international global-warming farce doesn’t even rate a second thought. Especially since about 90% of Democrat voters don’t even know he gave the taxpayer's cash away. After all, welfare programs are still paying out, so why should they worry?  

On a similar matter, a Facebook friend, posted some information, further confirmed by the Department of Energy website, which may be of interest to readers.

According to Tom O’Halloran.com, it was noted back on on April 24, 2015: “Every time you fill up the car, you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia. Just buy from gas companies that don’t import their oil from the Saudis.

“These companies import Middle Eastern oil:
Shell………………………205,742,000 barrels
Chevron/Texaco…………144,332,000 barrels
Exxon /Mobil……………..130,082,000 barrels
Marathon/Speedway…….117,740,000 barrels
Amoco……………………  62,231,000 barrels 

“Citgo Gas comes from South America, from a Dictator who hates Americans.

 

“Here are some large companies that DO NOT import Middle Eastern oil:
Murphy……………..0 barrels
Sunoco…………….0 barrels
Conoco…………….0 barrels
Sinclair……………..0 barrels
BP/Phillips…………0 barrels
Hess………………..0 barrels
ARC0………………0 barrels 

Also: Pilot, Flying J, Love’s, RaceTrac, Valero. 

Now, here’s today’s quote from Ronald Reagan, sent by a friend: “'No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.” 

Bringing us to the other extreme, today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife.

This morning, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano @FoxNews.com opined on one of his favorite subjects, writing: “The FBI investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failure to protect state secrets contained in her emails has entered its penultimate phase, and it is a dangerous one for her and her aides.

“Federal law enforcement sources have let it be known that federal prosecutors and the FBI have completed their examination of raw data in the case. After the FBI acquires raw data -- for example, the nature and number of the state secrets in the emails Clinton failed to protect or the regular, consistent, systematic nature of that failure -- prosecutors and agents proceed to draw rational inferences from that data.” 

The judge then went on to detail how the process works from here on, the FBI's corroborating inferences, looking for other sources to support or even to contradict them. Explaining that all of this work has been done with neutral sources of evidence -- documents, email metadata, government records and technical experts, with one exception. Bryan Pagliano, a “member of Clinton's inner circle who, with either a written promise of non-prosecution or an order of immunity from a federal judge, began to cooperate with federal prosecutors last fall. 

“Pagliano has explained to federal prosecutors the who, what, when, how and why he migrated an open State Department email stream and a secret State Department email stream from government computers to Clinton's secret server in her home in Chappaqua, New York. He has told them that Clinton paid him $5,000 to commit that likely criminal activity.” 

What’s critical about the testimony is that: “He has also told some of the 147 FBI agents assigned to this case that Clinton herself was repeatedly told by her own State Department information technology experts and their colleagues at the National Security Agency that her persistent use of her off-the-shelf BlackBerry was neither an effective nor an acceptable means of receiving, transmitting or safeguarding state secrets. Little did they know how reckless she was with government secrets, as none was apparently then aware of her use of her non-secure secret server in Chappaqua for all of her email uses."

Prosecutors have now begun to ask top aides during Bill’s wife’s time as secretary of state to come in for interviews. “This is a delicate and dangerous phase for the aides, all of whom have engaged counsel to represent them.” 

The judge then presents what he sees as her dilemma. 

“If she were to talk to federal prosecutors and FBI agents, they would catch her in many inconsistencies, as she has spoken with great deception in public about this case. She has, for example, stated many times that she used the private server so she could have one mobile device for all of her emails. The FBI knows she had four mobile devices. She has also falsely claimed publicly and under oath that she neither sent nor received anything “marked classified. The FBI knows that nothing is marked classified, and its agents also know that her unprotected secret server transmitted some of the nation’s gravest secrets. 

“The prosecutors and agents cannot be happy about her public lies and her repeated demeaning attitude about their investigation, and they would have an understandable animus toward her if she were to meet with them.” 

On the other hand, though: “If she were to decline to be interviewed -- a prudent legal but treacherous political decision -- the feds would leak her rejection of their invitation, and political turmoil would break loose because one of her most imprudent and often repeated public statements in this case has been that she can't wait to talk to the FBI. That’s a lie, and the FBI knows it.” 

All of the preceding leading to the judge’s learned conclusion: “America has a bedrock commitment to the rule of law. The rule of law means that no one is beneath the law’s protections or above its requirements. The DOJ is not in the business of rewriting the law, but the Democrats should get in the business of rethinking Clinton’s status as their presumptive presidential nominee, lest a summer catastrophe come their way.” 

Which naturally leads right into the ongoing question: Joe Biden, Mayor Bloomberg, Jerry Brown, and Starbuck’s chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, are you guys reading this?  

That’s it for today folks.    

Adios