RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tide-keeps-rising-11556319160

With the comeback in financial markets this year, we probably should have seen it coming. But the headline rebound in first quarter growth to 3.2% reported Friday is still a pleasant surprise that shows again that the U.S. economy is remarkably resilient when government doesn’t get in the way.

The Keynesians who predicted an imminent recession are pointing out flaws in the GDP details, and they’re right that volatile categories like net exports (1.03%), inventory growth (0.65%) and state and local government (0.41%) contributed substantially to growth. Strip out those categories and growth would have been 1.3%.

Yet the government shutdown took some 0.3% off growth and that won’t be repeated in the second quarter. Auto sales took 0.49% off GDP in the quarter, but sales rebounded in March heading into the second quarter. Overall consumer spending contributed a relatively small 0.82% to GDP, perhaps due to the fall in consumer confidence after the stock market swoon in the last months of 2018. With job growth strong and wages rising, consumers should contribute more to the expansion the rest of this year.

https://spectator.us/furious-mueller-report-america/

“What has happened over the past two-plus years is a fundamental attack on the legitimacy of our democratic republic. Tactical partisan maneuvering has overwhelmed the institution of presidential elections. Note that this is a one-party party. It probably started in earnest with the election of George W. Bush in 2000. Al Gore withdrew his concession and put the country through months of legal wrangling. Republicans were unhappy when Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and again in 2012. But there was no question of his legitimacy. But when Donald Trump won in 2016, the sort of antidemocratic forces that beset George Bush had mutated from an angry squad of activists into an army of deniers.”

OK, Possums, here it is in redact and white (drum roll, please): The Mueller Report, 448 color-coded pages, replete with almost 900 redactions. Who says the government isn’t effective at education: over the last months it expanded the vocabulary of many Americans by putting that nice word into general circulation.So quickly was the report edited and rushed into print that the Surgeon General’s warning against operating heavy machinery while or shortly after dosing up on the report was omitted. So let me supply the defect and warn you: the report is boring.

After Jerry Nadler’s commandos finish poring over it for dirt and discard the tome in frustrated disgust, the authorities are planning to collect the remaindered copies of the report and make them mandatory punitive reading in penitential institutions around the country.

The former newspaper known as The New York Times made a manful attempt to skew the results of the report, offering a pathetic ‘live analysis’ of cherry-picked excerpts. But Donald Trump is right. As anyone not named Bill Kristol has suspected for months, and known since the Mueller report was delivered to Attorney General Barr last month, it’s Game Over: finis, end of the line, thank you all for coming, the egress is just over yonder.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/rod-rosenstein-has-a-few-choice-words-for-media-fbi-leakers-and-obama-administration/

During an event in New York City, Thursday evening, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein shared his feelings about the special counsel’s Russia investigation, while throwing shade on critics, politicians, the media and the Obama administration.

Speaking at a dinner where he was honored by the Armenian Bar Association, Rosenstein defended his handling of the probe, recalling how he had promised to “do it right” during his Senate confirmation hearing and to “take it to the appropriate conclusion.”

“It’s not our job to render conclusive factual findings. We just decide whether it is appropriate to file criminal charges,” Rosenstein noted.

“‘You’re going to be in charge of this [Russia] investigation. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you’ll do it right, that you’ll take it to its conclusion and you’ll report [your results] to the American people,'” he said the senator told him.

Rosenstein agreed to the first two things the senator asked, but then explained, “I did not promise to report all results to the public, because grand jury investigations are ex parte proceedings. It is not our job to render conclusive factual findings. We just decide whether it is appropriate to file criminal charges.”

He said that there were “some critical decisions” about the investigation that had been made before he got there. “The previous administration,” he added, “chose not to publicize the full story about Russian computer hackers and social media trolls, and how they relate to a broader strategy to undermine America.”

Rosenstein added that “the FBI disclosed classified evidence about the investigation to ranking legislators and their staffs, lawmakers and their staffers,” and then “someone selectively leaked details to the news media.”