82nd Weak of The Swamp Creature

“@POTUS has America’s economy firing on all cylinders,” tweeted Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Acosta.

Donald Trump Jr. agreed and used the numbers as an opportunity to insult former President Barack Obama. “Incredible numbers. I remember when “the experts” laughed about breaking 3%,” Donald Trump Jr. claimed. “Just because Obama never broke 2% doesn’t mean that someone with great policies can’t. Let’s keep this going.”

“We’re going to go a lot higher than these numbers, and these are great numbers,” President Donald Trump said.

But progressive economist Dean Baker points out that the boost in GDP is hardly unprecedented and that we saw similar—and much higher—numbers during previous administrations. Beyond that, Baker broke down the numbers and determined that the single digit growth is hardly the economic windfall promised by the President and Republicans when they passed their tax bill.

“Trump’s tax cuts did provide some boost to growth as the rich people who got the money spent much of it,” Baker observes. “The left-of-center economists who opposed the tax cuts didn’t doubt that rich people could spend money, we argued that there were better things to do with $1.5 trillion than to give still more money to the richest people in the country.”

As far as increased investment (which is supposed to eventually trickle down as wages increases) Baker does admit that we’ve seen a boost in some sectors, primarily energy industries like oil and gas drilling. But, Baker argues, that can probably be explained by the rise in world energy prices.

“In short, we are seeing no serious evidence of the sort of investment boom promised by the proponents of the Trump tax cut,” he concludes. “It still looks like the vast majority of the tax cut will go into the pockets of the very rich. And, in Donald Trump’s US, that is hardly amazing.

Click to expand...

Since June, 2009, the pit of one of the biggest recessions in American history, the U.S. economy has been growing, slowly but steadily. That’s just over nine years of uninterrupted growth. If the good times roll for another year — and most economists expect they will — this expansionary period will go down as the longest ever in American history, surpassing the 120-month-long period during the ‘90s tech boom. But don’t be so quick to pop bubbly and send the confetti raining down. There’s precedence for unprecedented growth: It always ends. The economy, of course, moves in cycles.

This article was originally published at Salon

And no matter how you slice it, it would seem there’s only so much more climbing before a fall. But what will set off a downturn? How bad will it be? And when will it actually happen? To answer these questions and more, Salon consulted with five economists, three of whom (Peter Schiff, Steve Keen and Dean Baker) predicted the 2008 financial crisis before it hit.

Click to expand...

“Taken as a whole, all of her style rebellions have served the same purpose,” Manigault-Newman writes. “I believe Melania uses style to punish her husband.”

The former Trump ally speculates that Melania wore the “I really don’t care” jacket because the president forced her to go to the immigrant detention facility against her will in order to clean up for his own mistakes.

Manigault-Newman also claims that the Trumps’ marriage is on the rocks and that Melania is itching to break free from him once his presidency ends.

“In my opinion, Melania is counting every minute until he is out of office and she can divorce him,” she writes.

Click to expand...

What does it say about the White House that you would make those tapes?” host Stephanie Ruhle asked. “Do you think the president is taping people?”

“Oh, absolutely,” she replied. “In fact, the president talked often, as you’ll see in Unhinged, about how important it was to tape your enemies and to make sure that you had information on your enemies.”

Manigault-Newman is the author of the new book, Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House by Omarosa Manigault Newman.

Host Ali Velshi asked Manigault-Newman to respond to Trump’s attacks.

“I think it’s sad, with all of the things going on in the country, that he would take time out to insult me and to insult my intelligence,” she replied.

“This is his pattern with African-Americans and he doesn’t know how to control himself,” Manigualt-Newman said. “He has no impulse control.”

Manigualt-Newman also said Trump, “has some serious mental impairment” and that the White House communications team preps Trump and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to lie “every day.”

Click to expand...

“You were instructed according to the book to bring up the emails at every point you could at the end of the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton’s emails,” Tur noted. “Did Donald Trump know about the emails before they came out?”

“Absolutely,” Manigualt-Newman replied.

“He knew about them before Wikileaks released them?” Tur followed up, to confirm.

“Yes,” she replied again.

“You are saying that he had a back channel?” Tur asked.

“You said that, I didn’t,” she answered. “I will expose the corruption in the White House and I will continue to blow the whistle about it.”

Click to expand...

JackLuis said:

Omarosa drops a bombshell claim on MSNBC: Trump knew about Clinton’s stolen emails before WikiLeaks



If Trump knew about the emails before Wikileaks published, then he had to be tight with whoever stole them, or Rodger Stone let him know? Which swamp creature twigged Trump. I know hedidn't read them all.

Click to expand...

JackLuis said:

Economist breaks down why Trump’s GDP numbers are wildly overhyped and make super rich even richer




As Trump returns from chasing his balls, the news is still bad.

Click to expand...

muycurioso said:

With AG Wall st Holder leading the charge. Leftie also cheered the goldman sachs bankers getting their fat bonuses. Obama!!!! Is perfect. Where was the outrage then?

Click to expand...

There’s a new way of demonstrating loyalty to Donald Trump and his Republican Party: Claiming that the president could not only survive an impeachment effort, but that it would guarantee his victory in 2020.

The idea gaining currency on the right is that Trump can be Bill Clinton, not Richard Nixon. It depends on a delicate political calculation — that a Republican-held Senate would never follow a Democratic House and vote to remove Trump, and that voters tired of the long-running Russia scandal will, as they did in the late 1990s with Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal, want to move on.

Click to expand...

A new report from Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman claims that President Donald Trump now wants to see estranged aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman arrested over her recently published book.

According to one of Sherman’s sources, “Trump told advisers that he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to have Manigault Newman arrested” despite the fact that “it’s unclear what law Trump believes she broke.”

In the roll out of her book, as it seems her every move is designed purposefully to make Trump explode with rage.

“She is doing everything perfect if her ultimate goal is to troll Trump,” one official explained.

Click to expand...

The $92 million figure dwarfs the $12 million estimate that was first reported by CNN last month. As noted at the time, the military parade was expected to cost as much as the "tremendously expensive" bilateral military exercise that Trump swiftly canceled with South Korea in the wake of the historic Singapore summit.

"We save a fortune by not doing war games, as long as we are negotiating in good faith – which both sides are!" Trump tweeted after meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

Click to expand...

JackLuis said:

Trump's military parade is now estimated to cost $92 million – $80 million more than earlier estimate



Only the bestest Ideas from the Dimwitt!

Click to expand...