monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

And your response is from information that is several years out of date.

Raising the debt is quite alright. These are standard Republican policy positions when they are in power or out of power.

The debt ceiling has been raised 74 times since March 1962, including 18 times under Ronald Reagan, eight times under Bill Clinton, seven times under George W. Bush, and five times under Barack Obama. In practice, the debt ceiling has never been reduced, even though the public debt itself may have reduced.

Same link as yours. So what about your response?

Trump clapping for himself becomes a thing

The House Intelligence Committee has voted to release the Nunes memo, which reportedly outlines widespread abuses by the Department of Justice and FBI in obtaining a surveillance order against former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, Carter Page. As a former FBI agent who has been through the process of obtaining these kinds of warrants under the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, I know that such an allegation, if true, would require a vast number of people—across two branches of government—to be on board and willing to put their careers on the line for a conspiracy. To that end, in advance of the memo being released, I want to highlight five questions that the Nunes memo must clearly address in order for its allegations of abuse to be substantiated and credible.

1. When Did the FBI Open an Investigation on Carter Page?

It’s important to understand that just because the FBI receives information (like the Steele dossier), the Bureau cannot immediately run to a FISA court and obtain a warrant. A FISA warrant itself does not make a case; rather, it’s an investigative tool used in support of an existing national security case, one that normally would have been opened months, if not years, prior. In fact, FISA warrants can be approved only for what are called Full Investigations. This is the most serious class of investigations within the FBI, and it requires an “articulable factual basis” to open: For counterintelligence cases on U.S. persons (USPERs), these cases involve facts demonstrating that the subject is in contact with and working on behalf of a foreign intelligence service.

Page was already on the FBI’s radar as far back as 2013, when it obtained recordings of Russian foreign intelligence officials discussing targeting Page for recruitment. FBI officials at that time interviewed Page and warned him that he was being targeted—Page admitted that he had been in contact with these officers (not knowing they were Russian intelligence operatives) and has said that he shared “immaterial information and publicly available research documents” with the Russian spies. As former CIA officers and I have described, this would be consistent with the early stage of an intelligence-recruitment process, and the FBI would have likely kept tabs on Russia’s efforts to see if it persisted and succeeded. There are even reports that Page was under FISA surveillance in 2014, which could have strengthened the basis for a new FISA warrant in 2016 with renewed Russian interest in him. The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. intelligence obtained intercepts as early as spring 2015 of Russians discussing “meetings held outside the U.S. involving Russian government officials and Trump business associates or advisers.” By the time Page joined the Trump campaign in 2016, the FBI would have had three years to monitor the recruitment process unfolding. Page continued his contacts with Russia through this time, and his unusual trip to Moscow in summer 2016 was no secret. This recruitment process is what the FBI would have outlined in its application to the FISA court to obtain surveillance in 2016 by demonstrating how and why Page was “engaging in clandestine intelligence activity on behalf of a foreign power.”

THE TAKEAWAY: If the Nunes memo does not indicate when the investigation underlying the Page FISA application was opened or how many months/years of investigative activity it included preceding the dossier, it is not telling a complete or accurate story.

I've been reading a malicious rumor that, last night in his SOTU address, Trump read from a teleprompter! Please pass on to anyone you know that this scurrilous charge is a fabrication. That it is fake news.

It was a bad choice to drink every time Trump claps. #SOTU2018

The stock market tanked by 362 points today. Every expert that follows the stock market knows that it follows cycles and stocks are way over valued now because companies have used their record amounts of cash on hand to buy back their stock. At least some experts are predicting a huge crash because of the past history of the market. The Indians used to hunt buffalo by causing a stampede near a cliff. Once the lead buffalos reached the cliff it was too late the buffalos in the back pushed them over the cliff. Many people even with a small amount of stock have made over $100,000 this year and they are getting extremely nervous. It won’t take much to touch off the stampede and the ones in front who don’t sell will be pushed over the cliff for the ungodly greedy to feast on. The fact that the market has gone up so fast tells anyone with any sense that it is unstable.

The stock market is like a crop that is carefully tended. The stocks are planted and raised until it is a mature crop and once that happens like all crops it is harvested. The big money is not made holding onto stock for 40 years and getting a return a little over inflation the big money is made manipulating the market. When the market crashes or goes through a “correction.” The stock is bought at the lowest price by the ungodly greedy and sold as it matures in order to start the stampede. The stampede lowers the stock to the lowest price. In the Kenny Roger song, the secret is “To know when to hold em and know when to fold em. Known when to walk away and known when to run.” Most people will stay at the table as long as they are making money but the ungodly greedy are already beginning to quietly leave table soon they will begin to run. The buffalos will be pushed over the cliff before they know what happened. Been there done that.

Trump’s Job Approval Is Underwater in 18 States He Carried in 2016

Summary

President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address was filled with several repeat claims about the economy, tax cuts and immigration that we’ve fact-checked before, as well as new false and misleading statements on auto plants, judicial appointments and development aid.

Trump claimed credit for 2.4 million new jobs “since the election,” when more than a half a million of those jobs were created under then-President Obama.
He claimed that wages are “finally” going up, when they’ve been on a generally upward trend since the 1990s.

Trump boasted that the African American unemployment rate was the “lowest rate ever recorded” and that Hispanic unemployment was at the “lowest levels in history.” True, but both rates have been in steady decline for about seven years. And the recent Hispanic rate matches the record low in October 2006.

Trump falsely said car companies have not built or expanded plants in the U.S. “for decades.” Two new assembly plants were announced and others expanded in the last nine years.

The president said he had appointed “more circuit court judges than any new administration” in history. True, but appointments by Presidents Nixon and Kennedy had a greater impact since there were far fewer appellate court seats back then.

Trump said the U.S. does “more than any other country … to help the needy, the struggling, and the underprivileged all over the world.” In raw dollars of development aid, it’s true. But as a proportion of gross national income, the U.S. ranked 22nd in 2016.

The president wrongly said that the U.S. is “an exporter of energy to the world.” The Energy Information Administration estimates the U.S. won’t be a net exporter of energy until 2026.

Trump again wrongly said that “we enacted the biggest tax cuts and reforms in American history.” There have been larger cuts as a percentage of gross domestic product and in inflation-adjusted dollars.

The president said the new tax law gives “tremendous relief for the middle class.” The middle quintile in terms of income gets an average tax cut of $930 in 2018, but the top quintile gets a little more than 65 percent of the tax cut benefits.

Trump said cutting the corporate tax rate will “increase average family income by more than $4,000.” This is a rosy, long-term estimate from White House economic advisers based on questionable assumptions.

Trump wrongly said the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program “hands out green cards without any regard for skill … or the safety of the American people.” There are both education or work experience requirements, and a background check for all who are selected.

Trump said that “America has also finally turned the page on decades of unfair trade deals.” But the trade deficit that he promised to reduce has grown larger during his presidency.

Trump said the U.S. is “restoring our … standing abroad.” But a recent Gallup Poll found “approval of U.S. leadership across 134 countries and areas stands at a new low.”

Analysis

The president’s speech on Jan. 30 clocked in at an hour and 20 minutes (and 31 seconds), the third longest dating back to 1966, according to the American Presidency Project. That means there was plenty of time for repeat claims and some new twists on the facts.

Taking Too Much Credit

Trump claimed credit for creating 561,000 jobs that actually were added before he took office, and for starting a rise in wages that began years earlier

Trump: Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone. Tremendous number. After years and years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.

It’s true that since October 2016, the month before Trump was elected on Nov. 8, the economy has added 2.37 million jobs, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But Trump didn’t take office until Jan. 20, 2017. The gain since Trump actually took office is 1.84 million.

In fact, as we reported earlier, the pace of job growth has actually slowed 12 percent during Trump’s first 11 months in office, compared with the preceding 11 months.

As for manufacturing jobs, the actual increase since Trump took office is 184,000 — not the 200,000 he said “we have created.”

It’s true that real, inflation-adjusted wages are rising under Trump — up 1.1 percent during his first 11 months.

But Trump went too far when he said they are “finally” going up. As we reported earlier, real wages have been on a generally upward path since the 1990s, and rose 4.1 percent during the Obama years.

“There are no current plans to release the House Intelligence Committee’s memo,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on CNN Wednesday morning, noting that Trump had not “seen or been briefed” on the memo’s contents before he made those comments Tuesday night.
{...]
Sanders’s Wednesday morning comments are the latest sign that Trump is out of step with parts of his administration when it comes to whether, or how, the memo ought to be made public.

Sanders insisted that the White house planned to “complete the legal and national security review that has to take place” before deciding whether the memo should be released.

“There’s always a chance” the memo won’t be released, Sanders said.

The memo hasn't even been released.

What a waste of time.