monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Antifa is mainstream? That is sad.

During the White House press briefing on Tuesday, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders used fake statistics to inflate President Trump’s record on African American employment.

After several questions about Trump’s feud with former aide Omarosa Manginault, NBC’s Kristin Welker asked Sanders whether she could guarantee the American people they wold never hear Trump use the “n-word” in any context. Sanders said that no, she could not guarantee that, but then forcefully argued that if any White House staff thought Trump is who his critics accuse him of being, they would not work there. She pivoted to what Trump had allegedly done for the African American workforce.

“This president since he took office in the year-and-a-half that he’s been here has created 700,000 new jobs for African Americans,” Huckabee Sanders said. “That’s 700,000 African Americans that are working now that weren’t working when this president took office. When President Obama left after eight years in office, eight years in office he had only created 195,000 jobs for African Americans. President Trump in his first year-and-a-half has already tripled what President Obama did in eight years.”

The number of jobs created from January 2017 to July 2018 is indeed about 700,000 for African Americans. But in Sanders’ haste to malign the reputation of President Obama, she misstated the facts.

Americans employed in January 2009, when Obama took office, and 18.49 million employed when he left office in January 2017. That’s 2.96 million jobs created, not 195,000 as Huckabee Sanders stated on Tuesday. From January 2009 to December 2016, Obama’s last full month, the figure would be 2.83 million jobs.

The raw numbers don’t account for the fact that the economy was cratering as Obama took office, as did the number of African Americans who were employed, which bottomed out at 14.7 million in October of 2009. From that low, one could argue that Obama actually created 3.7 million jobs as the economy began to improve.

It is unclear where she got the 195,000 jobs figure. The White House’s defenders might argue that Huckabee Sanders was trying to compare jobs created under the same timeframe — say, the first 19 months of Obama’s presidency to the first 19 months of Trump’s presidency. But that would have been a loss of 474,000 jobs, not a gain of 195,000 jobs.

The Washington Times repeated Huckabee Sanders’ claim without qualification in its writeup of the press briefing, and as of this writing, the figure has not been confirmed or refuted in conservative media or by the White House.

Trump has attempted to exploit the better economic situation in which African Americans find themselves in 2018 as a salve for otherwise racist words and acts. Black unemployment has fallen steadily since 2010, so Trump has in a sense ridden the trend caused by the Obama administration’s policies. In fact, in 2017, the African American unemployment rate fell at a slower rate than it had the previous four years.

In January, Trump falsely claimed that his approval rating among African Americans had doubled.

more moderate mainstream opposition.

A mysterious Russian satellite displaying "very abnormal behaviour" has raised alarm in the US, according to a State Department official.

"We don't know for certain what it is and there is no way to verify it," said assistant secretary Yleem Poblete at a conference in Switzerland on 14 August.

She voiced fears that it was impossible to say if the object may be a weapon.

Russia has dismissed the comments as "unfounded, slanderous accusations based on suspicions".

The satellite in question was launched in October last year.

"[The satellite's] behaviour on-orbit was inconsistent with anything seen before from on-orbit inspection or space situational awareness capabilities, including other Russian inspection satellite activities," Ms Poblete told the conference on disarmament in Switzerland.

"Russian intentions with respect to this satellite are unclear and are obviously a very troubling development," she added, citing recent comments made by the commander of Russia's Space Forces, who said adopting "new prototypes of weapons" was a key objective for the force.

Ms Poblete said that the US had "serious concerns" that Russia was developing anti-satellite weapons.

Alexander Deynko, a senior Russian diplomat, told the Reuters news agency that the comments were "the same unfounded, slanderous accusations based on suspicions, on suppositions and so on".

He called on the US to contribute to a Russian-Chinese treaty that seeks to prevent an arms race in space.

Space weapons may be designed to cause damage in more subtle ways than traditional weapons like guns, which could cause a lot of debris in orbit, explained Alexandra Stickings, a research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute.

"[Such weapons may include] lasers or microwave frequencies that could just stop [a satellite] working for a time, either disable it permanently without destroying it or disrupt it via jamming," she said.

But it was difficult to know what technology is available because so much information on space-based capabilities is classified, she added.

She also said it would be very difficult to prove that any event causing interference in space was an intentional, hostile action by a specific nation state.

Ms Poblete's comments were particularly interesting in light of President Donald Trump's decision to launch a sixth branch of the US armed forces named Space Force, added Ms Stickings.

"The narrative coming from the US is, 'space was really peaceful, now look at what the Russians and Chinese are doing' - ignoring the fact that the US has developed its own capabilities."

A spokesman for the UK's Ministry of Defence said he could neither confirm nor deny any tracking of Russian satellites.

"There are a range of threats and hazards to all space capabilities in what is an increasingly contested domain," he said.

"These include the development of counter-space weapons by a number of nations.

"The UK is working closely with international allies, including the US, to re-enforce responsible and safe behaviours in space and to build knowledge, understanding and resilience."

CNN Ratings Fall To 7th Place, Lose to ‘Ancient Aliens’

History Channel’s ‘Ancient Aliens’ has been criticized for presenting “pseudoscience” and “pseudohistory.”

Which apparently is more popular than CNN’s pseudonews.

PHOTO: DNC chief Tom Perez plays to tiny audience at mall — empty seats in front row!