All_Pro_Bills

Actually, the invasion of Ukraine didn't cause energy prices to rise. The sanctions on Russian energy exports lead to an increase in energy prices. Add to this the disruptions to global energy arrangements and trade that contributed to the price movements and supply disruptions. Some of that is behind use, some of it isn't. One consequence is the new-found pricing power of OPEC+ with the Saudi's and the Russians working in coordination to manage supply in an effort to keep prices near the $80 bbl level. China and India have been big buyers of Russian crude and have participated in some sanction busting deals by taking possession of oil shipments and flipping them to another buyer at a profit. The administration is hesitant to employ sanctions against either and in some respects allows the arrangement which help keep global and US energy prices lower while continuing the perception that tough sanctions against Russia are effective. Another thing was the seizing of Russian central bank assets held in the banking system. Unprecedented. One consequence is this caused many countries to question the reliability and safety of holding US dollars as reserves. What's stopping Washington from doing the same thing to another country is they're displeased? Nothing. Many other countries are considering the benefits of de-dollarizing their economies. Or seeking trade arrangements in other currencies, such as the Saudi's. Or selling of treasury bond holdings, such as China. Many other countries are selling dollars, buying gold or other national currencies to cut their risk to central bank reserves. While none of this has had much material impact to date at some tipping point it will. What that point is I have no idea.

This is a topic the J6 committee avoided like the plague. Because they didn't want the answer. They allowed violence to happen in order to create the pretext for instituting a series of actions and hearings to highlight the dangers of MAGA extremists to the nation. Look how much political mileage they've gotten. Hearing, arrests, trials. None of which would have been generated by not allowing it to happen by deploying more security that day. I'd call it the American Reichstag fire.

At some point I'll be asking you the same question about Biden and a few others.

I can't wait to see how enthusiastically everyone whooping it up over the government's efforts to nail Trump feel when the tables turn and the agencies the Dems have weaponized along with the flimsy legal precedents they're attempting to establish come after the Biden's and other malicious characters they're throwing their support behind.

They've concluded America is no longer a reliable partner. And as such they're seeking out new arrangements and security guarantees with other parties. Biden's personal attacks on MBS, even though true and accurate, don't help. The Saudi's announced another 1M barrel cut for September under the umbrella of OPEC+ with Russia making previously agreed to cuts. What the oil producers are saying by cutting production and maintaining prices at around $75-$80 is they're not going to shoulder the consequences of central bank rate increases slowing oil demand by over-supplying the market.

People get charged with conspiracy even if they don’t get charged with another crime because requiring that the crime be done successfully in order to charge someone is dumb. Again, I'm not saying the crime needs to be "successful". But there must be an act representative of the planning or commission of the crime beyond conspiracy. And we have a different definition of "success". In my thinking nobody gets charged with a successful crime because one element of success is getting away with it. Being arrested is a condition of failure.

It's not a case of succeeding or not succeeding. It a case of actually committing the criminal act or chargeable offense. What criminal act or chargeable offense did Trump commit in order to conspire and obstruct? I'll save you the response. No matter what you might cite it should be a count in the indictment. The current indictment contains no charge for anything. If for example, its attempting to disrupt the electoral college certification or inciting protesters to attack the Capitol then one or both of those should be a count(s) in the indictment. Thinking and talking about a criminal act or a chargeable crime and not committing a criminal act or chargeable offense is not a violation of the law because in the context of an act the government has no legal standing to regulate your thoughts and private conversations. I'm far from a legal expert but I've sat on Grand Juries 3 times, currently on one. Heard maybe 150 cases across the three times presented by a prosecutor. I don't recall a single case where the prosecutor presents a charge of conspiracy without a count in the indictment for the actual crime. Committing 3rd degree burglary and charged with conspiracy to commit 3rd degree burglary. Nobody's charged with conspiracy to commit 3rd degree burglary without be charged with committing 3rd degree burglary.

One legal problem is you've got two counts of conspiracy and two counts of obstruction but no "real" crime. Typically, prosecutors add these charges to an indictment, and they do not constitute a standalone charge by themselves. Looks weak.

So what's Smith's legal argument. Trump knew he lost the election but pretended not to know in order to continue pressing his view the election was stolen?

I'm not sure what that would prove. I'm not saying they're morons. Just hateful and obnoxious people. When you have show hosts such as Joe Scarborough that represents the traits I've identified much better than any guest or "expert".

Its not my star witness or my story. Its the House Committee's witness and story. The truth is Joe's as dirty as a pig in the mud hole and as far as the 2024 race goes he's a dead man walking. He's finished. They better find a new Presidential candidate acceptable to the reality denying cult ASAP. Good luck with that.

They're building a case for criminal referrals. Following the process. And the reality is, and we all know it, even if they released a transcript of the witness statements not a single major news outlets, all of which pretend the story doesn't exist, wouldt even acknowledge the existence of said transcript.

Their arsenal of excuses and denials has proven to be ineffective which leaves only the last resort of playing "kill the messenger".

Being under oath isn't a prerequisite for telling the truth nor does being under oath inhibit a witness from lying under certain circumstances. Public statements can be used to help or hinder a case or situation. The main problem is there was no mobilization of troops so whether or not it was discussed is irrelevant. It leaves you with a charge of conspiracy to commit an illegal act of mobilizing national guard troop without committing the act itself. It's BS. Hypothetically if somebody said to another person, "how about you and I go down to the local bank and rob the place?" And the other party responds "no" then there is no robbery. So do you want to charge everyone that discusses something that might be illegal in some interpretation of the law, where no action is taken, with a conspiracy charge under which they can be prosecuted? No, that's why in real life legal situations you see conspiracy charges only as an additional supplemental charge of an indictment for the actual commission of a crime. Unless they've got an axe to grind against the suspect they're trying to nail on anything no matter how flimsy the case.

And yet on the other end of the thought continuum we have overwhelmingly liberal MSM outlets proclaiming anyone that objects to or voices disapproval of Democratic ideologies or programs as Nazi fascist insurrectionists racist white supremacist bigoted gun-loving intellectually inferior homophobic transsexual haters bent on transforming America into a one-party dictatorship as all the on-screen talking heads nod simultaneous to demonstrate their approval and concurrence in that assessment.

We're absolutely way beyond the "theory" stage here and have enough corroborating evidence to remove the "theory" word from any discussions. This is as real as real gets. Still, there is an active conspiracy theory. It's not that Joe Biden had a critical role. Quite the opposite. The conspiracy theory in play here the idea that Joe Biden had no active role in the scheme. One piece of what's missing in the understanding of the arrangement the Biden's had was exactly what all the people making the payment's to "Hunter's business" received in return? In one case we know Burisma got VP Biden to pressure the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor that was investigating the company. Ironically an investigation of corruptions which included participation by the Biden's. So in getting the prosecutor fired Joe Biden was actually covering his own ass too. But for money received from Chinese entities for example, what did they receive in return? Given the status of China as a threat to the US its incomprehensible our law enforcement and intelligence agencies ignored any potential or real national security threats. Lots of people in lots of places have a lot of explaining to do. Namely, they knew what was going on and rather than take action against it, as required by their duty to country, instead either ignored it or inhibited others from investigating. For me, that's an even bigger transgression than what the Biden family business perpetrated. Another is that if anyone wants to make an intelligent argument Joe Biden was not involved then they're obligated to explain who else among the players in this arrangement had any capacity to influence or control government policy, actions, or involvement? To this point the correct answer is nobody. So why is any foreign entity seeking to influence US government actions going to pay Hunter, a guy with no ability to directly influence anything millions of dollars without the knowledge and commitment that Joe would step up and help them out?

A couple comments to the second bullet point. I'd suggest we add a couple items to the insolvency watch. First Medicaid. Another is obligations governments at the Federal, State, and Local levels have made to their employees. Upon retirement providing a series of monthly payments in specific amounts until death, sometimes after death if the pension stream can legally transfer to a spouse or domestic partner. Along with this generous health care benefits. Governments have committed the taxpayers to paying these obligations without regard for their ability to do so along with most pension funds being under-funded. The same is true for many private company pension plans. On the third bullet what a federal default might look like would differ significantly from how a private person or a corporation might resolve "bankruptcy". We need to acknowledge the Treasury, unlike you or I when we might get into a cash crunch, has the ability to "print" money. They could simply through edict or legislation "call in" those bonds and pay off the holders 100 cents on the dollar. Of course, that might result in a lack of confidence in the currency. But Washington would not say, sorry you're not getting your money back. So, some additional thought might be helpful for us to understand what a default event could look like and what might be the consequences.

Something I like to watch is cardboard and box production. It's basic and also a good leading indicator. As almost everything made and sold and bought comes in a box. The numbers aren't seasonally adjusted, or subject to other statistical slight of hand. Production of cardboard was down 9% in Q2. Which means there was less stuff being packed up and moved around and less business activity. My guess is the slowdown gets obvious in Q3 while the lag in the impact of interest rate increases makes itself felt by business, consumer, and government.

VP Harris is incapable of forming basic coherent arguments.

No, you're pathetic. I'm saying they didn't attempt to alter the vote count because you clowns love to mis-represent the facts. No votes were altered. No attempt was made to alter the functioning of the voting machines. Did they violate the law? That's up to the court and a jury to decide. But they didn't alter the results. Let's be clear.

This case involves no attempt to alter the actual vote count. Specifically, the charge is they attempted to download and in 5 instances succeeded in downloading the voting log to "audit" the machine count vs. the official vote tally. Apparently the State for one reason or another denied a requests to perform validation counts. And remember, the threshold of evidence applied when someone supported by your cult of denial is involved. Unless we actually have the evidence in our hands and in front of our eyes there is no evidence anyone did anything. An indictment is not evidence. Its an acknowledgement that a grand jury has heard the prosecutors presentation, heard witness testimony, and concluded an indictment is appropriate.

There's absolutely zero evidence any document in Trump's possession was disclosed to anyone which resulted in a national security exposure. But various clowns here still claim he sold secrets. Idiots.

The most obvious reason is the media blackout, pretending the story doesn't exist so they'd never cover any such release. Besides its a matter of following the process. Prosecutors and investigators building a case don't run to the microphone every time they find a piece of incriminating evidence. What they'll do is use testimony like yesterday's to corroborate other pieces of evidence they've collected independent of each other. Do the dates and times everybody states match? Are the same people confirmed to be involved? Do all the witness statement tell the same story? Rather than make a series of public statements the House Committee will refer a series of indictable offenses to the DOJ for prosecution. That's when you'll start hearing details. That will put the pressure squarely on the DOJ and AG Garland to do something. Ignoring the thing for the media or the justice department won't be an option at that point. Lots of people will be surprised when they hear the story for the first time! My guess is Garland will recuse himself and appoint a special prosecutor. There won't be any softball plea deals at this point either.

Hunter Biden could be doing 10 to 15 and Joe could be impeached, or run out of office via the 25th amendment, or be forced to resign and they'd still refuse to believe. But whether they accept it or not, reality will continue to exist without them.

This might need its own topic soon. France is recommending all EU citizens leave Niger and evacuating anyone wishing to leave. Other European nations are urging their citizens to take them up on the offer. Meanwhile, Burkina Faso and Mali, two nations previous under France's domination, have said that they will consider an attack against Niger by West African ECOWAS states as a de-facto carrying out France’s bidding and as such a declaration of war. Of note, the US has two military bases in the country. One under the Pentagon and the other the CIA.