The ranking Progressive-Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warren (D, VA) has a thought on the DoJ IG report on the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton email scandal.
He says the authors of the IG report found no evidence of bias in the FBI’s handling of that investigation. Then he says that that handling “benefited the Trump campaign more than one time’.”
That other benefitting, though, wasn’t bias at all.
Hmm….
President Donald Trump often decries Europe’s NATO nations for their lack of seriousness about their defense, and he zealously insists that they honor their commitment to spend 2% of their national GDP on defense. It’s arguable that Trump could ease off (a little bit) and acknowledge the progress he’s made in getting Europe’s NATO members to boost their spending.
But only a little bit because those nations don’t appear to be stepping up in any serious way, as these numbers from a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed demonstrate.
Overall inflation-adjusted military spending by every NATO member excluding America grew 1.8% in 2015, 3.1% in 2016, and 4.8% last year.
These are tokens, not real increases. A nation committing 1% of its GDP to defense that then increases its defense spending by these per centages will end up committing 1.11% of its GDP. There’s nothing serious about that.
Germany’s defense spending increase? The WSJ says that nation currently is spending 1.2% of its GDP on its defense, and it has plans for a 6% increase in next year’s budget. Increasing that 1.2% by 6% would take it all the way up to 1.27%.
Be still, my heart.
That’s what Facebook is planning to allow regarding merchants that advertise on Facebook.
The social-media giant is rolling out a new feature that lets people leave feedback about their shopping experience after viewing a Facebook ad. The company said it is warning businesses that receive a high volume of negative feedback to give them a chance to address the grievances. If feedback doesn’t improve over time, Facebook will reduce the number of ads that businesses can deliver and could eventually ban them from the platform.
With this, Facebook is allowing “customers” to harm a business of whose ideology they disapprove simply by flooding that business with “negative feedback” on Facebook’s pages.
Just like the Left has been doing to the National Rifle Association, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, and on and on.
Norway is asking us to double the number of troops we have stationed there and to move them closer to its border with Russia. It’s a pittance—700 Marines vs the 330 we have there now—but we need to work with Norway very seriously to figure out how to do this.
Norway said the invitation was about NATO training and improving winter fighting capability.
“Allies get better at training together,” Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen told reporters.
Yewbetcha. And joint training is especially important in the face of demonstrated Russian aggression and its stationing of nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad.
This image, from a Deutsche Welle article on Venezuela’s inflation rate—which last month reached 24,571% year-on-year—says it all.
The word drawn on the 100 bolivar note (and yes, it’s a real note, and it’s actually that big) translates to “hungry.” In the context, it means more broadly, “a widespread, intense, and prolonged shortage of staple foods that a population suffers.”
Hungry indeed, too. A bit over two pounds of meat cost about 2 million bolivars (or did once, daily inflation is running at 2.4%), or €16.9 or $20, against a surgeon’s monthly salary of not even 6 million bolivars. Meat, not steak in particular. That’s some expensive hamburger or shank cut.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, that works out to a bit over three ounces of meat per day, with nothing left over for anything else: vegetables, rent, transportation, etc. And that’s for a relatively well off man like the surgeon. What about the middle class, or especially the poort.
This is reminiscent of what Joseph Stalin did to the Ukrainians and White Russians when he collectivized—socialized—the Soviet Union’s kulak farms.