The new GDP numbers are terrible. No wonder Hillary won’t talk about the economy

No wonder Hillary doesn't want to talk about the economy. ‎
We got revised GDP numbers from the Commerce Department on Friday and the economy actually did slightly WORSE than originally estimated. Growth was 1.1 percent in the second quarter of this year and less than 1 percent for the first six months of 2016. The business sector of the economy has sunk recession territory. Profits are srinking (down 2.4 percent last quarter) so how long can the stock market rise?   
The consumer is keeping the economy out of negative territory, but that's only because we are spending more than we are earning.
How long can that go on? About as long as the housing bubble could inflate without bursting.   
For years the polls have shown that Americans are hyper-concerned about the economy and job security. That was when the economy was growing at a meek 2 percent. Now at 1 percent, we aren't just treading water, more families are being plunged underwater.  
This is some recovery. Under Reagan we had growth rates quarterly of 5, 6 and even 7 percent. Economists in the '80s worried about overheating. Too much growth. Now growth is nowhere to be seen - except for those at the very top of the income ladder.   

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The Democrats who keep saying how well the economy is doing seem to be living in an alternative universe. And that's probably because so many of the leftwing pundits and economists live and work in Washington DC, which really is doing just fine - thank you.  DC is booming thanks to the tribute taxpayers from real America send each month to the capital. Three of the five wealthiest counties are around DC. That tells you everything about who is getting rich off liberal government expansion policies.  
Hillary says that what the economy really needs now is a tax increase. Crazy.  ‎A new study by the National Center for Policy Analysis says that Hillary's economic plan will eventually shave 1 percent off GDP. That would technically sink the economy down to zero growth.  
Oh and there was more wonderful news this past week. The deficit is now climbing again to an estimated $600 billion this year. The red ink is headed back to $1 trillion on current course.  Some states are facing 20 percent or more rise in Obamacare premiums this year.   
The Financial Times reports that we are still 1 million manufacturing jobs short of where we were in 2007.   
So much for morning in America.   
Trump must hammer Hillary and Obama on  these abysmal economic developments.  What is needed?  ‎Tax cuts. Deregulation. American energy production. Repeal of Obamacare. He should talk about little else if he wants to win.    
The appeal of Hillary's "four more years" agenda is in mortal peril given the flimsiness of the economy. We are moving in the wrong direction. Two of three voters have been saying this for years. ‎ The burger flipper economy has flattened wages as Census Bureau data tells us.   
Could it get worse? Here's ‎how economist David Tuerck described Hillary's jobs plan in his NCPA study: ‎"What we have here is a plan to destroy hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs just to pad government payrolls while, in the process, doing almost nothing to improve tax fairness."
The one percent growth economy is the new normal thanks to liberal governance. With Hillary's tax and spend agenda, a 2017 recession could  be on the way. 

Second State Dept. unit conducted probe into mysterious deletion

A second unit within the State Department -- led by its top internal auditor -- conducted a separate probe into the mysterious deletion of a critical exchange about Iran from the department's video of its December 2, 2013 daily press briefing, Fox News has learned.
In an email to Fox News Friday afternoon, Doug Welty, a spokesman for the State Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), confirmed that investigators there launched their own "preliminary assessment" of the case, including conducting their own interviews with State Department employees and their own review of emails and other documents. 
Last week, the State Department's Office of the Legal Advisor (OLA), the department's top attorney, released a report that found -- after a three-month investigation that included email and document reviews and interviews with nearly three dozen DOS employees -- that it was impossible to determine whether the deletion was caused by a technical glitch or by willful misconduct.
Welty's statement marked the first public confirmation by any officials at the State Department that OIG had been reviewing the case separately from OLA. 
House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Fox News he and his colleagues were "very frustrated" by the investigative efforts of both OLA and OIG, and that they plan, as part of House Republicans' own investigation into the matter, to press both offices for access to their raw investigative files. The first request the lawmakers make will be for voluntary production by the offices.
In presenting the OLA's findings to reporters last Thursday, State Department spokesman John Kirby said there was "no evidence" as to why the edit was made -- despite the fact that the OLA report itself acknowledged, in a section titled "Evidence of Purposeful Editing," that the individual who ordered the edit specifically mentioned "a Fox network reporter and Iran" while issuing the order to the subordinate technician who carried it out.
"The results of our preliminary assessment show that limited evidence exists surrounding the December 2 DPB (daily press briefing) and that the available facts are inconclusive," said Welty of OIG. "However, the identification of the missing footage prompted the Department to improve its video policies. Specifically, the Department explicitly prohibited DPB content edits and is currently working with NARA to schedule the DPBs for disposition as federal records."
OIG indicated that due to the paucity of evidence -- the State Department has said it can no longer access the relevant telephone records for the technician -- additional investigation would likely be fruitless. "No further work by OIG would add clarity to the events surrounding the missing footage," Welty said, "or effect any additional change at the Department."
Officials at OIG privately briefed key congressional Republicans on their work last week, making it clear the internal auditors would not carry the investigation any further.
At the briefing in question, then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked by Fox News’ James Rosen about an earlier claim that no direct, secret talks were underway between the U.S. and Iran – when, in fact, they were.
Psaki at the time seemed to admit the discrepancy, saying: “There are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that.”
However, Fox News later discovered the Psaki exchange was missing from the department’s official website and its YouTube channel. Eight minutes from the briefing, including the comments on the Iran deal, were edited out and replaced with a white-flash effect.

Clinton's full State Dept. schedule won't be released until after Election Day

WASHINGTON –  Seven months after a federal judge ordered the State Department to begin releasing monthly batches of the detailed daily schedules showing meetings by Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state, the government told The Associated Press it won't finish the job before Election Day.
The department has so far released about half of the schedules. Its lawyers said in a phone conference with the AP's lawyers that the department now expects to release the last of the detailed schedules around Dec. 30, weeks before the next president is inaugurated.
The AP's lawyers late Friday formally asked the State Department to hasten that effort so that the department could provide all Clinton's minute-by-minute schedules by Oct. 15. The agency did not immediately respond.
The schedules drew new attention this week after the AP analyzed the ones released so far. The news agency found that more than half the people outside the government who met or spoke by telephone with Clinton while she was secretary of state had given money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation. The AP's analysis focused on people with private interests and excluded her meetings or calls with U.S. federal employees or foreign government representatives.
The AP's reporting was based on official calendars covering Clinton's entire term plus the more-detailed daily schedules covering roughly half her time as secretary of state. The AP first asked for Clinton's calendars in 2010 and again in 2013. It then sued the State Department in federal court to obtain the detailed schedules, and the department so far has provided about half of them under court order.
Clinton has said the AP's analysis was flawed because it did not account fully for all meetings and phone calls during her entire term as secretary. She also said the analysis should have included meetings with federal employees and foreign diplomats. The AP said it focused on her meetings with outsiders because those were more discretionary, as Clinton would normally meet with federal officials and foreign officials as part of her job.

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Clinton said she met with people outside government regardless of whether they gave money or charitable commitments to her family's charity.
"These are people I would be proud to meet with, as any secretary of state would have been proud to meet with, to hear about their work and their insights," Clinton said this week on CNN.
With the foundation drawing continued attention, Clinton promised Friday to put in place additional safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest with the charity should she win the White House.
The foundation issue, along with continued focus on her use of a private email server, has dogged Clinton politically throughout the week, drawing strong criticism from opponent Donald Trump.
Former President Bill Clinton said last week that if she is elected president, the foundation will no longer accept foreign or corporate donations.
The State Department is now estimating there are about 2,700 pages of schedules left. Under its process, it is reviewing and censoring them page-by-page to remove personal details such as private phone numbers or email addresses. In some cases it has censored names of people who met privately with Clinton or the subjects they discussed.
A State Department spokeswoman, Elizabeth Trudeau, declined to discuss the ongoing case and noted the agency is struggling with thousands of public records requests.
In court, the AP in December had asked U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to order the State Department to produce specific percentages of the remaining schedules every 30 days under a formula so that all would be released before the presidential primary elections were complete.
Instead, because the State Department said it did not know how many pages were left, Leon ordered it in January to release at least 600 pages of schedules every 30 days. Each 600-page group covers about three months of Clinton's tenure.
Under the present rate, a government attorney working on behalf of the State Department notified the AP's lawyers, it will take about four and one-half months — or until Dec. 30 — to release all the remaining schedules through the end of Clinton's term, in February 2013. The government's notice late Thursday was the first time the State Department has provided the AP with a measure of how many pages were remaining and when it expected to complete the job.
It was unclear whether the judge will reconsider his earlier decision and order faster results. In the AP's lawsuit over other Clinton-related files, Leon has said it would be "ridiculous" to allow the State Department to delay until even weeks before the election. He also cited "mounting frustration that this is a project where the State Department may be running out the clock."

Bias Media Cartoons

EpiPen price hike puts bipartisan heat on Democratic senator's daughter

Good Old Democrats

The mounting congressional scrutiny of pharmaceutical giant Mylan over its 400 percent price hike for EpiPen has created an awkward situation on Capitol Hill for Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin -- his daughter runs the company at the center of the scandal. 
Colleagues on both sides of the aisle, as well as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, are now slamming Mylan and demanding investigations into why prices were jacked so high on the lifesaving allergy treatment drug.
The uproar over the increase has become a public relations nightmare for Mylan, CEO Heather Bresch and Manchin, who finally broke his silence on the subject Thursday.
“I am aware of the questions my colleagues and many parents are asking and frankly I share their concerns about the skyrocketing prices of prescription drugs,” Manchin said in a written statement. “Today I heard Mylan’s initial response, and I am sure Mylan will have a more comprehensive and formal response to those questions.”
Manchin, a former West Virginia governor who has served in the U.S. Senate since 2010, said he would work with his “colleagues and all interested parties to lower the price of prescription drugs and to continue to improve our health care system.”
But his comments come days after his colleagues called out his daughter’s company.
Several senators – including Amy Klobuchar, whose daughter uses an EpiPen – have pressed the Food and Drug Administration for answers and asked if alternatives to the EpiPen are in the works.
Klobuchar also wants the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing to investigate the enormous increase in the price of EpiPens. The Minnesota senator sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission to look into whether Mylan violated antitrust laws. 
For its part, the company said Thursday it is voluntarily reducing the patient cost of EpiPen through savings cards which will cover up to $300 for a two-pack of EpiPen, but some say it’s not enough.
Admittedly, Manchin is in a tight spot. In the past, he has taken the lead in going after pharmaceutical companies.
He played a big role in pushing to get controversial painkiller Zohydro ER permanently shelved despite the FDA approving the powerful opiate.
Manchin, whose home state leads the nation in prescription overdoses and abuse, worked with both Republicans and Democratic lawmakers to overturn the approval.
At the time, some questioned his motives, since his campaign to kill Zohydro could benefit his daughter’s company.
Though the Mylan epi-scandal hits close to home, Klobuchar believes the senior senator’s connections in Congress won’t deter his colleagues from pursuing answers.
“I think we have an obligation to the American people to do our job regardless of who is related to who at a company,” she told reporters Wednesday. “And I have never seen Senator Manchin intervene himself in any of these cases involving this company. I’ve never seen that happen. I know him very well.”
On Monday, Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Mark Warner, D-Va., also sent a letter to Bresch demanding an explanation. 
Bresch tried to defend the company's pricing in an interview with CNBC. She seemed to struggle to justify the jump in price but said lowering the price wasn’t an option.
“Had we reduced the list price, I couldn’t ensure that everyone who needs an EpiPen gets one,” she said. She argued that much of the $608 price for a two-pack goes to other middle men in the health care consumer chain. 
But Grassley said in a statement that the price is still what Medicare and insurers have to pay, regardless of the pledge to offset the cost for some patients. 
Another fact not lost on angry customers is that as the price for EpiPens grew, so did Bresch’s own compensation, which spiked more than 671 percent to $18.9 million last year.
The price hike debate has also made it to the campaign trail.
Clinton called the company’s pricing strategy “outrageous” and a “troubling example of a company taking advantage of its consumers.”

BIAS ALERT: Media looks inward, deems slanted Trump coverage warranted

BIAS ALERT: Media consumed with Trump

Donald Trump’s claim that the “crooked media” has it in for him has prompted much soul-searching with the Fourth Estate, and its conclusion appears to be that he's right -- and that's just fine with some news organizations. 
“I’m not running against Crooked Hillary,” Trump told a crowd in Fairfield, Conn., last week. “I’m running against the crooked media.”
Lately some, including The New York Times, Vox and Bill Moyers’ website, have not only owned up to Trump's accusation, they've embraced it.
“If you deplore media cowardice, you might think this is a good thing, not because Trump is a mortal danger to this country, although he is, but because it means the press is doing its job,” Neil Gabler wrote on the journalism website of Moyers, the longtime PBS newsman who cut his teeth as a spokesman for Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. “Call it partisan bias if you like. I call it journalism.”
Ezra Klein, the Vox writer who as a Washington Post staffer organized a secret society of left-wing reporters dubbed “JournoList” that was shut down after it was exposed in 2010, acknowledged that the press is not giving Trump traditional treatment.
“The media has felt increasingly free to cover Trump as an alien, dangerous, and dishonest phenomenon,” Klein wrote last week.
New York Times’ media critic Jim Rutenberg wrote that journalists who personally oppose Trump had an obligation to “throw out the textbook” when it came to coverage of The Donald.
“If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?” Rutenberg wondered in a front-page article earlier this month.
When it comes to covering Trump, it’s only fair to be unfair, according to The Atlantic.
“All things considered, the press has responded defensibly to the unusual challenges of covering a brazen, habitual liar,” Conor Friedersdorf wrote in a recent column titled, “The Exaggerated Claims of Media Bias Against Donald Trump.”
If Trump is confused by the media’s stance that it has been fair by being biased, he can take comfort in a new study on his treatment by the press since he entered the political arena.
Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy tracked his coverage by CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. It concluded that through its coverage of Trump, both good and bad, the media helped him get the Republican nomination.

Republican calls grow for second look at Clinton case

More than seven weeks after FBI Director James Comey’s July 5 announcement closing the case on Hillary Clinton’s personal email use, Republican calls are growing for prosecutors to take a closer look – at everything from perjury questions to the tangled dealings with Clinton Foundation donors during the candidate’s tenure leading the State Department.
And on Thursday, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy pointed out another potential problem with the bureau’s original email investigation.
After viewing the FBI’s tightly held file on the case, the South Carolina congressman told Fox News it doesn’t appear investigators asked Clinton about the issue that was the basis for not pursuing charges – known as “intent.”
During Comey’s congressional testimony last month, he said while Clinton was “negligent” and “careless” in her use of personal email for official business, “What we can’t establish is that she acted with the necessary criminal intent.”
But Gowdy said that in reviewing the FBI’s interview file, “I didn’t see any questions on the issue of intent.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has steadily racked up endorsements from fellow Republicans for his call earlier this week to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the ties between the family foundation and her State Department.

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Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., a Trump supporter, was the latest to back that call late Wednesday, saying in a statement “we need an independent prosecutor to investigate the corrupt Clinton Foundation.”
The newest calls follow an Associated Press report Tuesday that more than half of the non-government people with whom Clinton met as secretary of state donated to her family foundation.
The Clinton campaign said the AP relied on “utterly flawed data” and “cherry-picked a limited subset of Secretary Clinton's schedule to give a distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation.” 
Asked Wednesday about the calls for a special prosecutor, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest suggested there was little need.
“President Obama and the administration have complete confidence in the independent career prosecutors at the Department of Justice and the FBI who devoted significant time and attention to investigating Secretary Clinton's email practices,” he said. “… I just think it's hard for anybody to make a very persuasive case that somehow there hasn’t been enough investigating, particularly when you layer on top of that all of the congressional hearings and testimony that's gone on with regard to Secretary Clinton's tenure at the State Department.”
The calls for a special prosecutor come after House Republicans already were looking to the FBI to examine whether Clinton committed perjury during her 2015 congressional testimony on her email practices.
In a letter obtained by Fox News, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., asked U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips to look at “four pieces of sworn testimony” they claimed were “incompatible with the FBI's findings.”
Among those discrepancies, they said Clinton testified there was “nothing marked classified” on her emails, yet Comey said a “very small number” of emails had markings indicating classified information.
The Justice Department Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs, Peter Kadzik, confirmed in an Aug. 2 letter to both committees they had the perjury investigation request and the department would "take appropriate action as necessary."

Assange vows Clinton email release, as storm clouds gather for candidate

Assange

With 75 days before voters pick their new president, email revelations are threatening to overtake Hillary Clinton’s campaign – with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hurling another log on an already raging fire with a vow to release “significant” Clinton documents.
In an exclusive interview Wednesday night with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, Assange was asked whether new information culled from Clinton emails would be released before the general election: "Yes, absolutely.” 
Asked whether it could be an election game-changer, Assange told Kelly, “It depends on how it catches fire."
Dana Perino, former White House press secretary under the George W. Bush administration and co-host of Fox News’ “The Five,” predicted Assange would release the files before the third presidential debate, since “it is the one everyone pays attention to.”