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Sat., July 8, 2017
Step One
Trump and Charlie Gard
“Fresh Hope” From US For Charlie Gard?
While world leaders debate the fate of an infant on a ventilator, a New York hospital wants to throw him a potential lifeline — if both the US and UK governments will allow it. The Guardian reports this morning that New York Presbyterian and Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center have volunteered to admit Charlie Gard to administer experimental treatment to reverse his life-threatening condition, if the FDA approves it. Alternately, they will ship the necessary drugs to the UK if they promise to administer it:
The US hospital said it would treat Charlie with an experimental drug pending approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a government regulator.
It said it had “agreed to admit and evaluate Charlie, provided that arrangements are made to safely transfer him to our facility, legal hurdles are cleared, and we receive emergency approval from the FDA for an experimental treatment as appropriate”.
It added: “Alternatively, if approved by the FDA, we will arrange shipment of the experimental drug to Great Ormond Street hospital and advise their medical staff on administering it if they are willing to do so.”
That’s a lot of government approval just on this side of the Atlantic. The UK’s National Health Service has stuck foursquare behind Great Ormond Street Hospital’s refusal to allow Charlie to be taken anywhere else for any kind of treatment, so the alternative does not appear likely to be accepted either. However, it does put additional pressure on Theresa May’s government to explain why NHS and the hospital are so determined to prevent any other options from being exercised by the parents, who understandably want to see if they can save their son’s life.
What’s not as understandable is why so many institutions seem lined up against their choice. Ethicists have lectured about quality of life considerations, even within Catholic circles, which reflects the odd split at the Vatican over the past week on the Charlie Gard case. Michael Redinger wrote at the Jesuit magazine America that when the experts line up in a case like this, opposing their conclusions risks making life an “idol” rather than viewed in perspective to other “goods”:
To this point, readers might reasonably conclude that if Charlie’s mechanical ventilation helps maintain him so that either he experiences an acceptable quality of life in the eyes of his parents or if his suffering is tolerable on a temporary basis until he is able to access a potentially beneficial experimental treatment, then his parents’ wish to keep him alive ought to be respected.
There are, however, medical treatments that fall outside of the ordinary and extraordinary frameworks. One category includes those treatments that are termed futile or, more accurately, “non beneficial,” and it has been an increasing focus of both secular and Catholic medical ethics. Physicians are not obligated to offer treatments that, in their medical expertise, have no reasonable chance of success or in which the harms so far exceed the potential benefits that it becomes inhumane to provide them. To do so violates the ancient maxim to “first, do no harm.” …
The Bishops’ Conference for England and Wales, the Pontifical Academy for Life and Pope Francis have not contradicted the E.C.H.R.’s decision to deny Charlie prolonged life support in order to receive experimental treatment. While expressing sympathy and prayerful support for the Gard family, their public statements have acknowledged that at times medicine is powerless to cure terminal illness. None of these church leaders insisted on continuing artificial life support at all costs, nor did they argue against the proper role of the state to either protect the best interests of children or to resolve disputes between patients, their families and their physicians.
The tragic case of Charlie Gard is one in which some well-intentioned members of the pro-life community reflexively leapt to the defense of the Gard family. In doing so, they unfortunately failed to recognize the nuances of Catholic teaching on end-of-life care. When life is valued so highly relative to other goods, its pursuit becomes detrimental. In effect, life itself becomes an idol.
There are a couple of problems with this analysis. First off, Redinger’s not quite accurate on Francis’ position, about which more later. Second, there are physicians who want to treat Charlie, and the parents want to exercise that option before consigning their son to death, and use privately raised funds to pay for it. They aren’t being forced to do anything, but are being prevented from having access to the patient. It’s the physicians in the hospital that currently holds Charlie that won’t allow it, in defiance of the parents’ wishes, rather than having those services demanded of them. There are no indications that the ventilator is making Charlie’s life so permanently miserable that he can’t be medicated to tolerate it better while those final options are explored. It’s odd that a Catholic ethicist sees “quality of life” as a greater good than life itself, and the pursuit of the latter as an idol rather than the assembled institutions preventing parental choice of a potential treatment.
Edward Pentin reports that Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, the founding president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, has a far different ethical perspective on the Charlie Gard case. The thrust of the courts and the commentary consigns people to being children of human institutions, not children of God, Caffarra argues, and have surrendered to the “culture of death”:
“We have come to the end of the road of the culture of death.”
“It is now public institutions, the courts, who decide if a child has, or hasn’t, the right to live — even against the will of the parents,” he said, adding: “We are the children of institutions, and we owe our lives to them? The poor West: it has rejected God and his paternity and now finds itself entrusted to bureaucracy! Charlie’s [guardian] angel always sees the face of the Father (cf. Mt 18:10).”
Cardinal Caffarra exhorted the authorities to “stop it, in the name of God. Otherwise, I say to you with Jesus: ‘It would be better for you if a millstone were hung round your neck and you were cast into the depths of the sea.’ (cf. Lk 17:2).”
Pentin also reports that the Italian medical association has strenuously objected to the restraints on the parents and the depiction of Charlie’s case:
It recognizes “clinical situations in which the insistence on practicing medical and surgical interventions and treatments is not reasonable, or because it is totally irrelevant to the support of a life that is now ending, or because they are the cause of unnecessary suffering.”
But it adds that Charlie’s illness “is not terminal,” nor are ventilation, feeding and artificial hydration “so hard for him to recommend suspension” as the rulings state.
Why, then, the association asks, should a “seriously ill child be killed in advance of taking away the care he needs?”
“The justification for the irreversible death sentence inflicted upon Charlie is that this would be his ‘best interests,’” it continues, but behind this decision is “a mental attitude that is polluting the roots of medical practice, legislation and widespread sentiment: the idea that human beings, with a low quality of life, have a lower dignity and worth than others, and that it is unreasonable to waste on them valuable resources that could be destined elsewhere. It is the ‘throw-away’ culture of which the Charlie case has become a tragic symbol.”
So what of this last-ditch effort from New York’s medical community? If that fails to move the May government to remove Charlie from NHS custody, then perhaps Pope Francis might up the ante even further by providing Charlie with Vatican residency:
Pope Francis reportedly wants to hand terminally-ill Charlie Gard a Vatican passport so he can be flown to Italy for treatment.
Sources suggest court rulings preventing him from leaving hospital can be “overcome” if the 11-month-old baby becomes a Vatican City citizen. …
One Vatican source told the Sun : “It would be unprecedented if citizenship was granted to Charlie, but it is being investigated. Legal parameters are preventing him from being moved and treated overseas. If that can be overcome, then so be it.”
That doesn’t sound as though the pontiff is just going along with the ECHR, does it? May had better act soon, if she’s going to act at all.
It said it had “agreed to admit and evaluate Charlie, provided that arrangements are made to safely transfer him to our facility, legal hurdles are cleared, and we receive emergency approval from the FDA for an experimental treatment as appropriate”.
It added: “Alternatively, if approved by the FDA, we will arrange shipment of the experimental drug to Great Ormond Street hospital and advise their medical staff on administering it if they are willing to do so.”
That’s a lot of government approval just on this side of the Atlantic. The UK’s National Health Service has stuck foursquare behind Great Ormond Street Hospital’s refusal to allow Charlie to be taken anywhere else for any kind of treatment, so the alternative does not appear likely to be accepted either. However, it does put additional pressure on Theresa May’s government to explain why NHS and the hospital are so determined to prevent any other options from being exercised by the parents, who understandably want to see if they can save their son’s life.
What’s not as understandable is why so many institutions seem lined up against their choice. Ethicists have lectured about quality of life considerations, even within Catholic circles, which reflects the odd split at the Vatican over the past week on the Charlie Gard case. Michael Redinger wrote at the Jesuit magazine America that when the experts line up in a case like this, opposing their conclusions risks making life an “idol” rather than viewed in perspective to other “goods”:
To this point, readers might reasonably conclude that if Charlie’s mechanical ventilation helps maintain him so that either he experiences an acceptable quality of life in the eyes of his parents or if his suffering is tolerable on a temporary basis until he is able to access a potentially beneficial experimental treatment, then his parents’ wish to keep him alive ought to be respected.
There are, however, medical treatments that fall outside of the ordinary and extraordinary frameworks. One category includes those treatments that are termed futile or, more accurately, “non beneficial,” and it has been an increasing focus of both secular and Catholic medical ethics. Physicians are not obligated to offer treatments that, in their medical expertise, have no reasonable chance of success or in which the harms so far exceed the potential benefits that it becomes inhumane to provide them. To do so violates the ancient maxim to “first, do no harm.” …
The Bishops’ Conference for England and Wales, the Pontifical Academy for Life and Pope Francis have not contradicted the E.C.H.R.’s decision to deny Charlie prolonged life support in order to receive experimental treatment. While expressing sympathy and prayerful support for the Gard family, their public statements have acknowledged that at times medicine is powerless to cure terminal illness. None of these church leaders insisted on continuing artificial life support at all costs, nor did they argue against the proper role of the state to either protect the best interests of children or to resolve disputes between patients, their families and their physicians.
The tragic case of Charlie Gard is one in which some well-intentioned members of the pro-life community reflexively leapt to the defense of the Gard family. In doing so, they unfortunately failed to recognize the nuances of Catholic teaching on end-of-life care. When life is valued so highly relative to other goods, its pursuit becomes detrimental. In effect, life itself becomes an idol.
There are a couple of problems with this analysis. First off, Redinger’s not quite accurate on Francis’ position, about which more later. Second, there are physicians who want to treat Charlie, and the parents want to exercise that option before consigning their son to death, and use privately raised funds to pay for it. They aren’t being forced to do anything, but are being prevented from having access to the patient. It’s the physicians in the hospital that currently holds Charlie that won’t allow it, in defiance of the parents’ wishes, rather than having those services demanded of them. There are no indications that the ventilator is making Charlie’s life so permanently miserable that he can’t be medicated to tolerate it better while those final options are explored. It’s odd that a Catholic ethicist sees “quality of life” as a greater good than life itself, and the pursuit of the latter as an idol rather than the assembled institutions preventing parental choice of a potential treatment.
Edward Pentin reports that Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, the founding president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, has a far different ethical perspective on the Charlie Gard case. The thrust of the courts and the commentary consigns people to being children of human institutions, not children of God, Caffarra argues, and have surrendered to the “culture of death”:
“We have come to the end of the road of the culture of death.”
“It is now public institutions, the courts, who decide if a child has, or hasn’t, the right to live — even against the will of the parents,” he said, adding: “We are the children of institutions, and we owe our lives to them? The poor West: it has rejected God and his paternity and now finds itself entrusted to bureaucracy! Charlie’s [guardian] angel always sees the face of the Father (cf. Mt 18:10).”
Cardinal Caffarra exhorted the authorities to “stop it, in the name of God. Otherwise, I say to you with Jesus: ‘It would be better for you if a millstone were hung round your neck and you were cast into the depths of the sea.’ (cf. Lk 17:2).”
Pentin also reports that the Italian medical association has strenuously objected to the restraints on the parents and the depiction of Charlie’s case:
It recognizes “clinical situations in which the insistence on practicing medical and surgical interventions and treatments is not reasonable, or because it is totally irrelevant to the support of a life that is now ending, or because they are the cause of unnecessary suffering.”
But it adds that Charlie’s illness “is not terminal,” nor are ventilation, feeding and artificial hydration “so hard for him to recommend suspension” as the rulings state.
Why, then, the association asks, should a “seriously ill child be killed in advance of taking away the care he needs?”
“The justification for the irreversible death sentence inflicted upon Charlie is that this would be his ‘best interests,’” it continues, but behind this decision is “a mental attitude that is polluting the roots of medical practice, legislation and widespread sentiment: the idea that human beings, with a low quality of life, have a lower dignity and worth than others, and that it is unreasonable to waste on them valuable resources that could be destined elsewhere. It is the ‘throw-away’ culture of which the Charlie case has become a tragic symbol.”
So what of this last-ditch effort from New York’s medical community? If that fails to move the May government to remove Charlie from NHS custody, then perhaps Pope Francis might up the ante even further by providing Charlie with Vatican residency:
Pope Francis reportedly wants to hand terminally-ill Charlie Gard a Vatican passport so he can be flown to Italy for treatment.
Sources suggest court rulings preventing him from leaving hospital can be “overcome” if the 11-month-old baby becomes a Vatican City citizen. …
One Vatican source told the Sun : “It would be unprecedented if citizenship was granted to Charlie, but it is being investigated. Legal parameters are preventing him from being moved and treated overseas. If that can be overcome, then so be it.”
That doesn’t sound as though the pontiff is just going along with the ECHR, does it? May had better act soon, if she’s going to act at all.
NATURAL DISASTER: 5.8 MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE HITS MONTANA, RAISING SUPERVOLCANO CONCERNS
BY RYAN BORT
h The Body Of Mice
Yellowstone National Park, which covers parts of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, lies on top of a supervolcano that could effectively wipe out the United States if it were to explode. The last time it did, 640,000 years ago, it expelled 240 cubic miles (think about that) of rocky debris into the sky.
Early Thursday morning, residents of southern Montana feared the worst when a 5.8 magnitude earthquake shook the region. Though its epicenter was only 230 miles from Yellowstone, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) says the seismic activity was not irregular, and the supervolcano is not expected to erupt anytime soon.
"The location and focal mechanism solution of this earthquake are consistent with right-lateral faulting in association with faults of the Lewis and Clark line, a prominent zone of strike-slip, dip slip and oblique slip faulting trending east-southeast from northern Idaho to east of Helena, Montana, southeast of this earthquake," said the USGS.
Nevertheless, people were concerned.
This is fairly alarming when you consider it's only 232 miles from the gigantic supervolcano known as Yellowstone National Park. https://twitter.com/USGSted/status/882852363601678336 …
Earthquake in Bozeman = truly terrified Yellowstone volcano gonna go off
"How far is that from the Yellowstone Supervolcano," Bobby thought, unsure whether he feared this news or welcomed it. https://twitter.com/todayshow/status/882921733124235264 …
The earthquake, which was the eighth largest ever recorded in Montana and largest in 34 years, comes just weeks after a flurry of smaller earthquakes hit the region. The swarm of activity began June 12, and by the end of the month nearly 900 earthquakes had been recorded near the Yellowstone supervolcano, along the western edge of the park.
Though the heightened seismic activity has stoked fears of a possible supervolcano eruption, Jacob Lowenstern of the USGS told Newsweek that it is not without precedent.
“The swarm in 2010 on the Madison Plateau lasted at least three weeks. In 1985, there was one that lasted several months,” he said. “Yellowstone has had dozens of these sorts of earthquake swarms in the last 150 years it's been visited. The last volcanic eruption within the caldera was 70,000 years ago. For magma to reach the surface, a new vent needs to be created, which requires a lot of intense geological activity.”
The USGS puts the odds of a volcanic eruption at 1 in 730,000. Even if an eruption were to occur, it would likely result in lava flow rather than a cataclysmic explosion. Though this would have an effect on Yellowstone, it would not bring about the end of the United States as we know it.
The 5.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Montana early Thursday morning may have knocked some dishes over and woke up a few residents, but the supervolcano made it through the night undisturbed.
John Bolton: Every Time You Hear North Korea Think of Iran
by JOHN HAYWARD
Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton talked about North Korea’s Fourth of July missile test launch on Thursday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow.
Bolton said intercontinental ballistic missiles are a goal North Korea has been working towards since the early 1990s, as part of the outlaw regime’s quest for “deliverable nuclear weapons,” but it was still surprising to many observers that a missile with true intercontinental capability was successfully launched this week.
“It’s capable of hitting Alaska. It can’t hit the Lower 48 yet, but that’s only a matter of time,” he said. “The only other thing we need to find out, and I don’t want to be on the receiving end of it, is whether North Korea has miniaturized its nuclear devices – of which it’s already detonated five – to the point they can put it under an ICBM nose cone.”
“I’ve been talking about this for 20 years, and so have many other people. And yet, for the last three U.S. administrations – eight years of Clinton, eight years of Bush, eight years of Obama – people have tried to negotiate with North Korea to talk them out of their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. It’s failed consistently for 25 years,” he said.
“That’s why Trump has inherited this mess. The issue is whether he can find a way out of it, or whether he succumbs to what I know the State Department, and much of the Defense Department, and much of the intelligence community are telling him: just keep doing what we’ve been doing before. Because that will result in a nuclear North Korea,” Bolton warned.
“And by the way, you can already see the mainstream media and academia preparing us to live in a world where North Korea has nuclear weapons,” he added, citing a New York Times op-ed to that effect from Wednesday.
Bolton judged that Japan would continue to be a reliable ally against North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, since the Japanese are well aware their cities lie within range of North Korea’s missiles. On the other hand, he said “all of the evidence points to China and Russia as, at best, turning a blind eye to what the North has been up to, and more likely facilitating the North’s nuclear and missile programs.”
He said his support from China and Russia was kept low-profile to avoid sanctions, but there was no way to conceal that China supplies North Korea with much of its oil and food, giving Beijing more than enough leverage to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear missile program if it truly wanted to.
“China is playing a double game. They say they don’t want the North Koreans to have nuclear weapons but they haven’t shut it down,” Bolton charged. “It’s a very dangerous situation. Nobody should underestimate it.”
“One other point I would make: Every time you hear the words ‘North Korea,’ think of the word ‘Iran,’” he added. “Because whatever North Korea can do, Iran can do the next day by sending them a check in the appropriate amount. We have stovepiped these two nuclear proliferation threats for a very long time. We need to stop doing that because every day that goes by brings us closer to the day when one or both of them can hit the United States.”
Bolton cited North Korea’s five known nuclear test detonations, and its successful test of ballistic missile technology, to say it is a “more imminent threat” than Iran, but stressed that North Korea and Iran have been working “extremely closely on ballistic missiles” since the Nineties, “and there’s every reason to think they have worked extremely closely on the nuclear program as well.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if a big chunk of Iran’s uranium enrichment program is not in Iran, where we know where it is, but under a mountain in North Korea,” he said. “We have very poor intelligence on North Korea, so it’s a big advantage for Iran to work with them.”
“When the Israelis destroyed that reactor in Syria in September 2007, it was being built by North Koreans,” he recalled. “Well, who paid for that? North Korea doesn’t do anything for free. I doubt that Syria had the resources to do it. Quite likely it was Iran. When that reactor was found by the Israelis and destroyed, the lesson I think to Iran was, ‘Build it someplace where the Israelis can’t find it.’ That’s why they may well have turned to North Korea.”
Bolton noted that U.S. and South Korean military officials have been warning for the past year that North Korea was on the verge of developing missiles that could hit the West Coast of the United States, perhaps as early as 2018.
“In public testimony three or four months ago now, the head of the U.S. Strategic Command told Congress that the only thing he had any doubt about was whether North Korea had fully conquered the miniaturization tasks to take a nuclear device and make it small enough to put under an ICBM nose cone. So even just three or four months ago, he didn’t have any doubt about the range,” he noted.
“There are a lot of other technical steps to overcome here. You can put the nose cone and the warhead up, you can bring it back down, but it’s a pretty rocky ride. You have to make sure that the warhead will detonate at the appropriate time,” he explained.
“We don’t know whether the North has mastered that technology, but I would be very cautious about intelligence that says they can’t do this, and they can’t do that, and they can’t do the other thing, because the first American reaction to this launch was ‘it was an intermediate range ballistic missile, not an ICBM,” and we were wrong. And we didn’t detect this one before the launch. I think we’ve had enough lessons in intelligence being imperfect,” he said.
“Don’t count on our lack of knowledge meaning that the North doesn’t have the capability,” he advised. “They may well have the capability. We may simply not have detected it.”
John Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and head of his own political action committee, BoltonPAC.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern.
North Korea Made A Move That Could Have Frightening Consequences
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continues to push the world to the brink of nuclear war.
His latest move crossed a red line that could be the final straw.
And the U.S. may be left with no choice but military action.
Over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, North Korea successfully test fired an intercontinental ballistic missile.
This was a disturbing development.
The projectile was in the air for 40 minutes and covered hundreds of miles.
North Korea’s ICBM was determined to have the capability of striking targets in the United States such as Alaska.
Trump immediately fired off two tweets to register his disapproval and his hope that the other Asian nations – led by China – would take dramatic action to shut down North Korea’s nuclear program.
Trump immediately fired off two tweets to register his disapproval and his hope that the other Asian nations – led by China – would take dramatic action to shut down North Korea’s nuclear program.
North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea.....
....and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!
But that was not the extent of Trump’s response.
The United States and South Korea staged a joint missile exercise as a show of unity and military force.
The Washington Post reports:
“THE U.S. ARMY AND SOUTH KOREAN MILITARY RESPONDED TO NORTH KOREA’S LATEST LAUNCH WITH THEIR OWN EXERCISE OF MISSILES, LAUNCHING THEM WEDNESDAY INTO SOUTH KOREAN TERRITORIAL WATERS ALONG THE COUNTRY’S EASTERN COASTLINE, U.S. PACIFIC COMMAND SAID IN A STATEMENT. THE LAUNCHES WERE DIRECTLY IN RESPONSE TO “NORTH KOREA’S DESTABILIZING AND UNLAWFUL ACTIONS,” PACIFIC COMMAND SAID.
THE ARMY USED ITS ARMY TACTICAL MISSILE SYSTEM AND SOUTH KOREA USED ITS HYUNMOO MISSILE II, WHICH CAN BE DEPLOYED RAPIDLY AND PROVIDE “DEEP STRIKE PRECISION CAPABILITY,” PACIFIC COMMAND SAID.
THE SOUTH KOREAN-U.S. MILITARY ALLIANCE “REMAINS COMMITTED TO PEACE AND PROSPERITY ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA AND THROUGHOUT THE ASIA-PACIFIC,” PACIFIC COMMAND SAID. “THE U.S. COMMITMENT TO THE DEFENSE OF THE [REPUBLIC OF KOREA] IN THE FACE OF THREATS IS IRONCLAD.”
But some wonder if this is just the next step on a road to war.
Trump has said North Korea’s nuclear menace must end.
Now that they have a weapon capable of striking the United States the price of poker just went up.
And the next step could be war.
Trey Gowdy Drove A Stake Through The Heart Of The Deep State With This Revelation
Deep State leakers have had free run to take pot shots at the Trump administration.Illegal leaks have peppered news stories and created a false air of scandal around the President.
But Trey Gowdy made one announcement that left the Deep State in tatters.
Gowdy was being interviewed on CNN after leaks of the closed door testimony of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats appeared in the press.
The South Carolina Congressman noted that less than ten people were in the room when Coats testified and that it was outrageous his remarks appeared in the media.
The Blaze reports:
“Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) angrily decried the leaks that came from a closed briefing of the House Intelligence Committee with Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. He made the comments to Erin Burnett on CNN Thursday.
“What I found out, Erin,” Gowdy said, “is that about eight hours ago Adam Schiff and I look at Dan Coates in the eye and we assured him that there would be no selective leaking of his testimony to us.”
“And I’ll be damned if eight hours later,” he said angrily, “there aren’t three different leaks with what he told us.”
“So if anyone is questioning why congressional investigations aren’t taken seriously and are viewed as political exercises,” he continued, “you need look no further than the fact that we looked one of our intelligence officials in the eyes and promised him there would be no selective leaking, and here I am being asked about it not even eight hours later.”
But Gowdy didn’t stop there.
CNN’s Erin Burnett asked him who passed the information to the press.
Gowdy put the leaker on notice by narrowing down the suspects.
The Blaze also reports:
“So congressman, who leaked it?” Burnett asked. “Was it Coates, was it Schiff? Was there anyone else in the room than the three of you?”
“I can tell you who it was not,” he responded. “Oh no. There were eight people in the room. I can tell you who it was not. It was not me, and I do not believe it was Adam Schiff. He’s a former federal prosecutor who knows that leaks undercut the efficacy and integrity of investigations.”
“I can’t tell you who it was,” he concluded, “but I can tell you this – you’re going to have a chilling effect on other witnesses who want to share classified, sensitive information when it makes its way to the headlines before the transcripts even dry!”
Gowdy could also have been playing coy.
Given the small number of people in the room – and the fact that he eliminated Congressman Schiff and himself as suspects – Gowdy knows there are only a select few suspects to choose from.
His interview could have been an unspoken message to the leaker that Gowdy knows who he is.
Trump supporters were thrilled to see leakers taken head on.
While the Coats leak was not illegal, it did violate protocol.
Gowdy sent a message he is on to the leakers and my even know who they are.
No June Swoon: US Adds 222,000 Jobs
ED MORRISSEYPosted at 9:21 am on July 7, 2017
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For once, the official jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics handily beat the ADP precursor. The US economy added a rather robust 222,000 jobs in June, a sharp increase over two less-than-stellar months preceding it. The BLS also upwardly revised April and May to add an additional 47,000 jobs, bringing the three-month average to 194,000:
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 222,000 in June, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 4.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in health care, social assistance, financial activities, and mining.
In June, the unemployment rate, at 4.4 percent, and the number of unemployed persons, at 7.0 million, were little changed. Since January, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed are down by 0.4 percentage point and 658,000, respectively. …
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for April was revised up from +174,000 to +207,000, and the change for May was revised up from +138,000 to +152,000. With these revisions, employment gains in April and May combined were 47,000 more than previously reported. Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors. Over the past 3 months, job gains have averaged 194,000 per month.
All of this is better news than in recent reports. In order to maintain current employment ratios against population growth, the US economy needs to add at least 125,000 jobs a month for a maintenance rate. June’s results provide evidence of moderate gains against joblessness, as do the upward revisions applied to April. The May results still don’t stack up as much more than a maintenance level of job creation, but now both May and the dreadful March results look like outliers of a somewhat cheery job-creation trend in 2017:
In June, the unemployment rate, at 4.4 percent, and the number of unemployed persons, at 7.0 million, were little changed. Since January, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed are down by 0.4 percentage point and 658,000, respectively. …
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for April was revised up from +174,000 to +207,000, and the change for May was revised up from +138,000 to +152,000. With these revisions, employment gains in April and May combined were 47,000 more than previously reported. Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors. Over the past 3 months, job gains have averaged 194,000 per month.
All of this is better news than in recent reports. In order to maintain current employment ratios against population growth, the US economy needs to add at least 125,000 jobs a month for a maintenance rate. June’s results provide evidence of moderate gains against joblessness, as do the upward revisions applied to April. The May results still don’t stack up as much more than a maintenance level of job creation, but now both May and the dreadful March results look like outliers of a somewhat cheery job-creation trend in 2017:
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Republicans promised a more robust job-creation trend, but they also have not put much of their economic plan into place yet, either.
The U-3 unemployment rate went up a tenth of a point to 4.4% from May, but that appears to be mainly a rounding artifact and a reflection of labor-force expansion. The civilian labor force went up by 361,000, almost reversing the significant drop seen in May of 429,000, while the number of those not in the labor force dropped by 170,000. Both the participation and employment-population ratios went up a tenth of a point, an improvement while still remaining near lows of recent decades. The U-6 unemployment rate — which is more comprehensive — actually went up two-tenths of a point, but again, that may reflect a larger workforce rather than a lack of job creation.
While the goods-producing sector had its best month of the quarter, most of the gains still came in the service sector. The biggest winner was in health care and social assistance (59,100 jobs), followed by temporary help services (45,000). The latter might indicate good news about future growth, although it’s not far off from May’s 35K and identical to April’s 45K. Businesses will often add temporary jobs for expansion first, and then convert them to regular employment when demand firms up.
The AP’s Christopher Rugaber sounds a cheery note about the job expansion, but a little less so about the US economy in general:
Home sales are chugging along, though a shortage of properties for sale suggests that the pace of purchases could flag. The number of people signing contracts to buy homes — step that precedes final sales by a month or two — has fallen for three straight months.
And auto sales are slowing from last year’s record pace, causing some automakers to cut jobs.
At the same time, surveys of manufacturing and service companies indicate that growth in both sectors may be accelerating. Factory activity is expanding at the fastest pace in three years, the Institute of Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, found.
The economy grew at just a 1.4 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, below even the sluggish 2 percent average pace in the eight years since the recession ended. But most economists have forecast that growth rebounded in the April-June quarter to an annual rate of 2.5 percent or higher.
And auto sales are slowing from last year’s record pace, causing some automakers to cut jobs.
At the same time, surveys of manufacturing and service companies indicate that growth in both sectors may be accelerating. Factory activity is expanding at the fastest pace in three years, the Institute of Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, found.
The economy grew at just a 1.4 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, below even the sluggish 2 percent average pace in the eight years since the recession ended. But most economists have forecast that growth rebounded in the April-June quarter to an annual rate of 2.5 percent or higher.
The job-creation trend seems to show employers anticipating a stronger Q2 and Q3, but not explosive growth. Employment usually lags growth, though, which is why the May results were disconcerting. It seems that employers in June went back to a mildly optimistic outlook, and so did workers re-entering the market, but both are still waiting for the new administration and Congress to deliver on their economic agenda.
G’day…Ciao…….Helen and Moe Lauzier
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