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Via PlanetFreeWill.com,

Within a Senate privacy hearing on Wednesday – which was seemingly swept out of the media spotlight by the lead up to today’s Judiciary Committee’s hearing involving a Brett Kavanaugh accuser – Google’s chief privacy officer Keith Enright admitted the existence of Project Dragonfly, reportedly a censored search engine for China.

During the hearing, members of the Senate Commerce Committee pressed Enright on how Google’s policies protecting user data would square up with the till-then rumored sanctioned search engine for China.

Before Wednesday’s hearing, Google had refused to confirm or comment on the reports claiming it has begun working on a project called “Dragonfly,” but the Google chief told lawmakers on Wednesday that “there is a Project Dragonfly.”

Enright would maintain while being pressed on the censorship project by Senator Ted Cruz:

“I will say that my understanding is that we are not, in fact, close to launching a search product in China, and whether we would or could at some point in the future remains unclear…

If we were, in fact, to finalize a plan to launch a search product in China, my team would be actively engaged.”

After admitting that “Dragonfly” project did exist, the privacy officer offered dodgy answering, saying that he is “not clear on the contours of what is in scope or out of the scope of that project.”

Senator Cruz then asked if he thought that the Chinese government censors what its citizens see, to which Enright responded:

“As the privacy representative of Google, I’m not sure that I have an informed opinion on that question.”

Project “Dragon Fly” was previously reported as the code name for a censored search app in secret development by Google that would be specifically for China and would blacklist any material deemed unfit by the communist regime.

The project first came to light through a report in The Intercept on September 21 that detailed how Google “forced employees to delete a confidential memo circulating inside the company that revealed explosive details about a plan to launch a censored search engine in China.”

The memo, authored by a Google engineer who was asked to work on the project, disclosed that the search system, codenamed Dragonfly, would require users to log in to perform searches, track their location — and share the resulting history with a Chinese partner who would have “unilateral access” to the data.

The memo was shared earlier this month among a group of Google employees who have been organizing internal protests over the censored search system, which has been designed to remove content that China’s authoritarian Communist Party regime views as sensitive, such as information about democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest.

According to three sources familiar with the incident, Google leadership discovered the memo and were furious that secret details about the China censorship were being passed between employees who were not supposed to have any knowledge about it. Subsequently, Google human resources personnel emailed employees who were believed to have accessed or saved copies of the memo and ordered them to immediately delete it from their computers. Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined. The Intercept

Enright’s remarks on Wednesday echoes those of other Google executives in August that claimed the company was “not close to launching” a search product in China. At that time company heads were admittedly considering how to do business again in the Chinese local market. Chief executive Sundar Pichai said that plans to re-enter China with a search engine were “exploratory” and in the “early stages.”

Google left China in 2010 after clashing with Beijing over censorship of search results and a cyber attack on users of its Gmail email service.

Shortly after project “Dragonfly” became familiar to the public, senior research scientist for Google, Jack Poulson, resigned in protest over the companies work on the censored search product.

Paulson told The Intercept‘s Ryan Gallagher that he felt an “ethical responsibility to resign” over the “forfeiture of our public human rights commitments.”

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The final prints for UMich September data was slightly weaker than the preliminary prints but hope and current conditions did bounce MoM and did the headline.

Consumer sentiment remained at very favorable levels in September, with the Index topping 100.0 for only the third time since January 2004.

Most of the September gain was among households with incomes in the bottom third, whose index value of 96.3 was the highest since November 2000. In contrast, the Sentiment Index among households with incomes in the top third lost a total of 8.1% during the past seven months since reaching its cyclical peak of 111.9 in February 2018

In addition, consumers were slightly more likely to favor advance buying ahead of anticipated increases in interest rates and prices—favored by 20% for durables, 13% for vehicles, and 25% for homes.

Finally, we note that the year-ahead expected inflation rate was 2.7% in September, down from 3.0% in August and equal to last September’s figure (which was an accurate year-ahead forecast of the most recent change in the CPI). Long term inflation expectations fell to 2.5% in September from 2.6% in August and equal to last September’s figure.

 

 

 

 

 

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In the aftermath of Italy’s defiant announcement that it would expand its 2019 budget deficit to 2.4% of GDP, above both the initial proposal from finmin Tria which was 1.6%, and also higher than the European “redline” of 2.0%, the question was how would Europe respond to this open mutiny by Italy.

The answers started to emerge on Friday, when European Parliament head Antonio Tajani said that fiscal targets set by Italy’s eurosceptic government were “against the people” and could hit savers without creating jobs.

“I am very concerned for what is happening in Italy,” said Tajani, who is a center-right opposition politician in Italy and close ally to former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The budgetary plans “will not raise employment but will cause trouble to the savings of the Italians,” Tajani said.

“This budget is not for the people, it is against the people,” Tajani said, adding that the planned measures “will create many problems in the north (of Italy) without solving problems in the south,” which is the least developed part of the country.

Separately, Pierre Moscovici, EU Economic Affairs Commissioner, said in an interview with BFM television that “Italy, which has debt at 132 percent, chooses expansion and stimulus. It’s “a budget that looks like jaywalking, and out of line with our rules.” 

As a reminder, Italy has the most public debt of any European country, surpassing both France and Germany, and its debt/GDP is the second highest in the EU after bailed-out Greece; until recently, Italy had committed for next year to a deficit three times smaller.

The verbal fireworks continued, with Moscovici reminding Italy that the only reason its “explosive” debt hasn’t collapsed is due to the ECB’s purchases, which has been actively monetizing it for the past few years.

“We have no interest in a crisis between the Commission and Italy,” Moscovici said. “But it’s also not in our interest for Italy to not respect the rules and not reduce its public debt, which remains explosive.”

In turn, Italy’s Di Maio swiftly brushed away Moscovici, with Bloomberg quoting him as telling reporters at a Rome event that “the concerns are legitimate but the government has committed itself to maintaining the deficit-GDP at 2.4 percent and we want to repay the debt.” Salvini was similarly confident. “Markets will come to terms with the budget,” he said in a Facebook video.

The verbal spat took place amid a broad-based liquidation of Italian assets which saw 10Y Italian yields rise as much as 35 basis points to 3.24%, the biggest increase since a rout in May during the government’s formation. The yield spread over Germany reached a three-week high.

Christoph Rieger, Commerzbank’s head of fixed-rate strategy chimed in, saying that investors are right to be nervous with the budget compromise at the high end of the range that had been talked about before.

“And what weighs more, it has demolished Tria’s credibility,” Rieger said. “This underlines the balance of power within the government, and having a lame duck finance minister in this situation will require a higher risk premium.”

For now, the European response to Italy’s defiance has been confined to verbal escalation. As Bloomberg notes, Italy has to submit its 2019 budget for approval to the Commission by Oct. 15, at which point Brussels has the power to impose fines of up to 0.2% of GDP on countries that persistently break the bloc’s fiscal rules. What would complicate a crackdown on Italy is that when “push came to shove” in 2016, the Commission opted to not penalize Spain and Portugal – the culprits at the time – and instead imposed symbolic zero sanctions.

The decision was seen at the time as an effort by the EU’s executive arm to not alienate its members amid rising populism and discontent with austerity. But for many EU officials, it tarnished the credibility of the bloc’s fiscal rules.

As such, any sanctioning of Italy will be seen as a personal vendetta against the Mediterranean country.

Additionally, the loosened budget target is seen as a setback for finance minister Tria and President Mattarella, who had “sought to moderate the more extreme instincts of the government” formed in June by Di Maio’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement and Salvini’s anti-migrant League according to Bloomberg. On the other hand, it shouldn’t be surprising that a country which has demanded populist policies ends up with just that.

As for the technocratic Tria, who initially brought a sense of calm among investors due to his moderate approach, and whose budget recommendations were trampled, he said said he’ll stay in his job because he has a responsibility to help maintain stability, La Repubblica newspaper reported. One look at the turmoil in Italian markets this morning would suggest that he has failed at that job as well…

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Ahead of today’s miss on Chicago PMI (60.4 vs 62.0 exp), ‘soft’ survey data has been surging as ‘hard’ real data has been slumping. The ‘reality gap’ is now at its widest in 11 months…

Chicago PMI dropped to its lowest since April… September’s drop is the largest since March…

Only 3 of the factors rose MoM:

• Prices paid rose at a slower pace, signaling expansion

• New orders rose at a slower pace, signaling expansion

• Employment rose at a slower pace, signaling expansion

• Inventories rose at a faster pace, signaling expansion

• Supplier deliveries rose at a faster pace, signaling expansion

• Production rose at a slower pace, signaling expansion

• Order backlogs rose at a faster pace, signaling expansion

But Chicago’s disappointment bucked the recent trend in ‘soft’ survey data that has pushed the gap between hope and reality to 11-month highs…

 

 

 

 

 

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If there was any doubt left that Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s impassioned testimony on Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee had convinced skeptical moderates to back his nomination, it has just been eliminated.

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, who was among the first Republicans to call for the Judiciary Committee to delay its initial recommendation vote on Kavanaugh after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford first came forward with her allegations, said Friday morning that he will vote to recommend that the Senate confirm Trump’s nominee to fill the vacant SCOTUS seat left by Justice Anthony Kennedy.

BREAKING — Flake Will Vote to Confirm Judge Kavanaugh

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) September 28, 2018

Flake’s was a critical swing vote because he sits on the Judiciary Committee, and could have swayed the committee’s 11-10 majority in favor of the Democrats. Late Thursday, Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, another skeptic and Trump adversary, said he had made up his mind as to how he will vote, but that he wasn’t willing to share it just yet.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders said they are working to convince Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia to vote for Kavanaugh, which would break the Democrats wall of unanimous opposition. Attention now turns to Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a key moderate vote. She and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski had said they were undecided on how they would vote. After the conclusion of yesterday’s hearing, Collins, Murkowski, Flake and Manchin were spotted huddling near the hideaway where Collins viewed the hearing.

The probability that Kavanaugh will be confirmed surged on the news, according to online betting market PredictIt.

 

 

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The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on Friday at 9:30 a.m. on President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh – one day after riveting testimony from both Kavanugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.

Ford claimed that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while at a high school party, while Kavanaugh responded with a vehement and categorical denial in an emotional statement. 

Senate Republicans are seeking to push Kavanugh through to confirmation on Friday, while the Democrats stood by Ford and are insisting that the confirmation be stopped or delayed until a “full investigation” can be conducted. 

Friday morning, Politico reported that the Senate panel had been advised by Rachel Mitchell, the attorney who represented the GOP members, that as a prosecutor “she would not charge Kavanaugh or even pursue a search warrant.” 

“Rachel Mitchell, a lawyer who was retained by the Senate GOP to question Ford, broke down her analysis of the testimony to Republicans, but did not advise them how to vote. She told them that as a prosecutor she would not charge Kavanaugh or even pursue a search warrant, according to a person briefed on the meeting.” –Politico

#RachelMitchell told Republican senators in a members mtg last night that she wouldn’t charge #Kavanaugh. People briefed on the mtg said Mitchell was very clear with senators that based on evidence presented, she couldn’t bring the case “anywhere near a court room.”

— Brooke Singman (@brookefoxnews) September 28, 2018

Last night, Townhall reported that Kavanaugh has the votes to make it out of committee and will be confirmed on the floor for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a Senate insider. 

Sens. Flake (R-AZ), Collins (R-ME), Murkowski (R-AK), and Manchin (D-WV) are expected to vote in favor of Kavanaugh. All the Republicans are voting yes. Also, in the rumor mill, several Democrats may break ranks and back Kavanaugh. That’s the ball game, folks. –Townhall

Speaking with reporters, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says he thinks “all of America” thought Ford’s testimony was compelling, while President Trump tweeted on Thursday night: “Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him. His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting.”

Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him. His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting. Democrats’ search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham and effort to delay, obstruct, and resist. The Senate must vote!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2018

FULL INTERVIEW: @PressSec Sarah Sanders on Kavanaugh testimony: “This could have been done differently.” https://t.co/BcNBKBAZ89 pic.twitter.com/P8AfT04bXg

— Good Morning America (@GMA) September 28, 2018

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, told CBS This Morning said that Kavanaugh will call “balls and strikes” fairly, as he has done for more than a decade. She noted that Ford’s testimony was “very compelling and very sympathetic,” and that Ford “was wronged by somebody,” but that it wasn’t Kavanaugh. 

“It seems that she absolutely was wronged by somebody … it may turn out that they’re both right,” she said. “That she was sexually assaulted but that he had nothing to do with it.”

Stay tuned for updates throughout Friday’s vote.  

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Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

As Japan braces for typhoon Trami, weather experts are warning that this storm could have “life-threatening impacts” when it hits. Trami will slam into the Ryukyu Islands and barrel into mainland Japan with destructive winds, flooding rain, and an inundating storm surge Friday night into Monday.

According to AccuWeather, residents should be preparing themselves for what could be a major devastating event.  Residents should be making the necessary precautions to protect themselves and their property against this dangerous typhoon, which is equal to a category 3 hurricane. Those living in the coastal communities and in flood-prone areas should pay attention to local authorities and heed evacuation orders.

Experts have said that at this time, all locations in Japan are at risk for impacts from Trami in the coming days. “Trami remains on track to blast the Ryukyu Islands Friday night into Sunday morning, with mainland Japan bracing for the blow Sunday into Monday,” said AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Kristina Pydynowski. “Time is running out for preparations in the Ryukyu Islands,” Pydynowski said.

Major flooding and mudslides are also possible and Pydynowski is warning everyone to not go outside. “Anyone outside during the height of the storm can endure bodily harm or be fatally struck by flying debris,” Pydynowski said. All of Kyushu, Shikoku and western Honshu will face torrential rain that can trigger widespread flooding and mudslides. This includes some of the same communities that endured the historic flooding over the summer.

The heaviest rain may fall north and west of Tokyo, but wind gusts of 95-145 km/h (60-90 mph) can still whip the city on Sunday night. Haneda Airport may be forced to shut down for a time. While the drier weather will quickly return for Monday, the morning commute and daily routines can still be disrupted due to any damage, littered roads or rail lines or power outages left in the wake of Trami.

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With the Senate Judiciary preparing to recommend that Judge Brett Kavanaugh be confirmed to fill the SCOTUS seat recently vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy, it’s looking increasingly likely that Kavanaugh will successfully make it through what has undoubtedly been the most bruising Supreme Court confirmation process since Justice Clarence Thomas in the early 1990s. And now that Democrats have played their final card (to no avail), Axios is reporting that Democratic operatives are already scheming to impeach Kavanaugh as quickly as they can.

Indeed, as the Nov. 6 midterm vote draws closer, Republicans expect the impeachment of both Trump and Kavanaugh to be “an animating issue.”

Here’s more from Axios, which cited several unnamed Democratic and Republican operatives in its report:

• A well-known Democratic strategist says the “only question is who calls for it first.”

• And top Republicans expect President Trump to begin making an even bigger issue of his own possible impeachment as a way of whipping up supporters in the final month of this fall’s midterm campaigns.

• A veteran Republican close to Senate leaders and the White House: “Impeachment of Trump and Kav will be an animating issue on both sides.”

At the very least, expect Democrats to “question the legitimacy” of his seat.

Be smart: If Kavanaugh is confirmed, Democrats could be expected to question the legitimacy of his swing Supreme Court vote. Congress degraded itself yesterday. And the Trump White House of course has serious credibility issues.

Meanwhile, former Hillary Clinton Press Secretary Brian Fallon offered a more complete look at how Democrats could push for impeachment in a Thursday night tweet, where he declared that, should Kavanaugh be confirmed (an outcome that is looking increasingly likely) he would “not serve for life.”

If Senate GOP ignores Dr. Blasey Ford and tries to muscle an attempted rapist onto the Supreme Court:
1. They will pay dearly this November.
2. Senators up in 2020 (Collins, Gardner et al) will feel intense heat for next two years.
3. Kavanaugh will not serve for life.

— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) September 27, 2018

During an interview with France 24, Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman illustrates a scenario where Kavanaugh could be impeached – not because of the sexual assault controversy, but because he’s suspected of lying about stolen memo used to push through Bush-era nominees. It’s also possible that he lied about his role in devising the Bush administration torture memos/

“Let us suppose we learn that there are documents which indicate quite unequivocally that Mr. Kavanaugh was involved with the construction of the torture memos. What will happen is he will be impeached for misrepresenting his position in his testimony both this time and when he was first confirm [to his appeals court judgeship for the Washington DC circuit].”

Earlier this month, former deputy attorney general Lisa Graves argued that Kavanaugh received memos stolen from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary committee during the Bush era and used them to help push through the administration’s nominees. Then he allegedly lied about it under oath.

Here’s Graves (per Slate):

Newly released emails show that while he was working to move through President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees in the early 2000s, Kavanaugh received confidential memos, letters, and talking points of Democratic staffers stolen by GOP Senate aide Manuel Miranda. That includes research and talking points Miranda stole from the Senate server after I had written them for the Senate Judiciary Committee as the chief counsel for nominations for the minority.

Receiving those memos and letters alone is not an impeachable offense.

No, Kavanaugh should be removed because he was repeatedly asked under oath as part of his 2004 and 2006 confirmation hearings for his position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit about whether he had received such information from Miranda, and each time he falsely denied it.

But assuming Democrats amass enough votes in the House and the Senate to push through an impeachment vote, how exactly would this play out?

Unsurprisingly, Vox has published a handy explainer:

Impeachment and removal of a federal judge, including a Supreme Court justice, requires meeting a high political bar. Just as with presidents, a majority of the House must approve an indictment to impeach, and a two-thirds supermajority of the US Senate must convict for the judge or justice to lose their office.

There is considerable precedent for impeaching and removing lower-level federal judges. For Supreme Court justices, the number of precedents is much smaller: There is one case in which a Supreme Court justice was impeached but not removed, and no other examples.

[…]

As a 2010 report by Elizabeth Bazan for the Congressional Research Service explains, Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution provides for the removal of “the President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States … on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

The term “civil officers” is not defined in the Constitution, and Bazan notes that with one exception (US Sen. William Blount, one of the first two elected from Tennessee in 1796) every person impeached so far has been an executive or judicial branch official. The Senate ultimately decided that Blount was not a “civil officer” and acquitted him on that basis.

By contrast, Bazan writes, “the precedents show that federal judges have been considered to fall within the sweep of the ‘Civil Officer’ language.” The House has, in the course of federal history, impeached 13 judges, and the Senate has convicted and removed eight. Of those convicted, seven were district judges. The other was Robert Archbald, who served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the now-defunct United States Commerce Court until his 1913 removal.

Thomas Porteous, a federal judge who was impeached in 2009, was facing criminal charges at the time of his impeachment, as were the other four judges who comprise the five most recent impeachment cases in the federal judiciary.

But as Vox also points out, these situations differ markedly from Kavanaugh’s situation (and Thomas’s as well):

If one takes the five impeachment cases in recent decades as a model, Kavanaugh’s conduct (and Thomas’s) does not appear similar. While Kent’s case involved sexual misconduct, he had also already been criminally convicted, whereas Maryland prosecutors show little interest in pursuing charges against Kavanaugh in the Ford case. There is little indication that federal prosecutors believe he committed perjury in his statements about the judicial memos.

More importantly, both Kavanaugh and Thomas have numerous supporters in the Senate and the House. At the time of their impeachment, these other judges didn’t.

In other words, not only would Democrats need the support of their entire caucus to succeed with an impeachment and removal – they would likely also need the support of most of their Republican colleagues. And unless evidence of some unspeakable act comes to light, it’s unlikely that this will happen.

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