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The Gallup Good Jobs (GGJ) rate rose nearly a percentage point to 47.0% in July, from 46.3% in June. The GGJ rate now ties the highest point for the measure since 2010, 47.1% in July of last year. The July figures are based on Gallup Daily tracking throughout the month, encompassing interviews with 28,383 U.S. adults. The increase in the July GGJ rate is not unexpected, as the measure typically rises between the spring and summer months, peaking in June or July. The measure has risen each year, from the onset of spring in March to July, since Gallup began...

The United States Coast Guard was established August 4, 1790. United States Coast Guard Tribute "Semper Paratus" US Coast Guard home page  

The Senate unanimously agreed to block President Trump from making appointments during their August break amid concerns that he’ll replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions during the recess. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who Trump blasted on Twitter after she voted against the party on health care last month, locked in nine “pro forma” sessions over the next four weeks, The Hill reported.

The scene is a German town called Gleiwitz close to the Polish border. Here, on the night of August 31, 1939, a small group of Nazi intelligence agents, dressed in Polish uniforms, burst into a German radio station. There they broadcast anti-German messages in Polish before dumping the bodies of prisoners they had just hauled out of the Dachau concentration camp, who had been made up to resemble Polish saboteurs then shot and mutilated to make identification impossible. A few hours later, Adolf Hitler rose in the Reichstag and announced that the Gleiwitz incident — which he, entirely deceitfully, blamed...

Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, who openly calls for the “annihilation of Zionism” and has promoted friendly relations with the Taliban, arrived in São Paulo, Brazil and discussed how Muslims can fight “radical terrorism”. Araki holds a senior position within Iran’s clerical regime; his pretense of being an opponent of extremism perfectly captures how Iran has sought to depict itself as an ally of the West in its battle against the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. In fact, the opposite is true. Araki’s visit is yet another demonstration of how the Iranian regime is busy exporting its own brand of radical Islam, in...

Fido and Fluffy are to blame for Global Warming, according to UCLA study First it was the cows of the fields being blamed for global warming/climate change by the more-bovine-than-them environmental activists. The United Nations targeted belching and gas-passing cattle as the world’s biggest source of ruining the environment. Their methane, the UN loudly lamented, gave them the biggest global warming footprint of them all.

Two people close to Pope Francis have accused ultra-conservative American Catholics of making an alliance of “hate” with evangelical Christians to back Donald Trump. Catholic priest Antonio Spadaro and Protestant theologian Marcelo Figueroa published a joint article in La Civilta Cattolica, a journal published by Jesuit priests in Rome and overseen by the Vatican, in which they denounced US Catholics for supporting the extremist positions of the American right, saying the world view of hard-line Catholics is “not too far apart” from that Islamist jihadists.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be joined by intelligence officials early Friday in a briefing on the leaks of classified information that have plagued the Trump administration. Sessions will be joined by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina on Friday in Washington to discuss "leaks of classified material threatening national security," the Justice Department said Thursday afternoon.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes invited former Vice President and climate alarmist Al Gore onto All In on Wednesday to promote his new climate change propaganda film. While on the show, Hayes invited Gore to hammer and smear the current White House. Gore went to an extremely dark place when he compared the administration was run to a bloody and brutal mass murder in the popular HBO series Game of Thrones. “Last week somebody said it was like the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones, with people coming and going and I’m going to fire everybody, and it was really wild,” Gore...

The fossilized Borealopelta markmitchelli, nodosaur for short, is so well preserved evidence of the animal’s last meal remains in its gut. On March 21, 2011, mining machine operator Shawn Funk at the Suncor Millennium Mine in Alberta, Canada, spotted some unusual rock formations that he suspected could contain fossils. Since a bunch of plesiosaur and ichthyosaur remains had been previously excavated from the region, Donald Henderson, who is the curator of dinosaurs at Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Canada, and a crew were sent to the mine to investigate. Henderson and his colleagues at first were baffled by the fossils,...

Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said the economy added 209,000 jobs in July; the number of employed people jumped by 345,000 to 153,513,000 in July, setting a third straight monthly record; the number of Americans counted as not in the labor force, meaning they don't have a job and are not looking for one, dropped for a third straight month to 94,657,000; and the nation's unemployment rate also dropped a tenth of a point, to 4.3 percent. The labor force participation rate.. was 62.9 percent in July, slightly better than it has been in recent months, but still close...

The situation with Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her IT guy would be the biggest news story of the year if Republicans were involved. But, it’s the Democrats dropping the ball again so the media has chosen to completely ignore it. People who think that government officials should be held accountable to the taxpayers have been following along though and the story is clearly going to be a long term problem for Debbie. Today, Wasserman Schultz opened up about the situation and it was a dumpster fire from start to finish. Trump Announces New Telehealth Program To Help Veterans Get More...

French President Emmanuel Macron’s popularity has slumped less than three months since he took office, according to a YouGov poll published Thursday. Macron has slipped seven points, with just 36 percent of respondents having a positive view of the president who was elected on May 7. Forty-nine percent have a negative view, a rise of 13 points, according to the poll for the Huffington Post and the CNews TV channel. The poll of 1,003 people was carried out on July 26-27. It confirms a downward trend already shown by a previous poll, carried out by Ifop on July 17-22, which...

On Thursday evening, Former Speaker and Trump surrogate New Gingrich ripped Robert Mueller on Sean Hannity’s program, calling the Special Counsel “the deep state at its very worst.” https://twitter.com/joshdcaplan/status/893465263097741313

On Aug. 4, 1790, the Revenue Marine, later called Revenue Cutter Service, was created by the recommendation of Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury. It consisted of 10 ships charged with stopping smuggling and French privateers from operating in American waters. The Revenue Marine’s first seven masters (captains) were commissioned by President George Washington on March 12, 1791. The Revenue Marine was the only armed maritime service of the United States till the Department of the Navy was created in 1798. During the U.S.-French Quasi War of 1798-1801, eight Revenue Cutter vessels were among the 45 American ships that...

What Is It That Most Distracts Us? Msgr. Charles Pope • August 3, 2017 • credit: dydcheung, FlickrWe think of distractions as coming mostly from the world around us, but is that really true? Consider the following, drawn from the stories of the early desert Fathers and monastic experience:Sometimes there would be a rush of noisy visitors and the silence of the monastery would be shattered. This would upset the disciples; not the Abbot, who seemed just as content with the noise as with the silence. To his protesting disciples he said one day, “Silence is not the absence...

A star of the 1980s hit TV show “The Dukes of Hazzard” was barred from performing in a local production of “42nd Street” yesterday after he was charged with sexually assaulting a fellow actor in the musical — and authorities say she is not the only woman in the cast who has complained. Tom Wopat, 65, of New York and Nashville, pleaded not guilty to indecent assault and battery and drug possession yesterday, a day after he was arrested on a warrant moments after leaving the theater at Waltham High School.

Sen. John McCain knocked President Donald Trump after reports emerged that he is considering dismissing the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, CNN reports. Trump reportedly expressed frustration with his military leaders during a White House meeting, apparently complaining that "we aren't winning, we are losing," according to NBC News. "Gen. John Nicholson has served our country with honor and distinction for 35 years. He has earned the trust and admiration of those he has served with. And he has earned my full confidence," McCain said in a statement. "Our commanders-in-chief, not our commanders in the field, are responsible for...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — 33 people were arrested in a recent four-day operation in West Michigan by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. In a press release put out early Friday, the agency says the operation was meant to target “criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants and immigration violators.” They say that among the 33 taken into custody, 24 of them had prior criminal convictions. The operation took place this week across West Michigan. The arrests span individuals from four different countries: Mexico (22 arrested), Guatemala (7 arrested), El Salvador (3 arrested) and Liberia. Rebecca Adduci, the ICE Enforcement and Removal...

Robert Hardy was a rascal. A man of unbridled enthusiasm, with a voice like butter melting on a hot crumpet, he would tell his scurrilous anecdotes in perfectly composed prose, as if reading aloud. His language was so erudite, his grammar so meticulously correct, that it was hard to reconcile the sound of his educated voice with the sheer mischief of his favourite stories. The actor, who has died aged 91, became a household name as eccentric vet Siegfried Farnon, whom he played for 12 years in the BBC1 series All Creatures Great And Small, and for his portrayals of...