tyb
Stephen Miller @StephenM
Dear GOP: the border is more cataclysmic by the day.
The #’s (6K crossers every 24 hours) stagger the mind. It’s illegal, immoral & nation-wrecking. Biden deep under water on the issue (AP poll below). You should talk about the disaster with 10X more urgency, 100X more frequency.
1:59 PM · May 10, 2021·
https://twitter.com/StephenM/status/1391815181500616705
Largest U.S. refinery shuts crude units due to Colonial outage
The largest U.S. refinery shut two crude distillation units on Sunday because of the Colonial Pipeline outage, according to people familiar with the matter.
Motiva Enterprises LLC’s 607,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Port Arthur, Texas, refinery shut the 195,000-bpd VPS-4 CDU and the 80,000-bpd VPS-2 CDU along with the 49,000-bpd reformer and 19,200-bpd lube oil hydrocracker, the people said. Motiva declined to discuss the status of indvidual units at the Port Arthur refinery. Temporary idling production on the two CDUs reduces production at the Motiva’s refinery by 45%. Motiva’s refinery has three CDUs. The largest of the three, the 325,000-bpd VPS-5, remained in operation on Monday, the sources said. CDUs break down crude oil into the feedstocks for all other units in the refinery.
Reformers convert refining byproducts into octane-boosting components added to gasoline.
https://www.reuters.com/article/refinery-operations-motiva-portarthur-idUSL1N2MX10M
U.S. Offers States $350 Billion in Virus Aid, With Conditions
The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday began accepting applications from states and municipalities for $350 billion in relief funds, laying out rules to ensure the money quickly goes toward Covid-19 relief and other programs that will support the economy.
The step will trigger money being released to governments potentially within days, with the funds being a key part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan virus-relief law signed by President Joe Biden in March. Generally, the funds are intended to help states and local governments combat the pandemic and stoke their economic recoveries. Treasury’s guidelines spell out the range of potential uses by governments such as rehiring workers or supporting industries that were hit hard by Covid-19 as well as prohibited uses. States and territories can’t use the funds to pay for tax cuts, a provision of the law that has sparked lawsuits from Republican state officials. Recipients can’t use the aid to fund debt payments, legal settlements, or deposits to rainy-day funds or financial reserves, according to a Treasury fact sheet.
Despite the legal challenges, administration officials who spoke with reporters on a conference call repeatedly characterized the restrictions tied to the use of the funds as common among federal spending measures that involve distribution of money to states. The officials also emphasized that the guidance prepared by the Treasury was designed to fit with Congress’s intent to limit the funds to specific eligible uses. “Today is a milestone in our country’s recovery from the pandemic and its adjacent economic crisis,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement accompanying the release. “With this funding, communities hit hard by COVID-19 will able to return to a semblance of normalcy; they’ll be able to rehire teachers, firefighters and other essential workers -- and to help small businesses reopen safely.” Treasury’s announcement came minutes before scheduled remarks by Biden on Monday. He plans to highlight federal assistance that should help Americans return to work, three days after a surprisingly weak April jobs report stoked criticism that excess government benefits are persuading some people to stay at home. The scale of the state and local aid is so vast that it will in many cases more than make up for any lost revenue, providing governors, mayors and other officials with an opportunity to jolt their economies and avoid a repeat of the years-long austerity that gripped the nation’s statehouses after the housing market crash and global financial crisis during the 2000s.
State tax revenue has come in much better than initially anticipated, which may free up governors to use the aid to provide relief to their residents and businesses.Ahead of the guidance’s release, state officials have been releasing their plans for the funds over the past two months. Governments can use the American Rescue Plan money to cover revenue declines during the pandemic. That provision allowed Republicans who opposed the bill to characterize the money as a bailout for poorly-run states. Democrats argued that propping up local government spending and services would help the broader economic recovery.
Local governments will receive the funds in two tranches beginning in May, and the second will be provided 12 months later. States that have seen their unemployment rate rise more than 2 percentage points since February 2020 will receive the funds in a full payment.
Treasury said in the fact sheet that governments will have “broad latitude to use this funding to support government services, up to this amount of lost revenue.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/u-s-offers-states-350-billion-in-virus-aid-with-conditions-1.1601796
>>52206 pb
Gates Foundation N887WM G650 departed Carlsbad, CA Palomar Airport back to Seattle Boeing Field and on descent
GTMO844 US Navy Beech Huron and PAT007 US Army C-560 on approach for San Juan, PR
PAT007 came from Charleston Int'l and GTMO844 came from Gitmo.
combo of the q like posts
taken from QR
ty compilation anon
yes seriously
no fight here with ya bro...never
Imma copacetic and just muh opinion that's all
never been that great with those anyhoo
we good
Janet Yellen Is Attempting to Consolidate the Fed’s Power to “Supervise” Wall Street Banks
You know there’s a problem when the media relations office at the Federal Reserve will not turn over the bio for one of its employees that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen just tapped to be the acting head of a key Wall Street banking regulator.
After days of media rumors that Yellen was set to appoint Michael Hsu, an Associate Director of the Federal Reserve’s Division of Supervision and Regulation, to be the acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Yellen made the announcement official on Friday. Hsu is set to assume that position today. We had attempted to obtain Hsu’s bio from the Federal Reserve for days. We were told they had no official bio. We asked for the resume Hsu provided when he was hired. We received no response. We then asked the Treasury Department’s media relations office for Hsu’s bio. We received no response.
What all the attempted secrecy is likely about is the fact that the organization chart for the Fed’s Division of Supervision and Regulation (that we sleuthed out on our own) shows that Hsu ranks significantly far down the chain of command at the Fed. In fact, ranking higher up in that Division than Hsu are six Senior Associate Directors; two Senior Advisers; three Deputy Directors; and one Director. According to the Fed’s organization chart, Hsu had 10 people reporting to him at the Fed as of April. At the OCC, he’ll have 3,400 people.
The OCC supervises approximately 1,200 national banks that operate across state lines. Those banks include the Wall Street mega banks that are serially charged with frauds, like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup’s Citibank. The OCC also supervises federal savings associations and the U.S. branches of foreign banks. The entities supervised by the OCC conduct approximately 70 percent of all banking business in the United States. Another overarching question is why would Janet Yellen, the Chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018, need to reach into the ranks of the Federal Reserve for an acting head of the OCC? The OCC calls itself an “independent” banking regulator. Its own division for Large Bank Supervision employs 800 people, including numerous Deputy Comptrollers. Why not appoint a career employee from within the ranks of the OCC to be the acting head of the OCC?
What does it do to the morale at the OCC for the U.S. Treasury Secretary to effectively say she has no confidence in the career employees at the OCC and has to go outside that agency to find someone she can trust with the job of acting head? The OCC hasn’t had a permanent head for almost a year. The last one was Joseph Otting, a Trump nominee with a dubious history at foreclosure king, OneWest Bank Group.
Yellen’s press release about Hsu said she was exercising her rights under 12 U.S. Code § 4, since President Biden has yet to nominate a permanent head at the OCC. That statute reads as follows: “The Secretary of the Treasury shall appoint no more than four Deputy Comptrollers of the Currency, one of whom shall be designated First Deputy Comptroller of the Currency, and shall fix their salaries. Each Deputy Comptroller shall take the oath of office and shall perform such duties as the Comptroller shall direct. During a vacancy in the office or during the absence or disability of the Comptroller, each Deputy Comptroller shall possess the power and perform the duties attached by law to the office of the Comptroller under such order of succession following the First Deputy Comptroller as the Comptroller shall direct.”
moar
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/05/janet-yellen-is-attempting-to-consolidate-the-feds-power-to-supervise-wall-street-banks/
>>52145 pb Amazon To Unleash Billions In Buybacks With Jumbo 8-Part Bond Offering
Amazon Bond Offering Upsized To $18.5BN, Its Largest Ever, Ahead Of Buyback Frenzy
Update 3:15pm: earlier we said that Amazon's first bond offering in almost a year "is expected to be in the $10-$20BN range and will be vastly oversubscribed", and we were spot on: the original offering closed on the mid-point, $15 billion... before getting upsized to $18.5 billion. As a result of the strong demand, the longest portion, a 40-year security, will yield 95 basis points over Treasuries, after initial price talk around 115 basis points, Bloomberg reported.
At $18.5 billion, it would be Amazon’s biggest bond sale ever, and the second-largest this year behind Verizon Communication Inc.’s $25 billion offering in March. It comes less than two weeks after Amazon reported record earnings for the first quarter and provided a sales forecast for the current period that was stronger than all analyst estimates. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities stood at $73 billion at the end of March, near an all-time high. Ironically, Bloomberg notes that Amazon, which has tens of billions in cash, doesn't actually need the newly raised capital, but the "cheap borrowing costs prove too tempting to resist." Curiously, despite the brand new massive war chest of "dry powder" that will be spent in the coming days on buying back its stock, AMZN shares are down almost 3%, trading just below $3,200 on the back of a broad selloff in the Nasdaq that has hammered all tech names.
We expect the AMZN weakness will reverse in the coming days as Goldman's buyback desk is tasked with VWAPing the stock price some $200 higher to allow Jeff Bezos to sell even more billions at a higher average price.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/amazon-unleash-billions-buybacks-jumbo-8-part-bond-offering
U.S. Coast Guard Ship Fired Warning Shots at Iranian Fast Boats
A U.S. Coast Guard ship accompanying a guided-missile submarine and other vessels near the Strait of Hormuz fired warning shots at Iranian fast boats that approached them in an “unsafe” manner on Monday, the Pentagon’s spokesman said.
A large group of fast boats controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps came as close as 150 yards (137 meters) to the U.S. ships when a Coast Guard cutter fired about 30 warning shots from a .50-caliber machine gun, spokesman John Kirby told reporters. He said the Iranian vessels were behaving “very aggressively.” The encounter is the latest sign of U.S.-Iran tensions in the Middle East and the second time an American ship fired at an Iranian vessel in recent weeks. Late last month, the U.S. released footage of the USS Firebolt firing at Iranian fast boats that came within about 68 yards. In early April, an Iranian boat pulled in front of another Coast Guard vessel, though no shots were fired. “It’s unsafe, it’s unprofessional, and this kind of activity is the kind of activity that could lead to somebody getting hurt and could lead to a real miscalculation in the region,” Kirby said. “Sadly, harassment by the IRGC navy is not a new phenomenon.”
The U.S. ships were entering the Persian Gulf when they were approached, Kirby said. The encounters come despite U.S. and Iranian negotiators taking part in indirect talks in Vienna over how to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/u-s-coast-guard-ship-fired-warning-shots-at-iranian-fast-boats-1.1601844
well I don't wanna do dat either.
have been cautious since late last year when it became obvious it was a longer time frame.
CIA Releases New 'Woke' Recruitment Ad Featuring Gay Librarian Despite Criticism
The videos are part of a series called "The Humans of CIA" the agency has been releasing since 2019. The short videos depict real members of the intelligence community, who talk about their experience of working at the CIA.
The Central Intelligence Agency has released a new "woke" video despite receiving harsh criticism about a previous clip. The new recruitment ad features a man, who works in the agency's library and is gay. "Growing up gay in a small southern town, I was lucky to have a wonderful and accepting family. I always struggled with the idea that I may not be able to discuss my personal life at work", the man in the ad says.
He then reveals that he was surprised to see a rainbow, a symbol of the LGBTQ community, on the-then director's lanyard. The librarian says that members of the CIA from "the top-down" work hard to ensure that every single person "whatever their gender, gender identity, race, disability, or sexual orientation" can bring their entire self to work every day. The CIA has been releasing recruitment ads since 2019. Most of the videos received minor pushback, but last week the intelligence agency received a barrage of criticism after releasing a video featuring a woman, who refuses to "internalise misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be".
#WednesdayWisdom
"I am unapologetically me. I want you to be unapologetically you, whoever you are. Whether you work at #CIA, or anywhere else in the world.
Command your space. Mija, you are worth it."
— CIA (@CIA) April 28, 2021
​Critics accused the intelligence agency of pandering to the left and becoming "woke". Senator Ron Johnson accused President Joe Biden of "diverting CIA resources to support radical leftists in their woke culture war that is tearing America apart" instead of focusing on "real international threats" or the migrant crisis on the nation's southern border.
Senator Ted Cruz and US Representative for Alabama's 2nd congressional district Barry Moore suggested that the recruitment ad would make the nation's adversaries laugh at the CIA.
The intelligence agency has since dismissed the criticism, saying its "Humans of CIA" series proved to be effective in hiring new personnel. A CIA spokesman told Fox News that last year the agency recruited a record amount of people despite the coronavirus pandemic and emphasised that the incoming class is "the third-largest in a decade".
https://sputniknews.com/us/202105101082844688-cia-releases-new-woke-recruitment-ad-featuring-gay-librarian-despite-criticism/
you'd think but prolly moar like did still
>>51958 pb
MC9359 USAF C-40B departed Kona Int'l Airport on the Big Island after an overnight north
Arrived from JBA yesterday as SAM359 with a ground stop at Monterey Regional Airport, CA prior to arrival at Kona
Fire season has started earlier than in previous years. To prepare, the @CalGuard and @NVNationalGuard completed another successful aerial firefighting mission with MAFFS. @forestservice @AirNatlGuard
https://twitter.com/USNationalGuard/status/1391830499342041092
saw deez guys (on scope) over the weekend up north and east of San Berdoo
Alphabet, Inc sold by Sergey Brin: $32.74m-May 7
This is the first reported sale for Brin since Feb 10, 2017
Sergey Brin stepped down as president of Alphabet, parent company of Google, in December 2019 but remains a controller shareholder and a board member. He cofounded Google with Larry Page in 1998 after the two met at Stanford University while studying for advanced degrees in computer science. Google went public in 2004 and changed its name to Alphabet in 2015. Brin was absent from public Alphabet events for much of 2019; he spent his time on Alphabet's moonshot research lab X. Brin is reportedly funding a high-tech airship project.
https://www.forbes.com/profile/sergey-brin/?sh=7807b7144b43
https://finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1295032&tc=7&b=2
from 2012
Google founders pay NASA $1.3 million to land at Moffett Airfield
Google Inc.'s founders will carry scientific equipment for NASA on their private Boeing 767 as part of a deal that grants them landing rights at Moffett Federal Airfield, near Mountain View, NASA and local officials said.
The agreement gives Larry Page and Sergey Brin use of the former naval air station, from which civilian aircraft are normally barred, in exchange for allowing the space agency to place instruments on board their planes for research into the Earth's atmosphere and beyond. NASA confirmed the contract on Monday, nearly a week after a 767-200 owned by Google's founders was first spotted at Moffett Field. The response appears to be aimed at placating local officials and residents who had raised concerns about noise from any new flights and who had asked NASA for additional information.
NASA said in a statement that it doesn't have any information about the number of flights planned under the agreement. However, the airport's overall traffic will remain below 25,000 flights annually, as required by Moffett Field's environmental impact statement, the space agency said.
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Google-founders-pay-NASA-1-3-million-to-land-at-2522865.php
00-9001 USAFSOC C-32B departed McGuire AFB and on approach for Richmond Int'l Airport, VA
Some Aussies on the way in at JBA from Paris.
Royal Australian AF ASY304 Dassualt Falcon inbound from Paris, France overnight-inbound from
Some interdasting visits prior to coming here
0504 departed from Rome, Ciampino Airport to Farnsborough Airport England
0506 depart to Geneva, Switzerland
0508 depart to Dubai, Al Minhad AB
0509 departed Dubai for Paris-CDG Airport
this from earlier today
Australia told to prepare for Chinese bombing raids on air bases after Beijing threatens long-range missile strikes
https://www.the-sun.com/news/2859519/australia-chinese-bombing-raids-beijing-threat/
"you nigga's always slamming muh door!"
that would be muh reaction too.
Doing good..needed the rest this weekend so kinda glad camp did not go.
Did some yardwerk but very little else.
>>52185 pb
SAM tree-fiddy USAF C-32A se from Las Vegas, McCarran int'l ground stop
>noise
dat is the ONE thing for me
Can do a lot of other thangs that others wouldn't deal with but that is no bueno
bake it B