Laugh of the Day: Good Lord, Jeeves, that QAnon thingy where people think a top government agent is speaking to them through 4chan has made it to one of my own family

Aunt Agatha, sir? Say it isn't so.

Story here.

"Wisdom in discourse with her loses discountenanc'd, and like folly shews." -- John Milton

Then leave already

"This is not our country": Anti-Trump protesters gather in Washington

Trump has 2,000 (illegal alien) separated kids, Obama had 20,000 American kids separated in 2016

Reported here:

As Peter Kirsanow, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, points out, a report from the Department of Health and Human Services shows that more than 20,000 children were placed in foster care in 2016 because of “Parent Incarceration.”

None of those protesting against the Trump administration seem concerned that 10 times more American children than the 2,000 alien children cited in the Associated Press report were separated from their parents in 2016 because of violations of the law by their parents.

As Kirsanow says, it is “regrettable” children are separated from their parents. But “people who cross the border illegally have committed a crime, and one of the consequences of being arrested and detained is, unfortunately, that their children cannot stay with them.”

Child separations are the fault of Bill Clinton and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

As explained here:

In 1997, the Clinton administration entered into a settlement agreement in Flores v. Reno, a lawsuit filed in federal court in California by pro-illegal immigration advocacy groups challenging the detention of juvenile aliens taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The Clinton administration agreed to settle this litigation despite the fact the Supreme Court had upheld the Immigration and Naturalization Service regulation that provided for the release of minors only to their parents, close relatives, or legal guardians.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the Flores agreement allows the agency to detain unaccompanied minors for only “20 days before releasing them to the Department of Health and Human Services which places the minors in foster or shelter situations until they locate a sponsor.”

But in a controversial decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the most liberal in the country, has interpreted the settlement agreement to apply to “both minors who are accompanied and unaccompanied by their parents.”

In other words,it is the 9th Circuit’s misinterpretation of the Clinton administration’s settlement agreement that doesn’t allow juvenile aliens to stay with their parents who have been detained for unlawful entry into the country.

Of course, if those parents would simply agree to return to their home countries, they would be immediately reunited with their children. So those who come here illegally are themselves to blame for their children being assigned to foster care or to another family member or sponsor who may be in the country.

The executive order signed by President Donald Trump directs the attorney general to file a request with the federal court in the Flores case to modify the settlement agreement to allow the government “to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.”

Of course, the administration’s critics know about this settlement and know it limits the ability of the administration to keep alien families together. 

White privilege: 1 in 5 Bay Staters use marijuana, 34% of whom drive high and 71% white

"The study of 3,022 adults — which was mandated by legislators and began in 2017 — also found that more than half of marijuana users do it for nonmedical reasons."

Chicago Tribune: Voters can fairly conclude Illinois Governor Rauner defeated alliance between unions and Democrats

Here:

Voters can fairly conclude that, with Wednesday’s Supreme Court verdict, Rauner defeated the long invincible alliance of public employee unions and Illinois Democrats. Voters may well give Rauner new respect as the Republican who dared to fight the twin Goliaths of Illinois politics and governance. He really did risk his political future when he picked this fight early in 2015. ... “Government union bargaining and government union political activity are inextricably linked,” he said one month after being sworn in early in 2015. “As a result, an employee who is forced to pay unfair share dues is being forced to fund political activity with which they disagree. That is a clear violation of First Amendment rights and something that, as governor, I am duty-bound to correct.”

Enoch Powell 1968: Britain is insane, busily heaping up its own funeral pyre, making Britons strangers in their own country through immigration

Here:

This is the full text of Enoch Powell's so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech, which was delivered to a Conservative Association meeting in Birmingham on April 20 1968:

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.

One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future.

Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: "If only," they love to think, "if only people wouldn't talk about it, it probably wouldn't happen."

Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical.

At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after.

A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries.

After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this country." I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn't last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: "I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man."

I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation?

The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children.

I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking - not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.

In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General's Office.

There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.

As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase. Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority. It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead.

The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask: "How can its dimensions be reduced?" Granted it be not wholly preventable, can it be limited, bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent.

The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy of the Conservative Party.

It almost passes belief that at this moment 20 or 30 additional immigrant children are arriving from overseas in Wolverhampton alone every week - and that means 15 or 20 additional families a decade or two hence. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancés whom they have never seen.

Let no one suppose that the flow of dependants will automatically tail off. On the contrary, even at the present admission rate of only 5,000 a year by voucher, there is sufficient for a further 25,000 dependants per annum ad infinitum, without taking into account the huge reservoir of existing relations in this country - and I am making no allowance at all for fraudulent entry. In these circumstances nothing will suffice but that the total inflow for settlement should be reduced at once to negligible proportions, and that the necessary legislative and administrative measures be taken without delay.

I stress the words "for settlement." This has nothing to do with the entry of Commonwealth citizens, any more than of aliens, into this country, for the purposes of study or of improving their qualifications, like (for instance) the Commonwealth doctors who, to the advantage of their own countries, have enabled our hospital service to be expanded faster than would otherwise have been possible. They are not, and never have been, immigrants.

I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the basic character of the national danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last ten years or so.

Hence the urgency of implementing now the second element of the Conservative Party's policy: the encouragement of re-emigration.

Nobody can make an estimate of the numbers which, with generous assistance, would choose either to return to their countries of origin or to go to other countries anxious to receive the manpower and the skills they represent.

Nobody knows, because no such policy has yet been attempted. I can only say that, even at present, immigrants in my own constituency from time to time come to me, asking if I can find them assistance to return home. If such a policy were adopted and pursued with the determination which the gravity of the alternative justifies, the resultant outflow could appreciably alter the prospects.

The third element of the Conservative Party's policy is that all who are in this country as citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public authority. As Mr Heath has put it we will have no "first-class citizens" and "second-class citizens." This does not mean that the immigrant and his descendent should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow-citizen and another or that he should be subjected to imposition as to his reasons and motive for behaving in one lawful manner rather than another.

There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it "against discrimination", whether they be leader-writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same newspapers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over their heads. They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong.

The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming.

This is why to enact legislation of the kind before parliament at this moment is to risk throwing a match on to gunpowder. The kindest thing that can be said about those who propose and support it is that they know not what they do.

Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in Britain and the American Negro. The Negro population of the United States, which was already in existence before the United States became a nation, started literally as slaves and were later given the franchise and other rights of citizenship, to the exercise of which they have only gradually and still incompletely come. The Commonwealth immigrant came to Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service.

Whatever drawbacks attended the immigrants arose not from the law or from public policy or from administration, but from those personal circumstances and accidents which cause, and always will cause, the fortunes and experience of one man to be different from another's.

But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.

They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted. They now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by act of parliament; a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect them or redress their grievances is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent-provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions.

In the hundreds upon hundreds of letters I received when I last spoke on this subject two or three months ago, there was one striking feature which was largely new and which I find ominous. All Members of Parliament are used to the typical anonymous correspondent; but what surprised and alarmed me was the high proportion of ordinary, decent, sensible people, writing a rational and often well-educated letter, who believed that they had to omit their address because it was dangerous to have committed themselves to paper to a Member of Parliament agreeing with the views I had expressed, and that they would risk penalties or reprisals if they were known to have done so. The sense of being a persecuted minority which is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine.

I am going to allow just one of those hundreds of people to speak for me:

“Eight years ago in a respectable street in Wolverhampton a house was sold to a Negro. Now only one white (a woman old-age pensioner) lives there. This is her story. She lost her husband and both her sons in the war. So she turned her seven-roomed house, her only asset, into a boarding house. She worked hard and did well, paid off her mortgage and began to put something by for her old age. Then the immigrants moved in. With growing fear, she saw one house after another taken over. The quiet street became a place of noise and confusion. Regretfully, her white tenants moved out.

“The day after the last one left, she was awakened at 7am by two Negroes who wanted to use her 'phone to contact their employer. When she refused, as she would have refused any stranger at such an hour, she was abused and feared she would have been attacked but for the chain on her door. Immigrant families have tried to rent rooms in her house, but she always refused. Her little store of money went, and after paying rates, she has less than £2 per week. “She went to apply for a rate reduction and was seen by a young girl, who on hearing she had a seven-roomed house, suggested she should let part of it. When she said the only people she could get were Negroes, the girl said, "Racial prejudice won't get you anywhere in this country." So she went home.

“The telephone is her lifeline. Her family pay the bill, and help her out as best they can. Immigrants have offered to buy her house - at a price which the prospective landlord would be able to recover from his tenants in weeks, or at most a few months. She is becoming afraid to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letter box. When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they know. "Racialist," they chant. When the new Race Relations Bill is passed, this woman is convinced she will go to prison. And is she so wrong? I begin to wonder.”

The other dangerous delusion from which those who are wilfully or otherwise blind to realities suffer, is summed up in the word "integration." To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members.

Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is difficult though, over a period, not impossible. There are among the Commonwealth immigrants who have come to live here in the last fifteen years or so, many thousands whose wish and purpose is to be integrated and whose every thought and endeavour is bent in that direction.

But to imagine that such a thing enters the heads of a great and growing majority of immigrants and their descendants is a ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one.

We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population - that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate.

Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. The cloud no bigger than a man's hand, that can so rapidly overcast the sky, has been visible recently in Wolverhampton and has shown signs of spreading quickly. The words I am about to use, verbatim as they appeared in the local press on 17 February, are not mine, but those of a Labour Member of Parliament who is a minister in the present government:

'The Sikh communities' campaign to maintain customs inappropriate in Britain is much to be regretted. Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or should one say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker; whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned.'

All credit to John Stonehouse for having had the insight to perceive that, and the courage to say it.

For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."

That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century.

Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

Did you know CNN's Jeffrey Toobin cheated on his wife, knocked-up a colleague's daughter, wanted her to get an abortion, and had to be dragged into court to pay child support?

I didn't either.

And CNN claims to be the first name in news.

Seen here.

People who advocate shunning Trumpsters are nothing more than latter-day Puritan theocrats, sans the theo

The Right Way to Shun the Trumpsters

Just when you think the religious Right had been expunged from the public square, the irreligious Left swoops in to fill the vacuum, inspired with all the same self-righteous zeal of the hypocritical Pharisee, but for lesser lights, and minus the deity:

"The solution is not to be Pelosi standing down, or Waters screaming in someone’s face, but to quietly shun those like the Golden Couple who could say something or do something but don’t. ... A nod or a stiff arm extended for a handshake to avoid the air kiss. No polite small talk and stay stuck to your chair when the music plays. Make it clear to them, in some quiet dignified way, that the border crisis is a bridge too far."

-- Margaret Carlson, who probably doesn't even know she's a Paulinist

But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. -- I Cor.5:11

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? ... Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, -- II Cor. 6:14ff.

Rumor has it that the Capital Gazette was dying for readers

US paper attacked in shooting covers its own tragedy

Well, at least his won't be hard to miss

Michael Moore: We Have to ‘Put Our Bodies on the Line’ to Stop Trump

The guy's so big he could occupy Oakland all by himself.

The Swamp, 2.8 million, same as it ever was

Arctic sea ice volume in June 2018 is at its highest level for the date in 14 years

USS Fitzgerald collision a year ago: Officer of the Deck, Tactical Action Officer, Damage Control Officer were all women

Three women in charge kill seven sailors and nearly sink the destroyer in a collision with a Philippine container ship.

Story here with links.

The lesson about Reagan appointee to high court, Anthony Kennedy, who calls it quits July 31

Never appoint anyone from the Ninth Circuit Court of Schlemiels to anything, especially not to the Supreme Court.

Immigration bill fails in the US House 301-121

Good.

Call the Hungarians and start running the razor wire.

There is Reagan libertarianism, and then there is conservatism

Reagan libertarianism says: "Man is not free unless government is limited".

Conservatism says: "Government can never be limited unless men first limit themselves".

Obama's fascist Larry Summers credits Chinese state capitalism for its advances instead of its thefts

Here:

“You ask me where China's technological progress is coming from. It's coming from terrific entrepreneurs who are getting the benefit of huge government investments in basic science. It's coming from an educational system that's privileging excellence, concentrating on science and technology,” said Summers, former Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and an ex-economic advisor to Barack Obama. “That's where their leadership is coming from, not from taking a stake in some U.S. company.”

Sometimes it takes Drudge a few hours for the significance to sink in

8:00 AM

Noon

Young illegal aliens commit crimes at twice the rate of young US citizens

Study here.

Crime rate for illegal aliens is difficult to quantify but is much higher than for US citizens

For example, 14% of federal prisoners are illegal aliens but come from just 3-6% of the US population.

More than half of burglaries in border states are committed by illegal aliens.

Kris Kobach has more, here. 

Chelsea Manning has another reason to jump, loses big in Maryland

Massachusetts carpetbagger wins Utah Republican primary for US Senate

That idiot Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire thinks Woodrow Wilson changed America for the better

He's also the idiot who wrote the TARP bailout.

And now he's the idiot who blames the Baby Boom for the programs bankrupting America: Social Security and Medicare, which pre-date it and were passed by spendthrift Democrats.

Here.

In 2011 Peter Fonda made thinly veiled threats against Obama

Remember?

So the recent tweet against Barron Trump just shows the guy's a chronic violent crank who should have been charged for inciting violence years ago.

The guy is poison.

Edward Snowden documents help The Intercept identify eight AT&T buildings central to NSA spying on global internet, phone, email, chat

From the story here:

THE EIGHT LOCATIONS are featured on a top-secret NSA map, which depicts U.S. facilities that the agency relies upon for one of its largest surveillance programs, code-named FAIRVIEW. AT&T is the only company involved in FAIRVIEW, which was first established in 1985, according to NSA documents, and involves tapping into international telecommunications cables, routers, and switches.

In 2003, the NSA launched new internet mass surveillance methods, which were pioneered under the FAIRVIEW program. The methods were used by the agency to collect – within a few months – some 400 billion records about people’s internet communications and activity, the New York Times previously reported. FAIRVIEW was also forwarding more than 1 million emails every day to a “keyword selection system” at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters.

Central to the internet spying are eight “peering link router complex” sites, which are pinpointed on the top-secret NSA map. The locations of the sites mirror maps of AT&T’s networks, obtained by The Intercept from public records, which show “backbone node with peering” facilities in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

One of the AT&T maps contains unique codes individually identifying the addresses of the facilities in each of the cities.

Among the pinpointed buildings, there is a nuclear blast-resistant, windowless facility in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood; in Washington, D.C., a fortress-like, concrete structure less than half a mile south of the U.S. Capitol; in Chicago, an earthquake-resistant skyscraper in the West Loop Gate area; in Atlanta, a 429-foot art deco structure in the heart of the city’s downtown district; and in Dallas, a cube-like building with narrow windows and large vents on its exterior, located in the Old East district.

Elsewhere, on the west coast of the U.S., there are three more facilities: in downtown Los Angeles, a striking concrete tower near the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Staples Center, two blocks from the most important internet exchange in the region; in Seattle, a 15-story building with blacked-out windows and reinforced concrete foundations, near the city’s waterfront; and in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, a building where it was previously claimed that the NSA was monitoring internet traffic from a secure room on the sixth floor.

The peering sites – otherwise known in AT&T parlance as “Service Node Routing Complexes,” or SNRCs – were developed following the internet boom in the mid- to late 1990s. By March 2009, the NSA’s documents say it was tapping into “peering circuits at the eight SNRCs.”

Supremes rule in favor of Trump in Trump v. Hawaii

Ha ha.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in favor of President Donald Trump in Trump v. Hawaii, the controversial case regarding Trump's September order to restrict travel to the U.S. for citizens of several majority Muslim countries. In the 5-4 opinion penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court found that Trump's immigration restriction fell "squarely" within the president's authority. The court rejected claims that the ban was motivated by religious hostility.

Read the whole thing here.

Nancy Pelosi perfunctorily calls for civility and unity, the Party of Violence goes bonkers over it

'Schumer and Pelosi Have to Go': Democratic Leaders Under Fire for Urging 'Civility' in Face of Trump's Vicious Agenda

Stop the Paul Ryan Amnesty for Illegals bill in the US House: Call 202-224-3121

The Trump administration doesn't get it that the Chinese trade system is a strategic threat

And neither does the Politico story excerpted below. China faces an unpredictable foe in Trump and his tariff threats, but China is playing the long game of imperial expansion and domination and only seeks a path navigating through what it knows is the temporary and incoherent threat Trump represents. Trump does not bring a fundamental rethinking of China. Once he is gone the US trade stance will return, unfortunately, to the status quo ante, continuing the hollowing out of the West by enriching a few who sell these communist liars and thieves the rope they'll use to hang the rest of us.

From the story here:

The administration in May said it wanted China to commit to reducing the trade deficit by $200 billion by 2020. It also asked China to stop subsidizing high-tech sectors like robotics and alternative energy vehicles identified in its China’s strategic economic plan, cut tariffs on “all products in non-critical sectors” to levels at or below U.S. duties and assure that it would not challenge U.S. actions taken in intellectual property disputes.

Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s chief [trade] negotiator, said at the time that it wasn’t his goal to “change the Chinese system,” despite his long list of criticisms of that system.

Hey Mexico, I'm eating your refried beans . . .

And you can kiss my sweet German-American ass.

Trump asks for more oil, OPEC delivers

Story here.

A favor to save the Republicans' November election bacon.

GitHub and Medium take down ICE database and story, Wikileaks publishes it

From the story here:

In this case, WikiLeaks appears to have reproduced a project created by a New York-based artist and programmer named Sam Lavigne, who has taught as an adjunct instructor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and The New School's Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts.

When it comes to monsters who separate children from their mothers, you can't beat these people

Poster child for "separations" on cover of TIME never separated from her mother, came to US against the will of Honduran father

From the story here:

He revealed that his wife had previously mentioned her wish to go to the United States for a 'better future' but did not tell him nor any of their family members that she was planning to make the trek.

'I didn't support it. I asked her, why? Why would she want to put our little girl through that? But it was her decision at the end of the day.'

He said that Sandra had always wanted to experience 'the American dream' and hoped to find a good job in the States.

Denis, who works as a captain at a port on the coast of Puerto Cortes, explained that things back home were fine but not great, and that his wife was seeking political asylum.

He said that Sandra set out on the 1,800-mile journey with the baby girl on June 3, at 6am, and he has not heard from her since.

'I never got the chance to say goodbye to my daughter and now all I can do is wait', he said, adding that he hopes they are either granted political asylum or are sent back home.

'I don't have any resentment for my wife, but I do think it was irresponsible of her to take the baby with her in her arms because we don't know what could happen.'

The couple has three other children, son Wesly, 14, and daughters Cindy, 11, and Brianna, six.  

'The kids see what's happening. They're a little worried but I don't try to bring it up that much. They know their mother and sister are safe now.'  

Denis said that he believes the journey across the border is only worth it to some degree, and admits that it's not something he would ever consider. 

He said he heard from friends that his wife paid $6,000 for a coyote - a term for someone who smuggles people across the border. 

'I wouldn't risk my life for it. It's hard to find a good job here and that's why many people choose to leave. But I thank God that I have a good job here. And I would never risk my life making that journey.'  

After media pull out all the stops to blame Trump, 54% blame illegal alien parents for "separations"

Rasmussen poll, reported here.

Build The Damn Wall.

Congressional threats to DOJ for 1.2 million documents subpoenaed three months ago yield materials this week

From the story here:

"A small cache of documents was given to intelligence panel staff on Tuesday, followed by another tranche on Wednesday, a congressional source told the Washington Examiner."

Expect more excuses for why everything hasn't been provided by today.

The DOJ under Trump has been slow-walking and stonewalling just like every department under Obama did during his administration's attempts to thwart Congressional oversight.

The Swamp.

Michael Daniel testimony to Senate: Obama administration (Susan Rice) ordered him to stand down in Russian hacking investigation in summer 2016

The story here says

"The view that the Obama administration failed to adequately piece together intelligence about the Russian campaign and develop a forceful response has clearly gained traction with the intelligence committee."

No shit. 

Flashback: There's government indifference to your problems, and then there's Obama's indifference to your problems

The New York Times, March 8, 2009, just as Mr. Market was tanking, the discount window was lending trillion$, and millions of Americans were losing their homes, here:

"Well, I just think it’s clear by the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system. And the thing I constantly try to emphasize to people if that coming in, the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it. I have more than enough to do without having to worry the financial system. The fact that we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis."

Separating families is nothing new, has been policy since the Bush administration in 2005

From the Senate Judiciary Committee, here:

As a matter of procedure and policy, border agents routinely separate family members, including intentionally, as punishment—or “consequences”—through what DHS calls its Consequence Delivery System (CDS). These consequences are meant to deter future migration, often regardless of international protection or other humanitarian concerns. The CDS has been implemented systematically since 2005. ... [M]any parents and children arriving at the border and seeking asylum are subject to CDS to punish them for their flight to the United States. Deterring future migration is prioritized over concern for protection, access to justice, and family unity.

JP Morgan: US tariffs on China to have only modest impact on US economy

From the story here:

Investment bank JPMorgan estimated in a report on Tuesday that Trump’s tariffs on China would have only modest effects on the broader U.S. economy. It based its analysis on a 12 percent average U.S. tariff on $450 billion of imports from China, estimating that this would add just 0.4 percentage points to U.S. consumer price inflation if the additional costs of the duties were passed on to consumers in their entirety.

IG report did say there was bias while testimony of Horowitz and FBI's Wray contort this to no bias

But we live in an age where characterization matters more, saying something is such and so when it isn't.

Documented here by Sharyl Attkisson:

The IG report is rife with examples of bias, even if Horowitz hadn't explicitly said so. (But he did.)

Andrew McCarthy: IG report simply ignored the offence of the Hillary private server set up

Here:

[T]heir analysis left out the best intent evidence, namely, Clinton’s willful setting up of a private, non-secure server system for all official business.

They have to go back: Call 202 224 3121 and tell Congress to deport the illegals and Build The Damn Wall

202 224 3121

Manufactured crisis of child separations: Both Bush and Obama separated families by the hundreds of thousands

And there are lots of photos, here.

The "crisis" is being used to move poor legislation, and the president is its easy mark:

Representative Mark Meadows said Trump told Republican members of the House at a meeting on Capitol Hill that they needed to get something done on immigration "right away."

This is why conservative temperament matters: It isn't manipulated easily or hastily. Unfortunately Trump has no such temperament.

Hillary in 2014: "Just because your child gets across the border that doesn't mean your child gets to stay"

YouTube, here.

But now:

If it's a central tenet, you would think she could quote it correctly. Hillary means this about as much as she meant what she said four years ago.

Paul Ryan and the rest of the Republican pussies can't build The Wall ANYWHERE, let alone over mountains

Laugh of the Day: Happy Birthday to you Tu Youyou

Ehhhh ... puto! In the race for most fines for anti-gay slurs, Hispanic soccer fans have everyone else beat

Well, Spain was ruled by Muslims from 711 to 1492 AD.

From the story here:

Homophobia and homophobic chants are not exclusive to Mexico fans. Fifa issued 51 disciplinary actions over homophobia during 2018 World Cup qualifiers. Of these, 11 were handed to the Mexican federation, with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama and Peru also receiving multiple fines. Fifa additionally cited Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Greece, Hungary and Serbia once each for homophobic chants.

But there is no doubt the chant is most prominent among Mexico fans. “To call your opponent homosexual is definitely along a spectrum of machismo, whereby your opponent is weaker – less masculine,” says Joshua Nadel, author of Fútbol!: Why Soccer Matters in Latin America.

Free movement of peoples from foreign lands, a key tenet of libertarianism, is an ideology of Western suicide

Pat Buchanan, here, except he doesn't mention that's libertarianism (Pat defaults to "liberal democracy").

I can't think of a single public figure, except (maybe) Ann Coulter, to have made the explicit connection.

The real enemy is the ideological habit of mind, not the specific ideology per se. Its most characteristic failing is its inability to face reality, in all its intractability, but more than that, its revolt against reality. In its rage against the ugly facts of life which refuse to conform to its theories, libertarianism recoils and withdraws to the imagined safety of its gated communities, drawing up the bridge over the moat it has built around its citadels.

The worst ideologies until now have been armed and totalitarian. The current libertarian one, however, is just as deadly. Instead of actively killing people in the streets, it just stands by watching the video, when it's not making it.

Trump reestablishes the right tone about the US in space, recommits to exploring and taming the new frontier

Quoted here:

"My administration is reclaiming America's heritage as the world's greatest spacefaring nation," Trump said in the East Room, joined by members of his space council. "The essence of the American character is to explore new horizons and to tame new frontiers."

 

China accused of imposing exit bans on American citizens

From the story here:

It’s difficult to know exactly how many U.S. citizens have been affected. The State Department declined to confirm the number of cases, citing privacy concerns, but [John] Kamm said he knows of about two dozen cases over the past year and half alone.

“One of the problems with exit bans is that you don’t know that there is an exit ban on you until you actually get to the airport,” said Kamm. “There may be people in the country who have exit bans on them and they don’t know it.”

By surviving past May 30 and not resigning, John McCain has insured there will be no election for his seat until 2020

When he dies, as he surely will, the governor of Arizona is obligated to appoint a Republican to fill out the remainder of his term.

Another man might have given Arizona voters what they deserve under the circumstances, a fully-capable senator whom they themselves elected, but that man is not John McCain.

Democracy for me, but not for thee.

The story is here.

Edit:

Of course, not resigning but sequestering in Arizona for medical reasons brings a twofer: He stymies the advance of the Trump agenda in the Senate where the votes are razor-thin even when he's there. This makes the likelihood of success for "moderate" alliances between liberal Republicans and Democrates in the Senate even greater.

Trump's National Guardsmen at the border are busy shoveling horseshit and changing flat tires, not running razor wire

Way to go, Brownie!

Politico has the story here:

[I]n one assignment, soldiers are actually feeding and shoveling out manure from the stalls of the Border Patrol’s horses. ... Other soldiers, like Sgt. Jonathan Sanchez, 35, a cook, are performing maintenance on the Border Patrol’s heavily used vehicles. “We fix flats,” he explained on a steamy afternoon after completing his shift in the motor pool a few miles north of town. ... A few National Guard helicopters and crew have also been enlisted to join the Border Patrol fleet for aerial surveillance, but more troops are clearing vegetation, serving as office clerks and making basic repairs to Border Patrol facilities.

Our wizards of smart have hollowed out our country and run it straight into the ditch

Fake economic boom: Industrial Production went negative in May 2018

Compared to the 1950s, this economy might as well be sleeping.

Maybe more to the point, when did Strzok and Page have any time to do any actual work for the FBI?

If there are 16 waking hours in the day, they were texting each other during them every 6.6 minutes for 17 months straight!

The FBI should ask for its money back.

The evil Robert Mueller has just separated Paul Manafort from his family

By sending him to jail.

Something about witness tampering.

You know, like Robert Mueller does every day with his inexhaustible supply of government money and time to intimidate, bully and bankrupt defenseless American citizens until they tell him what he wants to hear.

Reunite all the detained illegal aliens with their families

Back in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua . . ..

They have to go back.

Did Trump voters in 2016 vote for a huge corporate tax cut, war with North Korea, and a DACA amnesty?

I watched all the rallies and never heard about these things.

The enthusiasm was all for The Wall, a symbol of the out of control immigration problems facing the country, of which we haven't gotten one inch 19 months later. We could have had 2000 miles of razor-wire by now, but for that you'll need Hungarians apparently, not Americans.

The secondary enthusiasms were for jobs and an end to Obamacare, which have been half-heartedly addressed, not in the least because rank and file Republicans are about business as usual, i.e. keeping their jobs. We still have 16.1 million total unemployed in May 2018, and (unusable) privately purchased health insurance premiums going through the roof.

They don't give a damn about us or what we need, except at election time.

I'm voting in the primaries against incumbents where possible, and third party (but no libertarians) in the general. Otherwise it'll be for Mickey Mouse, Dopey and Goofy, but never again for these fools. The cartoon variety would be an improvement.

FBI's Page and Strzok never had time for sex: Texted each other 144.9 times every 24 hours for 17 months

Julius Malema wants white people dead, views China as model for South African communism

Istanbul-based TRT World reports here:

[H]e once said the EFF [Economic Freedom Fighters party] was not calling for the white genocide “yet.” ... “This inequality, which is growing, which the gap is widening and racially based – blacks becoming more poorer and whites becoming more richer is not sustainable,” Malema explained, warning it would lead to “loss of life”. “So I am saying to you, not under my leadership will we call for the slaughter of white people. I don't know who is coming after me, I will not speak for them.” Nevertheless, he is adamant about the racism that he says is still prevalent in South African society today. “They (white people) hate the idea of equality. That irritates them. That a monkey can never be equal to a white man,” he said. “White people are scared of equality. They don't want it because equality is a threat to privilege.” ...

Malema says China is still a “model” for nations that want to take up the socialist cause and that they are in the process of getting there. “They (the Chinese) have never abandoned the strategic vision and mission of the Communist Party.”

Ann Coulter: The rich are like sharks, all appetite and no brains

Here:

Trump thought North Korea was hard? With immigration, we have all of the most influential forces in our culture on the same page. Immigration is a great unifier of the rich and powerful. 

The rich are like sharks -- all appetite, no brain. With their cheap labor voting 7-3 for the Democrats, it won't be long until Democrats have a lock on government. What do you think they'll do then, Business Roundtable? Answer: Make it impossible to do business. Google "California." 

With the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the Koch brothers' incessant lobbying for more and more cheap labor, we see exactly what Lenin said about the capitalists: They will sell us the rope with which to hang them. 

The rich don't care. They can't think beyond next quarter's earnings. 

Mark Levin asks, Why after the IG report does FBI director Wray think the FBI needs to be trained to be unbiased?

Why indeed.

Here.

Inspector General's report reveals several FBI agents politically motivated to act vs. Trump in their official capacity

You can bet any documentary evidence was destroyed long ago by these foxes put in charge of guarding the hen house. The FBI rogues are laughing at this report.

From the story here:

The Justice Department inspector general has referred five FBI employees for investigation in connection with politically charged texts, revealing in its report on the Hillary Clinton email case that more bureau officials than previously thought were exchanging anti-Trump messages. ...

The report noted that it was specifically concerned about text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that “potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations.” ...

[T]he IG report revealed a new one in which Strzok vowed to "stop" Trump from becoming president -- and made clear that as many as five total FBI employees exchanged politically charged messages. "The text messages and instant messages sent by these employees included statements of hostility toward then candidate Trump and statements of support for candidate Clinton," the report said. ...

The report did not, however, find ... "documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions" ... “Nonetheless, these messages cast a cloud over the FBI’s handling of the Midyear investigation [MYE = FBI code for Midyear Exam, aka Hillary Clinton server investigation] and the investigation’s credibility.”