People with a brain know Trump's threat to close the Department of Education is idle

 Can Trump actually close the DOE?

Technically, yes.

However, “It would take an act of Congress to take it out,” Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, told Vox. “It would take an act of Congress to radically restructure it. And so the question is whether or not there’d be appetite on the Hill for abolishing the department.”

More.

That's because an act of Congress created it in the first place.

Trump is not a dictator, and never will be, although he plays one on TV, which is the real problem.

It's all just words.

 

"Weird" didn't work, try "bizarre" lol

 

The Bizarre Home Stretch of Trump's 2024 Campaign

 

Zack Beauchamp, Vox

In which we learn that Zack Beauchamp is just jealous, wishing he could be as perceptive as Salena Zito, dammit:

In late 2016, the Atlantic published a campaign trail dispatch by Salena Zito, a conservative reporter, exploring Trump’s appeal to his voters. The piece was forgettable save one line, a description of Trump’s relationship to his fans that has been quoted endlessly for the past eight years: "The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."...

If we took all of [Trump] literally, really integrated the reality of what these steps would mean into our daily behavior, it would be hard to live life normally. The specter of out-and-out authoritarianism, a crashing economy, and an international system shorn of the alliances that keep the global peace sounds apocalyptic. Actually trying to envision the enormity of this world is psychologically taxing; trying to live as if this were indeed an imminent possibility invariably leads to a life monomaniacally devoted to trying to stop it.

Poor fella knows he suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

It's a cry for help.

 

Vote for Trump

 

Why Is Your Power Bill So High? And What You Can Do About It

Adam Estes, Vox

The left's answer is always to call the other guy what you are

 Zack Beauchamp for Vox:

Biden is a steady leader but in a poor position to handle a crisis; Trump is a demagogue who is more likely to raise tensions rather than lower them.

 

 

Illegal aliens running around everywhere thanks to Joe Biden, followed by leprosy

 Experts Warn Leprosy NOT Ancient History as Cases Surge in USA...

The tropical disease suddenly everywhere...

VOX says 2.5 million children in the U.S. experience homelessness every year, The Wall Street Journal says the homeless number just 653,000

 VOX.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Rod Dreher goes hunting a confederacy of dunces, bags prey from The Week, National Review, Religion News Service, The New Republic, Reason, NYMag, and Vox

 

LOL, newly-minted vaccine misinformation celebrity Joni Mitchell suffers from "a disease most doctors think isn't real"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.vox.com/2015/4/2/8330925/morgellons :

Interestingly, a large number of people in the study had a psychiatric or addictive condition, including depression and drug use. Among half of the participants in the study used drugs, but it wasn't clear whether the drugs caused the symptoms or whether they were being used to deal with the disease. 

Even so, the researchers could not uncover any particular underlying medical condition or infectious source, and concluded that Morgellons is "similar to more commonly recognized conditions such as delusional infestation."

The idiots at Vox don't know that the constitution specifies a minimum congressional district size of 30,000

Here:

"Literally nothing in the Constitution prevents Congress from admitting the Obama family’s personal DC residence as a state — a state which would then be entitled to two senators, one member of the House, and exactly as much say on whether the Constitution should be amended as the entire state of Texas."

Article I, Section 2.3:

The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative;

You can't have two per thirty thousand, that is, one per fifteen thousand, let alone one representative for just four people.

It doesn't occur to the idiots at Vox, nor Harvard Law whence the idea comes, that the main problem with the federal government is that the US House concentrated power in its hands decades ago by stopping the growth of representation. It's been on a spending spree ever since, picking the taxpayers' pockets.

Why do you think we have a $23 trillion debt?

Giving Obama his own representative just makes the Obama family more like Wyoming, our least populous state, which already has too much representation relative to California according to these liberals.

The feds grabbed this power by fixing the number of representatives at 435 way back in 1929, contrary to the intent of the constitution, which required a census every ten years in order to add representatives to the US House as the country grew in size. The original First Amendment to the constitution would have fixed the formula at one per fifty thousand, giving us over 6,000 representatives by today. It failed ratification by just one vote. The bastards finally realized this loophole in 1929 and pulled a power play.

Yes, maybe some mega states like California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio should be carved up to add states to the union and increase representation that way. Northern Californians and Southern Illinoisans already feel this way.

But carving up DC into a bunch of states? Really? It has about 705,000 residents total, less than the current average size of one US congressional district. If it were a state, the most representatives it should have today would be fourteen, but under the current way it's done, just one.

And the Obama family doesn't get its own private Representative to the US House, not while we're alive anyway. He got to be president for eight years. He can cast his useless vote now like everyone else.

What a farce is Vox. 

Biden in the cat bird seat: Just as Bernie tanked after promising criminals will get to vote, Warren has tanked after hedging on Medicare for all

Ezra Klein, here:

One lesson of the past few weeks is that the Medicare-for-all debate has become a minefield for Democrats — and it’s not clear that any candidate has a safe path through it.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has dropped 14 points since October 8, when she briefly led the Democratic field in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Most attribute her decline to her handling of Medicare-for-all — the financing plan she released made her the target of attacks from the moderates, and then the transition plan she released, which envisions a robust public option in the first year of her presidency and only moving to Medicare-for-all in year three, left single-payer advocates unnerved about her commitment to the cause.

The Democrat left has been its own worst enemy.

In addition to alienating working people by going soft on crime, the people who bear the brunt of it,  Bernie has notably lost ground with the working class by flipping on immigration restriction. Every new immigrant drives down their wages when immigrants are not taking their jobs outright.

For her part, on top of hedging on Medicare for all, Warren has rolled out a veritable cornucopia of crazy in this campaign, including a ban on all fracking in the US and ending the Electoral College. Combined with the recent lying about the little details of her life, voters justifiably doubt her sincerity on these larger issues and suspect that she cares about little except getting the power into her hands.

Hence the default candidate still on top, Joe Biden.

America's political institutions are still so structured that even when radicals like Obama do win, those institutions frustrate their aims. The upside of this is that harmful radicalism is usually stopped in its tracks. The downside is that mediocrities and grotesques are produced.

Just as Obama was content to let his Clinton retreads handle the Great Financial Crisis resulting in the still poor full time employment, moribund GDP, unaffordable housing and low interest rates catastrophic to income portfolios of the present time, Obama provided zero leadership on healthcare reform. This resulted in the competing Democrat House and Senate versions which consumed his first year in office, and eventually produced the Affordable Care Act camel, a horse designed by a committee. He sure did enjoy watching basketball in the private residence, though, and went on to make the Bush tax cuts permanent after winning re-election in 2012. Some radical, huh?

The same thing has happened with Trump. Although promising us the moon about immigration, healthcare reform and foreign wars, he instead delivered tax reform mostly for the corporations and huge spending increases for the military industrial complex, which is the basic consensus of the Republican caucus in Congress, foolishly hoping that they would give him a little somethin' somethin' in return.

Nothing doing. Even trade realignment will disappear when Trump does.

Trump's problem is that he never had a political faction holding any seats in Congress to drive his agenda. He just assumed the existing members would adopt his positions, which is pretty damn naive considering how he attacked and alienated them all throughout 2015-2016. Instead, Trump has steadily moved away from his own positions and adopted theirs, for his own political survival.

Trump's porous bollard fencing instead of the real wall he promised is simply the most public symbol of this, going back as it does to the George W. Bush administration.

The only radical realignment we have seen is the realignment of the radicals with their respective parties, and Election 2020 will be the same old, same old fight between them.

Those who won't realign get discarded.

This is the tyranny of the legislative. And the only way to remedy this is to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, the great mistake of 1951. Only the threat of a Trump or an Obama perpetually in the White House will restore the balance of power between the three branches of government and advance the interests of the people who vote for the president.

As things stand, the best we can hope for is a president desperately stacking the courts to increase his power in a tyranny of the judiciary, which is hardly the remedy intended by the founders and is unacceptable to Americans loyal to the constitution and the nation as founded. The three stooges of the law schools on display at the impeachment hearing yesterday are proof enough of that. 

Remember when Robert Mueller and Donald Trump were working together to expose the coup-plotters and pedophiles in government?

Good times there are not forgotten.

Putin at summit presser: Bring your investigation to Russia and we'll bring ours to America . . .

. . . to investigate the misdeeds of Bill Browder, Jewish grandson of Earl Browder, CPUSA leader from 1930-1945.

Bill Browder renounced his US citizenship in 1998 to avoid taxes and is a British national and major Putin opponent and target.

The Swamp is in complete sympathy with Bill Browder on the subject of Russia. Don't expect the financial transactions of his associates in support of Hillary Clinton to come to light readily.

All we've got so far is this:

But federal records show that Browder's New York financial partners, Ziff Brothers Investments, donated only $1.75 million in the 2016 campaign, spreading it among candidates for many offices in both parties and favoring Republicans in congressional races. The watchdog site opensecrets.org shows it giving only $17,700 for Clinton's election.

From the transcript of the summit presser, here:

Putin:

We have an existing agreement between the United States of America and the Russian Federation, an existing treaty that dates back to 1999. The mutual assistance on criminal cases. This treaty is in full effect. It works quite efficiently. On average, we initiate about 100, 150 criminal cases upon request from foreign states.

For instance, the last year, there was one extradition case upon the request sent by the United States. This treaty has specific legal procedures we can offer. The appropriate commission headed by Special Attorney Mueller, he can use this treaty as a solid foundation and send a formal, official request to us so that we could interrogate, hold questioning of these individuals who he believes are privy to some crimes. Our enforcement are perfectly able to do this questioning and send the appropriate materials to the United States. Moreover, we can meet you halfway. We can make another step. We can actually permit representatives of the United States, including the members of this very commission headed by Mr. Mueller, we can let them into the country. They can be present at questioning. ...

Then we would expect that the Americans would reciprocate. They would question officials, including the officers of law enforcement and intelligence services of the United States whom we believe have something to do with illegal actions on the territory of Russia. And we have to request the presence of our law enforcement.

For instance, we can bring up Mr. Browder in this particular case. Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over $1.5 billion in Russia. They never paid any taxes. Neither in Russia nor in the United States. Yet, the money escapes the country. They were transferred to the United States. They sent huge amount of money, $400 million as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Well, that’s their personal case. It might have been legal, the contribution itself. But the way the money was earned was illegal. We have solid reason to believe that some intelligence officers, guided these transactions. So we have an interest of questioning them. That could be a first step. We can extend also it. Options abound. They all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.

Spending bill is a giant FU to Trump, prevents him from using any of the new border wall prototypes

Reported here:

But, crucially, the bill specifically prevents the Trump administration from using any of the new wall designs it commissioned and tested in California last year. All money has to be spent on “operationally effective designs deployed as of the date of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017” — a bill Trump signed on May 5, 2017.

If President Trump cared less about his wall than about a wall, this wouldn’t be an issue. But everything we know about the president indicates that’s not the case, and that this is a blow to his ego — he reportedly upbraided congressional Republicans this week for not supporting it, claiming they “owed” him for his support for the tax bill and his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The bullying tactics do not appear to have worked. ...

Trump wanted 1,000 new ICE agents; he’s getting barely 100, and none of them are the field agents responsible for arresting unauthorized immigrants. (Instead, ICE is getting more staff for investigations and mission support.)

And when it comes to immigration detention, Congress isn’t just refusing to give the White House the 20 percent increase in detention Trump asked for — it’s rebuking ICE for overspending and expecting Congress to bail it out. 

h/t Mickey Kaus

If essential federal government employees will continue working in a shutdown, haven't we identified who ought to be eliminated?

The non-essential federal employees, who numbered about 850,000 in 2013.

But that would make too much sense for this farce in which we star.

We have the government we deserve.

Trump: The man without a compass goes from racist to violent ideologue in one week

The hysteria continues.

And if that doesn't work, they'll try something else next week.

Out they trot Reza Aslan to lie about his religion

And it is his religion, make no mistake about it, so he's not an objective source, especially since he's a switch hitter, a former Christian, and a lousy historian of Christianity whose popular book on Jesus doesn't pass the smell test because it stole the long ago propounded thesis of the scholar S.G.F. Brandon but never credited him or responded to it.

Here at Vox:

"Islam doesn't promote violence or peace. Islam is just a religion and like every religion in the world it depends on what you bring to it."

Islam promotes submission, means submission, requires submission. It's inherently confrontational in a way which Christianity or Judaism or any other religion has never been and he knows it. And the lying about it is not a bug, either, but a feature. Lying to the infidel is sanctioned as part of the process of dominating the infidel.

And that's the problem for the West. Islam uses the West's value of freedom of expression and freedom of religion against it, as an opening to dominate it. And like fools, we allow it. 

Vox details the Hillary triple players who didn't just lobby or donate to her foundation, but also enriched her and Bill personally

Here:

The latest episode in the Clinton money saga is different than the others because it involves the clear, direct personal enrichment of Hillary Clinton, presidential candidate, by people who have a lot of money at stake in the outcome of government decisions. ... Together, Hillary and Bill Clinton cleared $25 million on the lecture circuit over the last 16 months, according to a Hillary Clinton's personal financial disclosure required of presidential candidates. ... Corning's in good company in padding the Clinton family bank account after lobbying the State Department and donating to the foundation. Qualcomm and salesforce.com did that, too. ... And Microsoft, the American Institute of Architects, AT&T, SAP America, Oracle and Telefonica all paid Bill Clinton six-figure sums to speak as Hillary Clinton laid the groundwork for her presidential campaign. And that list, which includes Clinton Foundation donors, is hardly the end of it. There's a solid set of companies and associations that had nothing to do with the foundation but lobbied State while Clinton was there and then paid for her to speak to them. Xerox, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, in addition to Corning, all lobbied Clinton's department on trade matters and then invited her to earn an easy check.