On Hannity with Mark Simone, Stephen Moore just said we still have 94 million Americans "of working age" still out of work

There's a statement which is utterly false, and should end Steve Moore's credibility as an economist forever, but it won't.

The metric measures everyone aged 16 and older who is not in the labor force, the vast majority of which are not in the labor force for very good reasons.

For one example, young people in high school, college and graduate school are included in this number. In 2017 they number about 37 million people.

For another, in March 2017 another 45.7 million were over 65 and getting Social Security. In other words, retired.

Together that's nearly 88% of the current 94.4 million "not working".

That leaves 11.7 million "not working", some of whom are disabled receiving Social Security but some disabled are still working, trying to lead productive lives despite their handicaps.

Typically the rest are homemakers, who are trying to make sure their kids aren't rotten like yours.

George Mason University should take away Steve Moore's MA in economics, if you ask me.

And even if you don't.

Total employment lags 2008 by at least 2.4 million while Drudge plays Trump propagandist

In April 2008 total employed, not seasonally adjusted, hit 145.9 million, which was 48.1% of the US population of 303.38 million.

In April 2017 we're at 153.3 million, 47.4% of the US population of 323.58 million.

If we had employment at the 2008 rate, there would be at least 2.4 million more employed today than there are.

But no, Trump is making America great again, you see.

American Health Care Act of 2017 passes US House 217-213

The roll call is here.

20 Republicans and 193 Democrats (which is all of them) voted against it.

It's a Rube Goldberg fix to the Rube Goldberg machine known as Obamacare.

Remember all those Trump rallies where the crowds shouted "Repair 40 miles of fence!"?

Yeah, me neither.

[Spicer] said about a fifth of the funding allotted to the Department of Homeland Security in the spending bill moving through Congress this week will be used to erect a barrier 20 feet high to replace some 40 miles of the current 700-mile border fence along the 1,900-mile border. That 40-mile replacement alone will cost $341.2 million.

Republican $1.1 trillion spending bill includes $18 million to combat misogyny in the Marine Corps

Now Republicans take a whack at turning the Marine Corps into the Marine Corpse.

Story here.

France's Emmanuel Macron is with her

Frau Merkel is "more attractive than you think"

Marine Le Pen rocks the vote: France will be led by a woman, either me or Frau Merkel

Yeah baby.

See it all, here.

The vehicle for the obscene $1.1 trillion House omnibus spending bill was the HIRE Vets Act

They can't even tell the truth about the name of the bill.

The $1.1 trillion bill passed with support from both parties in a 309-118 vote. Fifteen Democrats and 103 Republicans voted against it. ... House Democrats have repeatedly been needed to help pass spending bills since Republicans took over the majority in 2011.

The roll call vote is here.

131 Republicans united with 178 Democrats to pass the bill, which once again defies regular order for appropriations.

Spineless Michigan Republicans Upton, Trott, Bergman, Walberg, Mike Bishop, Huizenga, Moolenaar and Mitchell all voted for the included Christmas tree of goodies for Democrats in order to get the increased defense spending in the bill.

Only Justin Amash of the Michigan Republican US House caucus voted against the damn thing.

Hillary: I was on the way to winning . . . until I came under sniper fire in Bosnia

The only three things Trump needs to do: Build The Wall, don't start a war, and golf

Hillary supporter Gersh Kuntzman says Hillary got what she deserved, and since she won't apologize she should just shut up and go home

Very entertaining.

Here.

Also entertaining is his litany of her lies, here. He voted for her anyway.

Just remember that when feeling blue about our boy Donald.

Over and over again, Donald Trump promised he would build a Big Beautiful Military

You just didn't hear him right.

Here's a compilation.

Ya'll misunderstood . . . He said he's going to build The Big Beautiful Military

The person destined for political oblivion now is Mike Pence

"Rush, let me be real clear. The number one priority of President Trump is to rebuild our military, to restore the arsenal of democracy."

Mark Levin lies again, says Obamacare was passed under reconciliation when it wasn't

As if it's germane anyway. Levin is just trying to appear to respect the tradition of the Senate.

Well, Harry Reid did away with that by going nuclear on appointments.

And Mitch McConnell went nuclear on Gorsuch.

Two blows to tradition right there.

Like tits, if you've seen one you might as well see the other.

So, Mitch just needs to keep going nuclear.

The Republican Senate should simply jettison the filibuster rule, and pass repeal with the clean Republican majority.

Trump's instincts on this are correct on spending, which means on Obamacare as well, and on every bill which might come the Senate's way.

Then we can focus our attention on Paul Ryan, who hides behind the Senate's filibuster rule like a little boy hides behind his mommy's skirts to restrain what he does in the House.

Talk radio and Republicans are trying to defend this latest indefensible continuing spending resolution

When Democrats took control of the Congress under Obama in 2009, they promptly added about $700 billion to Bush's outlays in the middle of his last fiscal year, and successfully made the new level of spending the baseline for the rest of Obama's two terms. This was done in the name of rescuing the country from the financial/housing crisis.

They sold it as an $800 billion stimulus, but it was in reality the most outrageous expansion of federal spending ever: $5.6 trillion over 8 years. The sum is $1.28 trillion in excess of Obama's entire dollar GDP increase for his presidency. It means we spent $1.30 for every $1 of Obama's GDP.

But you have heard nothing about it because Republicans are co-dependents in government spending.

Spending soared overnight from $2.8 trillion to $3.5 trillion, and stayed at that level right through the final days of the Obama administration, despite Republicans taking the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014.

Now that the tables are turned, Republicans are claiming "the rules" mean they have to compromise with Democrats and continue spending on Democrat items under the Christmas Tree, like Planned Parenthood, sanctuary cities, border security without The Wall, and a variety of non-defense spending items, in order to get what they want in the $1.1 trillion continuing spending resolution, which basically boils down to a big increase in defense spending, but not much for what Trump advocated and promised the people.

Disappointed doesn't begin to describe our displeasure with this disgraceful pack of spendthrift bastards occupying The Swamp.

And they appear to have eaten Donald Trump.

Delusional Hillary today blames "Russian" Wikileaks and Comey for her loss

Everybody and everything but herself.

Here.

VP Pence in the spin zone on The Rush Limbaugh Show: Trump's number one priority is defense spending

Oh, well, that clarifies things.

Here I thought Trump's campaign for president was all about stopping illegal immigration, restoring law and order, and repealing Obamacare.

Silly me. I must have misunderstood Donald Trump.

First quarter GDP has fallen from an average of 2.95% under Truman to 0.53% under Obama

Truman: 2.95%

IKE: 1.05%

JFK/LBJ: 2.97%

Nixon/Ford: 2.52%

Carter: 2.77%

Reagan: 1.70%

Bush I: 1.27%

Clinton: 1.10%

Bush II: 0.95%

Obama: 0.53%

Michael Moore to star in one-man Broadway show because there's no room on stage for anyone else

Somebody please tell The Steve Gruber Show that it's not The Stop Female Genital Mutilation Show

Gruber is fixated on the issue. Everyday he talks about it lately.

Male genitals have been mutilated from time immemorial, Steve. But I don't want to hear about that everyday either.

Especially with my morning coffee.

France to be ruled by perverts: It turns out Emmanuel Macron of France fell in love at 16 with his 39 year old married teacher, a mother of three

And they've been together just about ever since. And he's about to defeat Marine Le Pen for the presidency of France. Unbelievable.

They change partners over there like pants, but still.

Story here.

Video of Tanana River Ice Out in Nenana AK today at noon

Here. And here.

The siren goes off at about 16 seconds in at the first link. The second link is not video but patched together shots from the Tripod cam.

Another Chinese forced laborer writes a plea for help and sequesters it in a purse purchased at Walmart

And Trump expects the Chinese authorities to do something about North Korea.

Yeah right.

From the story here:

“Inmates in the Yingshan Prison in Guangxi, China are working 14 hours daily with no break/rest at noon, continue working overtime until 12 midnight, and whoever doesn't finish his work will be beaten. Their meals are without oil and salt. . . .."

Democrats continue to ignore the revulsion Democrat voters felt for Hillary

It's not like they didn't have information about this in 2008 when primary voters ended up picking Obama over Hillary in the first place.

Here:

[N]ew information shows that Clinton had a much bigger problem with voters who had supported President Barack Obama in 2012 but backed Trump four years later. ... Turning out the base is not good enough, the data suggest. 

But Hillary didn't turn out the base in 2016 anymore than she did in 2008. Every single story from the Democrats ignores that Democrats revolted against Hillary in 2016 just as they did in 2008. Just as they did in 1993. 

Just look at the top vote-getters by state since 2004.

Trump 2016 was the top-vote-getter in AL, AZ, AR, FL, GA, IN, KY, LA, MO, MT, NC, ND, SC, TN, TX, WV, and WY for a total of 26.4 million votes. Seventeen states, two of them swing states.

But eight years ago Obama 2008 is still today the top-vote-getter in CT, DE, HI, IL, IA, ME, MI, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OH, OR, PA, RI, VT and WI for a total of 28 million votes. Eighteen states.

Hillary 2016 was the top-vote-getter only in CA, CO, DC, MD, MA, NV and VA for a total of 16.6 million votes, over half of which were in California. Six states and DC.

Obama 2012 was top-vote-getter in WA, Romney 2012 in ID and UT, McCain 2008 in AL, MS and OK, and Bush 2004 in KS, NE and SD.

That's all fifty states plus DC.

Trump is somewhat weak with his base in 8 states going back to 2004, but Hillary is far weaker with hers.

That's the story which has been ignored over and over again since election night. Hillary underperformed Obama 2012 in 34 states, but Obama 2008 in 39.

They weren't with her. Ever.

We have Tanana River ice-out in Nenana AK today at noon

Here.

There's something strangely familiar about Rebekah Mercer

Rebekah Mercer

Basil Fawlty

It looks like Emmanuel Macron has become Marine Le Pen's chief advocate

He's pointing at his head, but he's not using it.

Macron, quoted here:

“When the rights and values of the European Union are not respected, I want sanctions to be taken.”

“In the three months after I’m elected, there will be a decision on Poland.”

“You cannot have a European Union which argues over every single decimal place on the issue of budgets with each country, and which, when you have an EU member which acts like Poland or Hungary on issues linked to universities and learning, or refugees, or fundamental values, decides to do nothing.”

Rush is right: Congress' mission now is to deny Trump any significant legislation

And we thought the Democrats couldn't accomplish anything.

Now the Republicans wouldn't.

NeverTrump lives.

The difference between the 3% economy Trump wants and the one he's got

$428 billion.

Current dollar GDP just increased $137.9 billion in 1Q2017, about 0.73%.

At 3% the increase would have been $566 billion.

Laugh of the Day: Stupid liberal shackle dragger actually believed in her messiah, Barack, until he took the banksters' money

Here, in The Sydney Morning Herald:

This one seemingly greedy act has put all that in jeopardy. He's no different from all the others. Just another money-grubbing politician. I can scarcely believe it. I certainly don't want to. It's just weeks since he said, just before he left office: "I won't stop; in fact, I will be right there with you, as a citizen, for all my days that remain."

"And lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age", or the banks open at 0900.

Phyllis Schlafly correctly understood natural born citizenship to turn on the question of jurisdiction

Here is Schlafly in 2004:

The extensive litigation concerning American Indians illustrates that consent rather than place of birth is what controls citizenship. Indians did not receive citizenship until conferred by congressional acts in 1887, 1901 and 1924, long after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Constitution states that "no person except a natural born citizen" is eligible to be President. Everyone recognizes that this provision disqualifies the Governors of California and Michigan who were born in Austria and Canada, respectively.

On the other hand, then Michigan Governor George Romney, whose birthplace was Mexico, ran for president in 1968, and Senator John McCain, whose birthplace was the Panama Canal Zone, ran for president in 2000. Both were "natural born citizens" because their parents were U.S. citizens and subject to the jurisdiction of American sovereignty.

It's not the physical location of birth that defines citizenship, but whether your parents are citizens, and the express or implied consent to jurisdiction of the sovereign.

Trump's territorial tax plan gives no incentive for business and manufacturing to relocate to the US

What's up with that, huh? Maybe he's not really serious about bringing the jobs back here after all.

From Phyliss Schlafly here in 2011:

Although the Perry plan's most striking feature is its anti-marriage bias, his proposal for corporate income is equally pernicious. Perry would shift businesses to a "territorial" tax system, which means that corporations would be taxed only on the profits they earn inside the United States. 

We should do exactly the opposite. We should reduce or eliminate taxes on businesses that employ Americans producing goods and services inside our own country, while increasing taxes on the profits that corporations earn by outsourcing or manufacturing overseas. 

Above all, we should eliminate the foreign tax credit, a self-destructive provision that allows corporations to pay China or Venezuela or Saudi Arabia the money they would otherwise owe the U.S. government. Let's also cut out the deductions that U.S. corporations take for hiring foreigners to do work that Americans can do. 

Those who support a territorial business tax argue that it will encourage multinational corporations to bring home the profits they earn overseas, but that's unlikely so long as it remains more profitable for them to invest in cheap-labor countries. Of Republican presidential candidates, only Herman Cain and Rick Santorum understand that what corporations need is lower taxes on their operations inside the United States rather than on the profits they earn in other countries. 

"Middle class" according to Pew Research Center is just trying to make everyone feel better

MarketWatch here says that Pew estimates middle class household income for a family of 3 at between about $35,000 and $105,000 for 2011.

To understand how too liberally defined that is, consider that in 2011 almost 60% of individual wage earners made $35,000 or less . . . about 91 million wage earners out of 151 million.

Actually the middle third of all those paycheck earners, 50 million, made between just $15,000 annually and not quite $40,000, the average of which is about $27,500. Make over $40,000 and you were already in the top third of individual wage earners that year.

A couple making $27,500 can survive in this world, but it wouldn't have been able to buy the median priced home of $225,000 in 2011. Just financing that without a down payment, an impossibility, at the average 30-year rate of 4.5% in 2011 would have meant 50% of income going to principal and interest.

Putting 10% down would drop that to 45% of income, still hardly affordable. And who do you know making $27,500 with $22,000 saved for a down payment on a house?

They'd be renting, most likely, and not yet solidly middle class.

In 2016 the average median sales price of a home in the US soared to nearly $314,000, putting the American dream even farther out of reach than ever before for the majority.

US drone captures Afghan men having their way with a couple of goats

And you thought retired US Supreme Court Justice David Souter was a goat-fucking child molester.

We should have blown these sick bastards to kingdom come 16 years ago and not wasted one drop of American blood on them.

Video here.

Middle Class: The 30-30-30 countries according to wealth distribution are primarily Germanic

The following are the countries with relatively equal sized lower, middle and upper classes in 2013, meaning roughly 30% have wealth under $10,000, roughly 30% have wealth $10,000 to $100,000, and roughly 30% have wealth in excess of $100,000 up to $1M:

USA: 31-33-31

Austria: 28-32-37

Germany: 29-33-35

New Zealand: 26-34-38

Qatar: 25-38-35

Taiwan: 23-45-31

He ain't dead yet: Ted Cruz sees Trump's Wall, raises him one

Here:

"El Chapo led the Sinaloa drug cartel," Cruz explained. "There is a sense of justice. A sense of, this is what is right, that the people who are violating the border like crazy, we should use their ill-gotten gains [$14 billion] to finally build the wall, and to finally ensure we have the assets to secure the border."

Republicans to fund Planned Parenthood, but not The Wall

Republicans. Doing the opposite of what they promise, just like Democrats.

Story here.

Trump's Mick Mulvaney is letting the Senate's 60-vote rule stand in the way of funding The Wall

Screw the 60-vote rule.

It's a rule dating to 1917, last revised by the Democrat-controlled Senate in 1975.

It's not in the constitution, and the Senate can change the rules any time it wants.

Now would be a good time, but Trump, McConnell & Co. seem content to leave some water in The Swamp, the better to bog down what the people want, my dear.

Mulvaney, quoted here:

MICK MULVANEY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT & BUDGET: Yes. The problem is the Senate rules, people forget this sometimes, that the spending bills are different than the budget. The underlying budgets sort of move through the House and Senate differently. Anything that passes on reconciliation moves differently. But most bills, including spending bills, take 60 votes in the Senate.

TAPPER: So you need eight Democrats. 

MULVANEY: Got to have eight, which means that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have a place at the table. We recognize that. But that's why we just can't do it on our own.

TAPPER: A source close to efforts to avoid a government shutdown tells CNN that the Republican proposal in the House will not include funding for President Trump's border wall with Mexico. 

Is President Trump willing to sign a government spending bill that does not include that money? 

MULVANEY: Yes, because I think the bill -- at least the offer that we received from the Democrats the last couple of days included a good bit of money for border security. The Democrats said they would go to the mat and shut the government down over the border wall, the bricks and mortar. 

Laugh of the Day: The top one percent in brains tend to become our senators

Gotta be a typo.

Seen here:

Reflecting on the latest findings of longitudinal studies on gifted students, Jonathan Wai, a psychologist at the Duke University Talent Identification Program, concluded that children with early cognitive ability “control our society…The kids who test in the top one percent tend to become our eminent scientists and academics, our Fortune 500 CEOs and federal judges, senators and billionaires.”

Michael Savage: There's an easy solution to the shortage of lethal injection drugs, just give 'em an overdose of street heroin

Beautiful!

And clean out all the death rows already.

I've been workin' on the railroad . . ..

The Wall delayed is justice denied

As socialist Venezuela starves, remember Bernie Sanders once said that's the American Dream

Equal poverty for all!

Here, August 2011:

These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?

Marine Le Pen is popular with France's multitudes of unemployed youth

From the profile, here:

Part of her allure is rooted in the plight of young people in the world’s sixth-largest economy, nearly a quarter of whom are unemployed. On the eve of Le Pen’s rally in Metz, 20-something supporters from across the country came together in the city’s party headquarters to discuss their plans for the following day. It had more the feel of an awkward school dance than a strategy session – they had put out bowls of potato chips and bottles of soda.

Emilien Noé, a former Socialist who coordinates the youth movement in the region, says young people are drawn to the FN’s promise to restore French glory, something they’ve never known. “A lot of young people are living abroad instead of in France, and this is sad for a country like ours,” he says.

Le Pen #I'mWithHer

MOAB left Afghan tunnels used by ISIS "apparently undamaged"

Should have bombed the damn dams of Afghanistan instead.

Put out their lights for good, waste all their water. Send them back to the Stone Age where they belong. And leave.

From the story here:

Afghan special forces troops entered one of the caves used by suspected Isil fighters and found the tunnels apparently undamaged by the explosion. ... Afghan officials claimed that nearly 100 militants and no civilians were killed by the blast but those claims have not been independently verified.

Illegal alien workers in US get $4.2 billion in tax credits: Times five years is plenty to pay for The Wall

From the story here:

[A] July 2011 report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration ... said individuals who are not authorized to work in the U.S. have been paid $4.2 billion in refundable tax credits.

Marine Le Pen sounds just like Michael Savage, calling on France to choose French borders, language and culture

Quoted here after coming in 2nd in the first round of the French elections yesterday: 

It is a very simple choice for France. Either we carry on towards total deregulation without any borders or protection, and all that entails. With international unfair competition, mass immigration, the free trade, and the free circulation of terrorists. 

Or you choose the France with borders that are going to protect her, employment, and a national identity. 

So you have two choices. ...

I am the candidate of the people. I appeal to all sincere.. patriots to join us and abandon old-fashioned quarrels and particpate in the best interest of our country... and the survival of France. We will unite behind the project of renewal and they will be our brothers.

121 years of National Weather Service temperature data show a cooling trend in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Single deadliest attack in 16-year Afghan war, perpetrated by just 10 Taliban, kills over 140

This is payback for the MOAB attack. 

So bomb the water supplies in Afghanistan now. Cut off the money they make from well-irrigated opium.

From the story here:

Dressed in military uniforms, a squad of 10 Taliban militants drove in two army Ford Ranger trucks past seven checkpoints. They arrived inside northern Afghanistan’s largest military installation just as hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed soldiers were emerging from Friday Prayers and preparing for lunch.

For the next five hours, the militants went on a rampage, killing at least 140 soldiers and officers in what is emerging as the single deadliest known attack on an Afghan military base in the country’s 16-year war. Some assailants blew themselves up among the soldiers fleeing for their lives, according to survivors, witnesses and officials.

Pat Buchanan still believes 3,407 votes "mistakenly" cast for him in Palm Beach County made W president

Here:

[Buchanan] won 3,407 votes in Palm Beach County, Florida—a liberal, heavily Jewish community—thanks to the “butterfly ballot” famously confusing many voters. George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes, and Buchanan makes no bones about what happened. “The Lord intervened,” he says, grinning. “We sunk Al Gore and won the election for Bush.” 

Like Nader wasn't to blame, or the libertarians, or "other".

There are many ways to cut the cake George W. Bush ate:

Florida Results  Election 2000

Palm Beach County Results Election 2000

Tim Alberta profiles our old general, Pat Buchanan: This is the last chance for our ideas

Here in Politico Magazine.

Hungarian razor wire border fencing like this has cut illegal immigration to a trickle, so to speak

Mark Cuban's friend must read my blog

Mark Cuban's friend told him Trump was like chemo for the political system.

Way ahead of those guys.

Here's the Nenana Ice Classic Ice-Out Data for the last hundred years

Tanana River Ice-Outs in Alaska have been getting gradually earlier in the last 100 years

Nenana Ice Classic 2017: When will the ice go out this year?

It's official: Trump disappoints us, tells AP he's not going after Dreamers

Trump's official policy?

He specifically campaigned on rescinding Obama's two immigration executive orders.

So he's flip-flopped. He's disappointed us.

Expect lots more of that.

Here, today:

President Donald Trump says young immigrants shielded from deportation - often referred to as "dreamers" - should "rest easy" about his immigration policies.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Trump says he is "not after the dreamers, we are after the criminals." He says "that is our policy."

President Barack Obama changed enforcement priorities to protect many young people brought to the country illegally as children from deportation.

Attorneys say 23-year-old Juan Manuel Montes was recently deported to Mexico despite having qualified for deferred deportation. Montes sued Tuesday for access to records on his deportation.

Trump says Montes' case is "a little different than the Dreamer case," though he did not specify why.

Good idea: Remove public funding from any university failing to insure free speech everywhere on campus

CNBC's resident libertarian calls GOP's new Obamacare repeal bill cowardly and small-minded

From the story here by Jake Novak:

Of course the waiver option is all about shifting the political heat if people start losing coverage. By making the individual states apply for waivers, the Republican Congress thinks it can effectively blame the governors and state legislators if things don't work out in the states that get those waivers. Not only is that craven politics, it's delusional. Anyone who thinks the Republicans in Washington won't own every aspect of the results of this new law if it's enacted is totally clueless. ... In short, we need courage and smarts. And this new Republican plan is cowardly and small-minded.

Drudge lies with a headline to encourage the Trumpsters who read him

There is no order to curb foreign workers, only an order to reevaluate the program. Actually Trump is slow-walking his promise to end the import of foreign workers who take away jobs being done by Americans.

Stupid Georgia Republicans let 11 candidates run for Tom Price's seat

Trump slow walks H-1B visa reform, signs executive order to review the program

Story here.

Alt-right hero Julius Evola was essentially suicidal, at least until 1945

From the translator's introduction by Guido Stucco to Evola's The Yoga of Power here:

The first few years of Evola's life following the end of [WWI] were characterized by spiritual restlessness and by an intense search for an ideological self-identity. Evola began a personal quest for ultimate transcendence, which he believed could be found beyond the ethical and spiritual limitations of bourgeois prejudices. ... At this time his quest led him also to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs. His longing for the Absolute, for radically intense feelings, for what the Germans call mehr als leben, ("more than living") which was frustrated by the contingency of human experience, almost induced him, at the age of twenty-three, to commit suicide. ...

He did not hesitate to espouse an epistemological solipsism (though he rejected the term as "inadequate") whereby the individual stands alone in a world of maya, in which nature, things, and people are nothing but an illusion. ...

In 1945 he was in Vienna when, as a result of a Soviet air raid on the city, he was wounded in the spinal cord by a shell fragment. He later told a friend that instead of taking to an underground refuge, he had been purposefully walking the deserted streets of the Austrian capital. After spending a year and a half in a local hospital, Evola returned to Italy, destined to spend the rest of his life, a long twenty-nine years, in a wheelchair.

If DHS' John Kelly really cared about 4 tons of drugs coming in daily, he'd stop it

General Kelly here in the Boston Globe:

[Transnational criminal organizations] smuggle nearly four tons of heroin, cocaine, meth, and other illegal drugs across our border each day. In 2015, 52,404 people died from drug overdoses. It was the highest number of drug-related deaths our country has ever seen.

If our country really cared about it, we'd have ended opium production in Afghanistan yesterday. But it's been in our power to do for over 15 years. So obviously we don't do it because of the MONEY our corrupt country makes off the operation. And . . . it would be against LIBERTARIANISM, in which everyone believes more than saving Americans from the horrible consequences of drug addiction.

All we have to do is blow up the damn dams we built for those bastards after World War II.

17 MOABs and we're done. Over 90% of the world's opium production would end, just like that.

Hm, ISIS launches gas attack in western Mosul against Iraqi units with Australian and US advisers

You don't suppose ISIS could do that in Syria? No, Bashar al-Assad did that. Right.

Story here.

Trump adviser Jared Kushner's father was put in jail by Chris Christie

Byron York recounts the tale, here:

The short version is: In 2004, Jared Kushner's father Charles, a real estate magnate in New Jersey and New York, pleaded guilty to a tax fraud scheme in which he claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in phony deductions for office expenses at the partnerships he created to manage the apartment buildings he owned. Kushner, a major donor to the Democratic Party, also pleaded guilty to fraudulently making hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in the names of employees and associates who didn't know their names were being used. Finally, Kushner pleaded guilty to retaliating against a cooperating witness in the case — his sister. He did so by setting a trap in which he hired a prostitute to lure his sister's husband into a sexual encounter in a New Jersey hotel, where the action was secretly photographed and videotaped. Kushner sent the pictures and tape to his sister as revenge, apparently motivated by Kushner's belief that she and her husband were helping U.S. Attorney Christie and his prosecutors. ... [I]n a 2014 interview with the New York real estate publication The Real Deal, Jared called his father's treatment "obviously unjust" and said the experience had soured him on an earlier ambition to become a prosecutor. "If you're convicting murderers, it's one thing," Jared said. "It's often fairly clear. When you get into things like white-collar crime, there are often a lot of nuances. Seeing my father's situation, I felt what happened was obviously unjust in terms of the way they pursued him."

Trump White House appears to be backing away from Larry Kudlow/Steve Moore supply side tax plan from the campaign

Another bad sign for economic growth prospects.

From the story here:

"It's a little frustrating that they feel they have to write a new tax plan when they have a tax plan," said Steven Moore, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation who helped formulate tax policy for the Trump campaign.

Maxine Waters is a discredited has been, got a federal TARP bailout for husband's bank

From the story in March, here:

During the height of the 2008 fiscal crisis, Waters helped arrange a meeting between the Treasury Department and top executives of a bank where her husband was a shareholder. Using her post on the House Financial Committee as leverage, she called Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson personally, asking him to meet with minority-owned banks.

When Treasury followed through, there was only one financial institution present: OneUnited. Had that bank gone under, the New York Times reported, Waters' husband would've lost as much as $350,000. Luckily for the Waters family, OneUnited received a cool $12 million in bailout funds.

After three years of special investigation, the ethics committee eventually ruled that Waters didn't technically break any rules. But that ruling came after unearthing her more than questionable family business practices, like making her grandson, Mikael Moore, her chief of staff.

First North Korean nuclear test: October 9, 2006, and Bush did nothing about it

And neither did anyone else:

The United States Geological Survey reported that a seismic event occurred at 01:35:28 UTC (10:35:28 am local time, UTC+9) on October 9, 2006, and measured 4.3 on the Richter scale. It occurred at the geographic coordinates 41°17′38.4″N 129°08′2.4″E with a horizontal location uncertainty of ±9.6 km (6.0 miles). This is near Mantapsan, 73 km (45 mi) north of Kimchaek, 90 km (56 mi) southwest of Chongjin, 180 km (110 mi) south of Yanji, and 385 km (239 mi) northeast of Pyongyang.

Mother of all bombs

Dan Drezner, good liberal, Matt Yglesias, bad liberal

Story here.

NeverTrumper Bret Stephens bolts The Wall Street Journal for happier digs at The New York Times

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Bret!

From the story here:

The Journal's editorial page editor, Paul Gigot, said in a memo he is thankful for Stephens' 16 years with the paper.

Mandela's legacy: Black South African government covers up racist tortures and murders of white farmers

Reported here:

In total, between 1998 and the end of 2016, 1848 people have been murdered in farm attacks — 1187 farmers, 490 family members, 147 farm employees, and 24 people who happened to be visiting the farm at the time. ... 

But any form of justice is incredibly rare, and white farmers are increasingly questioning their future. The number of white farmers in South Africa has halved in a little over two decades to just 30,000. Thousands more farms are up for sale. ... 

Since 2007, at the direction of the government, South African police have stopped releasing statistics about the race of the victims. Monitoring group Genocide Watch says the cover-up has been exacerbated by American and European governments, which have “remained silent about the problem, reinforcing the campaign of denial”. The rise in farm attacks has been blamed on increasingly anti-white hate speech, particularly from the ruling African National Congress.

In 2010, high-profile ANC member Julius Malema sang “Shoot the Farmer, Kill the Boer”, which Genocide Watch describes as “once a revolutionary song, but now an incitement to commit genocide”.

Malema was convicted for hate speech and the singing of the song was banned, but just seven months later president Jacob Zuma sang the song himself at an ANC event, in direct contempt of the judge’s ruling.

Malema was later kicked out the ANC, forming his own Marxist party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, which is now the third-largest party in parliament. Recently, Malema has been travelling the country urging black South Africans to take back land from “Dutch thugs”.

“People of South Africa, where you see a beautiful land, take it, it belongs to you,” Malema was quoted in The Telegraph as telling parliament.

Perhaps in response to populist pressure from Malema, Zuma earlier this month called for the confiscation of white-owned land without compensation. Zuma urged the “black parties” in the parliament to unite to form the two-thirds majority that would be needed to make the necessary change to the country’s constitution.

Last week, during a debate in parliament about the farm attacks, an ANC MP shouted “Bury them alive!” while MP Pieter Groenewald was speaking about the plight of white farmers.

“This is proof that the utterances of political leaders could lead to violence and murders and that the issue of farm murders is of little importance to the ANC,” AfriForum’s head of community safety, Ian Cameron, said in a statement afterwards. “Certain members of the ANC were chatting during the debate and not listening nor partaking at all.”

Mother Of All Bombs tested on the wrong target in Afghanistan, prolonging the 16-year war

They bombed caves. If they had meant to end the war, they would have bombed the Kajaki dam instead, ending electricity and opium production in Helmand Province instantly:

Conservative Tree House is kooky, calls China not joining Russia Syria veto in UN "historic" and a Trump achievement

Here.

No, it isn't historic, and it's not a Trump achievement.

There have been nine occasions where China has not joined Russia in the veto since 1992. China does what's good for China.

The only country getting realigned here is America under Trump, who keeps "learning" things and changing his stated positions.

Trump's in danger of giving away the store to China on currency, trade and the South China Sea in exchange for the promise of a denuclearized North Korea.

China thinks that might be a good deal, but it's a lousy deal, because the Chinese are the biggest liars on the face of the earth, the biggest thieves, and the biggest mass murderers in the history of mankind.

North Korea is their little pit bull keeping South Korea, Japan and the United States off balance.

Wake up and smell the coffee, guys.

Trump's just getting started, wait until you see his next flip-flop

Trump flips on Ex-Im Bank

Reported here:

His budget chief Mick Mulvaney said on CNBC (transcript via Reason) Wednesday that Trump was now pro-Ex-Im, and the president himself professed his love for Boeing's bank to the Wall Street Journal:

The president said he planned to fill two vacancies on the bank's board, which has been effectively paralyzed with three open seats on its five-member board.

"It turns out that, first of all, lots of small companies are really helped, the vendor companies," Mr. Trump said. "But also, maybe more important, other countries give [assistance]. When other countries give it we lose a tremendous amount of business." ...

"Instinctively, you would say, 'Isn't that a ridiculous thing,'" Mr. Trump said of the Ex-Im Bank. "But actually, it's a very good thing. And it actually makes money, it could make a lot of money."

Flashback Trump August 2015: Ex-Im Bank is unnecessary, I don't like it, It's not free enterprise, I'd be against it

Quoted in Bloomberg, here:

"I don't like it because I don't think it's necessary," the real estate mogul said. "It's a one-way street also. It's sort of a featherbedding for politicians and others, and a few companies. And these are companies that can do very well without it. So I don't like it. I think it's a lot of excess baggage. I think it's unnecessary. And when you think about free enterprise it's really not free enterprise. I'd be against it."

Flashback Trump 2012: Electoral College is a disaster for democracy

You said it, buddy.

And you thought everything Obama said came with an expiration date: Trump in March 2016 NATO is obsolete, Trump in April 2017 not so much

Here in March 2016:

TRUMP: I think NATO is obsolete. NATO was done at a time you had the Soviet Union, which was obviously larger -- much larger than Russia is today. I'm not saying Russia is not a threat. ... What I'm saying is NATO is obsolete. NATO is -- is obsolete and it's extremely expensive for the United States, disproportionately so. And we should readjust NATO. ... You know, there's nothing wrong with saying that a concept was good, but now it's obsolete or now it's outmoded. Now, it can be trimmed up and it can be, uh, it can be reconfigured and you can call it NATO, but it's going to be changed. I mean this thing was -- was done many decades ago. And there's nothing wrong with saying it's obsolete. But it is obsolete.

Here the same in January 2017:

Trump used the interview to restate his doubts about NATO. "I said a long time ago that NATO had problems," he said in the interview. "Number one it was obsolete, because it was designed many, many years ago. "Number two the countries weren't paying what they're supposed to be paying," adding that this was unfair to the United States.

But now in April, here:

"The Secretary General and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism. I complained about that and now they fight terrorism. I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete," Trump said Wednesday.

Trump already lifted the federal hiring freeze he imposed, effective today

Story here.