Trump resurrects Bush's idiotic war on evil ideology

Trump, quoted here:

'This wicked ideology must be obliterated – and I mean completely obliterated – and the innocent life must be protected. All innocent lives. Life must be protected.'

"The long-term solution is to promote a better ideology, which is freedom. Freedom is universal," Bush said in 2011 after Osama bin Laden was assassinated by Obama.

How long is long term? 6 years? 10 years? 16 years in Afghanistan and Iraq? The better ideology isn't working too well, is it?

You don't defeat ideas. You defeat the people who have them, and keep them out of your society. You know, like a Muslim ban.

But no, we're "rights" absolutists and can't bring ourselves to infringe the rights of those who want to kill us.

That's the ideology that is killing us.

Living in the West should be viewed as a privilege, which then distributes the rights. Lose the privilege, and lose the rights.

Our real enemy is libertarians and liberals who think every man, woman and child in the world is entitled to come here, live here and enjoy the benefits previous generations bled and died to ensure for themselves.

The Manchester bomber is not equal to George Washington.

Visa overstays hit 740,000 through September 2016

From the story here:

Countries with the highest visa overstays during the period from October 2015 to September 2016 were Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China and India.

Trump isn't fighting to build a wall, in fact he keeps caving

Trump got nothing in the continuing resolution through this fiscal year, and will get even less than he was asking for, if he's lucky, in the next.

Story here.

What a pathetic loser this guy's turning out to be.

What the hell is this?! Now Comey is colluding with the special prosecutor to get their story straight!

Comey shouldn't be allowed to come near Mueller.

Chaffetz is a putz.

Trump photo-opped the wrong wall

Islamic costume is so diverse compared with The West

Trump's battle of good vs. evil sounds like George W. Bush, kind of warmed over for 2017

Flashback to 2004 here and The President of Good and Evil:

Bush's tendency to see the world in terms of good and evil is especially striking. He has spoken about evil in 319 separate speeches, or about 30 percent of all the speeches he gave between the time he took office and June 16, 2003. In these speeches he uses the word "evil" as a noun far more often than he uses it as an adjective-914 noun uses as against 182 adjectival uses. Only 24 times, in all these occasions on which Bush talks of evil, does he use it as an adjective to describe what people do-that is, to judge acts or deeds. This suggests that Bush is not thinking about evil deeds, or even evil people, nearly as often as he is thinking about evil as a thing, or a force, something that has a real existence apart from the cruel, callous, brutal and selfish acts of which human beings are capable. His readiness to talk about evil in this manner raises the question of what meaning evil can have in a secular modern world.

Ann Coulter's excellent rant against Heritage Foundation

We can bring Ann up to speed on the Germans later.

Best one: Burke said Americans were descendants of Englishmen, and Protestant.

Heritage should sell everything and donate it to the Center for American Progress. They're already doing their work anyway:

"champion the common good over narrow self-interest, and harness the strength of our diversity."

The Heritage Foundation are lunaticks, as the King James Version of the Bible would put it

They are oft cast into the sea in danger of drowning, or into the fire in danger of burns, were it not for the common sense of Americans who have been repelled by their passions, for health care mandates for example.

For a think tank they really should get some thinkers over there one of these days.

Which is why they kept slaves, and required presidents to be born here of American citizens?

Trump calls war on terrorism a battle between good and evil

Full transcript of remarks in Saudi Arabia here.

Gee, sounds just like Bush (and ISIS) and conservative talk radio is thrilled.

Typically, this rhetoric is used to justify treating the evil as less than human, which is what ISIS does, or sending American troops abroad in search of monsters to destroy. But we're 16 years into Afghanistan now, with no end in sight, and the monsters just keep reproducing themselves.

This is not to suggest moral equivalence, but only that the West continues to delegitimize the "Islamic" in Islamic State in order to keep the military-industrial complex busy.

The goal of war, rather, is supposed to be to end the enemy's ability to wage it. We haven't been serious about that, and I don't think Trump will be either.

Either end it, or quit it, but carrying on like this is bankrupting the country.

Enough. 

Flashback: Robert Mueller and James Comey at FBI accused the wrong guy in the 2001 anthrax letter deaths

Carl Cannon recounts the sorry episode of their incompetence, here, in The Orange County Register.

Hey Donald Trump, do the Arabs still owe us free oil for ten years?

Remember the Trump rallies where they shouted "Go to Arabia! Sell them weapons!"?

Yeah, me neither.

Fox to investigate fellow fox's conduct in hen house

Robert Mueller can't investigate Comey's record either, because Comey's his "protégé"

Conflict of interest.

Reported here:

Comey regards his predecessor as a mentor, while Mueller considers Comey his protégé.  When Comey was appointed to succeed Mueller as FBI Director, both men appeared together and were effusive in their praise of one another.  Their relationship is not merely a casual one.  It is precisely the kind of association which ethical rules are designed to guard against.     

Nancy Pelosi must be a Russian agent

She breathes the same air they do.

Oops, Robert Mueller's law firm represents both Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort

Conflict of interest!

If Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself, then Kushner and Manafort must be off limits to Mueller. Or, Mueller has to go.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Reported here:

Mueller's former law firm, WilmerHale, represents Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who met with a Russian bank executive in December, and the president's former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who is a subject of a federal investigation.

Hey WaPo: Thom Hartmann, Larry King, Jesse Ventura and Ed Schultz get $ from RT RIGHT NOW, are they Russian agents?!

You turds.

Here:

Flynn also received $45,000 to appear in 2015 with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a dinner for RT, a Kremlin-controlled media organization.

If you had a good mother and father, that's socialism

They did everything for you because you were of them and belonged to them.

No one else will ever care for you like that.

And that's as far as socialism goes, unless you're an Italian, capisce?

Robert Shiller blames housing bubbles on get rich quick flipper narratives, still completely misses the tax angle

Here, in The New York Times:

There is still no consensus on why the last housing boom and bust happened. That is troubling, because that violent housing cycle helped to produce the Great Recession and financial crisis of 2007 to 2009. We need to understand it all if we are going to be able to avoid ordeals like that in the future.

Ordinary Americans were suddenly able to make a lot of money by flipping their homes because of the tax law changes of 1997. Capital that was previously locked-up in housing by the rules of the New Deal until 1997 was suddenly unleashed to slosh around in the economy when lawmakers gave homeowners the right to avoid most capital gains on the sale of their homes as long as they lived in them only two years. Until 1997, if you didn't buy a more expensive home after you sold yours, you were exposed to a tax hit, unless you took the option of a once in a lifetime exclusion on the gain. The old arrangement had insured, along with the 30-year mortgage, that housing capital built up over a long period of time, creating forced savings for the middle class which could be safely liquidated in retirement without adversely affecting the housing market.

The Republican and Democrat geniuses who ran our government in 1997 changed all that, and within ten years the dang thing blew up. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Bill Clinton, and you, Newt Gingrich.

Too bad Robert Shiller still doesn't get it.

It would probably be unwise to turn back the tax clock now that the damage has been done, but the reinflation of the housing bubble after the crisis wasn't inevitable. The Fed's unprecedented zero interest rate policy has been responsible for that.

When the next housing crash comes, we'll probably not understand it either.

Meanwhile, the median sales price of homes in the aggregate has never been higher, or more unaffordable, and remains the primary driver of wealth inequality in America. 

Video of Comey saying under oath earlier this month that he's never been pressured to halt an investigation for political reasons

Here.

Obstruction of justice is Hillary Clinton deleting over 30,000 emails after they were subpoenaed

Lock her up, with the guy who gave her a pass.

You know, if Trump picks Joe Lieberman for FBI, I'm done

If we wanted that version of The Swamp in 2000, we would have voted for Al Gore.

We certainly don't want it now.

US House hasn't sent Obamacare repeal to Senate, waiting for budget score from CBO

It's been two weeks already. These people are soooooooooooooooo unserious.

Story here.

Kevin McCarthy is the poster boy for stupid Republicanism, but I repeat myself

No wonder Democrats run California.

From the story here:

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

Previously while preparing to replace Speaker John Boehner McCarthy infamously said with a straight face that Republican success was evident from the House Benghazi investigation because it was proving to be politically detrimental to Hillary. The mug. He never knew what hit him.

When are they going to lock up these Americans who "receive money from Russia" like Mike Flynn?

They all work for "RT" just like Flynn did once: liberal radio man Thom Hartmann, liberal CNN interviewer Larry King, former Minnesota governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura, and liberal radio man Ed Schultz.

Thom Hartmann

Larry King

Jesse Ventura

Ed Schultz

Tom Fitton is right, Robert Mueller will never find fault with anything done by Comey's FBI

Mueller led the FBI under Bush II and Obama before his pal Comey was appointed.

Fitton heads Judicial Watch, interviewed right now on Laura Ingraham.

Laura Ingraham singles out Justin Amash as a turncoat

In the last hour.

Good on her, but he's never been on our side. He's on his own side.

Libertarian Scott Sumner: Ideology good, reality bad

The people who leaked are imputing obstruction of justice as the meaning of Comey's memo

That was the political purpose of drafting the memo in the first place and showing it to others.

But Comey will testify under oath that he never saw it that way.

Otherwise he'll be in trouble himself.

He's a Niebuhrian. The end justifies the means.

What this is about is the deep state not wanting improved relations with Russia EVER . . .

. . . and it and the Clinton wing trying to criminalize the policy change by Trump & Company.

From the story here:

[T]he two [Flynn and Kislyak] discussed establishing a back channel for communication between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that could bypass the U.S. national security bureaucracy, which both sides considered hostile to improved relations, four current U.S. officials said.

The sound the special prosecutor makes

Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, as everyone lawyers-up.

If Comey concealed Trump obstruction for three months, he's guilty of misprision

Comey testified under oath May 3rd he wasn't told to stop his investigation for a political reason EVER, which would rule out Trump in February, and March and April

The New York Times has nothing on Trump, who only expressed a hope, that's all, IF the memo is legit

Meanwhile the dishonest media keep reporting such things as "Trump asked Comey to cut short the Flynn investigation" when Trump did nothing of the kind. 

Here, claiming to quote Trump from Comey's memo:

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” 

That's why Turley says there's no evidence in the memo. Trump asks for nothing, threatens nothing, and only expresses a hope.

And even if it were "evidence", it would only be "he said" vs. "he said", a form of hearsay and inadmissible.

Princeton's Stephen Cohen blames false Russia narrative about Trump on Clinton wing of Democrat Party and the intelligence complex

Here:

"Two motives have dirven this false narrative about Trump, that he is somehow a Kremlin agent. There have been two forces. One is the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, which doesn't want to admit she lost the election... and that may be because she wants to run again.... At the same time, there has long been in Washington, let's call it the fourth branch of government -- the intelligence services, who have opposed any rapprochement or cooperation with Russia." 

If Comey suspected obstruction of justice in February, he was obligated to report it immediately

From the story here:

Under the law, Comey is required to immediately inform the Department of Justice of any attempt to obstruct justice by any person, even the President of the United States. Failure to do so would result in criminal charges against Comey. (18 USC 4 and 28 USC 1361) He would also, upon sufficient proof, lose his license to practice law. So, if Comey believed Trump attempted to obstruct justice, did he comply with the law by reporting it to the DOJ? If not, it calls into question whether the events occurred as the Times reported it.

Jonathan Turley: The Comey memo is not proof of an impeachable offense

Here:

[W]e need to move beyond the hyperventilated pronouncements of criminal conduct or impeachable offenses based on this memo. This conversation in the Oval Office is a valid matter of concern and worthy of further investigation. It is not proof of an impeachable offense any more than it is proof of a crime.

My congressman, Justin Amash, trusts Comey more than Trump, would impeach over memo

Well, I never vote to reelect Justin Amash, and I'm not about to start now.

Story here.

Hey Comey, I write memos everyday!

Mark Levin: Let's see ALL Comey's memos

Levin correctly asks why Comey reveals a memo about a possible Trump misdeed now. If it's the real deal, he might have lied to Congress months ago when he said Trump was not a target of his investigation.

Here's the testimony of Comey's number two, who stresses there has been no interference "to date":

The notes taken by Comey appear to contradict testimony offered just last week by his temporary successor, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe.

"There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date,'' McCabe said last week in response to a question posed by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. "Simply put, sir, you cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution.''

Law enforcement officials declined to explain the apparent contradiction between Comey's notes and McCabe's testimony.

New York Times blames housing unaffordability on mortgage interest deduction, never mentions how the Fed just reinflated the housing bubble quite apart from it

Here.

Housing was on its way to being affordable again until the Feds stepped in to stop foreclosures from rising and prices from falling, late in 2008. As a result of rock bottom interest rates which existing owners used to refinance their mortgages, housing is now more expensive than it has ever been, but the Times attacks the mortgage interest deduction for causing the problem.

Prices are up 47% since the 2009 low, in just eight years! The mortgage interest deduction was invented over 100 years ago, and helped to build the post-war middle class.

The Times seems bent on further destroying it.

Thousands of Muslims march through a German village, shouting about something

Remind you of anyone?

Here.

Why did the president cross the road, Mark?

Because he was chasing the chicken.

Voter fraud: Is it really unimaginable that 3 million voted fraudulently in 2016?

In 2004 there were just short of 114,000 polling places in the United States. The number has doubtlessly grown considerably since then, but take 114,000 for a fact even though 12 years out of date and all it takes to get to 3 million is 26 illegal votes per precinct.

Fraud is complicated by in-person early voting in 21 states and DC, making it possible for determined fraudsters to vote multiple times in one state and/or states. Alternative voting methods other than by in-person on election day are now estimated to account for more than a third of all votes cast. These include absentee/by-mail voting in many states, which liberals typically find more susceptible of fraud than in-person systems.

Governments often raised funds with lotteries in the past, but how about $7 trillion in FY2017?

I don't think so.

Lotteries started to fall out of favor after 1830, according to the story here, mostly due to corruption. The guys running the things would run off with the dough. So much for the golden age of the past.

Government at all levels in the US will shell out $7.04 trillion in fiscal 2017, 36.5% of GDP.

In 1817 the number was in the neighborhood of $23 million, about 3% of GDP.

The problem with raising revenues today is only a problem because government is too damn big. Spending 3% of GDP today on government at all levels compared with current outlays means they are twelve times the size they should be, $7 trillion instead of $0.6 trillion.

Besides, you couldn't possibly raise enough using lotteries. In fiscal 2014 lottery revenues countrywide barely totaled $70 billion, just 1% of current total outlays.

Every man, woman and child in this country would have to purchase at least $21,757 in lotto tickets this fiscal year in order to fund government at all levels. And that's before any jackpots are paid out, or lottery workers paid.

Or we could just tax everyone that much.

It would be easier and fairer, right?

After all, we're all "equal".

Except 60 million Americans don't make even that much. If government took it all what would they live on?

Hope, no doubt.

Wow, Sen. Mike Lee falls 28,000 feet directly into the sea from Mt. Tea Party Olympus

Another phony like Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Justin Amash.

Somebody please tell The Nation that Hillary won Middlesex County MA with 65% of the vote

It's May and the top two issues remain healthcare and immigration

Here, but Obamacare is still the law of the land, and not one mile of The Wall has been built.

Robert Tracinski skewers some libertarians for the socialism in their heads, but still misses why it's there

Here, chalking it all up to "unexamined collectivist assumptions" and mistakenly allowing "a little dominion of socialism over their thinking" and the left "trying to preserve that territory they own in your head" through various schemes like the estate tax.

In other words, they're insufficiently indoctrinated. You know, like all those intractable Russians who were sent to the Gulag for nothing more than mistakenly expressing incorrect thoughts.

It never dawns on Tracinski that ideology is a coin with socialism on the one side and libertarianism on the other.

The article is amusing because the "conservatives" he skewers for being insufficiently libertarian are or were aligned with the left and leftism: Charles Murray (former labor unionist, six years in the Peace Corps, "rebel"), Ronald Reagan ("I didn't leave the Democratic Party . . ."), Stuart Butler of health mandate infamy (Brookings), Milton Friedman (FDR functionary) and Megan McArdle (self-described former "ultraliberal").

With the example of McArdle on the estate tax before him, one might have hoped that Tracinski had stumbled into the origin of the socialism in our heads, but no, "there is no such collective entity as 'society.'"

The man wishing to leave his estate to that little society called his family might have begged to differ.

Grassley wants to end the EB-5 visa program altogether, but Cornyn wants to end the EB-5 cap

Grassley would end the issuance of these "buy-your-way-in" visas, but the Texas Senator would open up the program to thousands more.

Story here.

Libertarianism is adolescence dressed up as a political philosophy

No surprise that it was cooked up by Baby Boomers.

And as we all should know by now, there's no arguing with adolescents, not even after they've wrecked the family car.

What P. J. O'Rourke doesn't get is that free individuals would never make babies without hormones

And they'd never make war, either. So O'Rourke's ideal libertarian world of individual freedom would die out first, from failure to reproduce, and then from war. Compulsion is inevitable. You know, like death.

Looks like we're well on our way.

Here:

And what defines a mob? Mobsters. That Cosa Nostra with its code of omertà at the Clinton Foundation. Those "Make America Great Again" Crips and Bloods wearing their colors on their baseball caps with brims bumped to the right.

We should be learning the value of individual liberty from the failure of the elites and the fiasco of their vast political power. Good things are made by free individuals in free association with other individuals. Notice that that's how we make babies.

Individual freedom is about bringing things together.

Politics is about dividing things up.

Elites would have us make babies by putting the woman on this side of the room and the man on that side of the room while the elites stand in the middle taxing sperm and eggs.

The Grauniad complains P. J. O'Rourke's new book is "rural" and "lazy"

One David Runciman, here, who evidently does not know that the old boy has slowed down since he became sick with cancer:

[O'Rourke] operates more in the mould of HL Mencken, one of his heroes, who rarely felt the need to leave his beloved Baltimore in order to lambast the idiocy of his fellow Americans. O’Rourke lives, as it says on the dust jacket, “in rural New England, as far away from the things he writes about as he can get”. This is American politics as viewed from the back room in front of the TV, feet up on the recliner chair. ... O’Rourke forfeits the reader’s patience and simply comes across as lazy.

Dilbert thinks James Comey took one for the American team

Scott Adams, here, who covers all the bases.

Senate Intelligence Committee aide anonymously tries to smear Trump with money laundering

Probably a Democrat aide. Democrats on the committee include Diane Feinstein, Ron Wyden, Martin Heinrich, Angus King (I), Joe Manchin, Kamala Harris and Mark Warner.

Here:

The Senate Intelligence Committee wants to see any information relevant to its Russia investigation the Treasury agency has gathered, including evidence that might include possible money laundering, according to a committee aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. Also at issue: to what extent, if at all, people close to Vladimir Putin have invested in Trump's real estate empire.

Trump showed patience in waiting to fire Comey and Krauthammer finds it inexplicable

Here.

Well, they pay Krauthammer to say something.

Susan Collins proves the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day

Here.

When the liberal Republican FBI director loses the support of a Susan Collins, he'd better believe he's had it.

Laugh of the Day: Trump fires Comey to distract from making no progress on border wall

Ann Coulter, here.

Why we love him still

The firing of James Comey presents the opportunity of a lifetime

Seen here.

Trump fires Comey from FBI, let's hope he fires Turkey from NATO next

Erdogan, our supposed ally, calls on Muslims to occupy Jerusalem.

The Dems say if they hadn't been caught lying they would be running the country right now

Seen here.

Ann Coulter gets it: Americans are paying higher taxes through their health insurance premiums

Here. How come nobody else talks this way?

War is the father of everything

Tea Party darling Sen. Ron Johnson of WI introduces massive guest worker/amnesty: 500k annually

The Tea Party was one half open-borders-libertarian from the beginning. That's why it went no farther than it did.

And Wisconsin narrowly reelected Johnson in 2016 why? It was the price we paid for the very narrow Trump victory there.

Story here.

Joe Klein says thanks to Trump we currently live in Pat Buchanan's world

Here in The New York Times.

He hopes it's only for a moment.

Emmanuel Macron doesn't know how to speak of France, only of Europe and its citizens

Emmanuel Macron, the new president of France, quoted in the story here:

"I know the anger, the anxiety, the doubts that very many of you have also expressed. It's my responsibility to hear them," he said. "I will work to recreate the link between Europe and its peoples, between Europe and citizens." ...

[Marine Le Pen's] tally was almost double the score that her father Jean-Marie, the last far-right candidate to make the presidential runoff, achieved in 2002, when he was trounced by the conservative Jacques Chirac. ...

[A]ny idea of a brave new political dawn will be tempered by an abstention rate on Sunday of around 25 percent, the highest this century, and by the blank or spoiled ballots submitted by 12 percent of those who did vote.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for April 2017

Mean average temperature was 51.9 degrees F in April 2017 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The mean for April back to 1896 is 46.5.

The lowest minimum temperature was 27. The mean for April is 22.

The highest maximum temperature was 81. The mean for April is 79.

Precipitation was 6.27 inches. The mean for April is 3.3. Sixth wettest April on record.

April snowfall was 0.4 inches. The mean for April is 2.3.

Heating degree days came to 391. The mean for April is 553. The total through April from July 2016 comes to 5366 vs. mean to date of 6404.

The heating season to date has been about 16% warmer than normal.

Obama's SECDEF said nukes were an option against North Korea

From the story here:

Last month, former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said about an attack on North Korea, “We’ve always had all options on the table… I wouldn’t take any off.”  Were North Korea to commence a massive artillery barrage on Seoul, and especially if they used chemical or biological weapons, one potential U.S. response could be nuclear retaliation against Pyongyang and/or their artillery at the border. (Perhaps dialing down the “variable yield” of our B-61 nuclear bombs to reduce radioactive fallout and civilian casualties). As outlandish as this response may seem right now, some U.S. war planners do not think so; it could be considered “proportional” and therefore within the laws of armed conflict. If a nuclear bombing were ordered under Obama–who was widely perceived as thoughtful and hesitant to use force—the world may have been largely willing to listen to his logic. Unfortunately, because much of the international community views President Trump as reactive, even unstable, any such U.S.-initiated action would likely be met by ferocious global condemnation. This perception of our President may be a tactical consideration for our war planners led by the very talented head of Pacific Command, Adm. Harry Harris.

Just 18 Republicans in the US Senate voted against the $1.1 trillion spending bill

The roll call is here. So-called conservatives Rubio and Johnson notably voted for it.

Laugh of the Day: Mark Levin calls caller employed as an electrician without health insurance a parasite

Just now.

They don't call Levin "the great one" for nothing.

Noted cardiologist predicts Republican healthcare reform will fail and lead to single payer

Here.

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