TRUE BORN SONS OF LIBERTY

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Laugh of the Day: The British spell it "couvfefe"

Here.

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Vampirism becomes a business, preying on the innocently offered blood donations of young people

This is outrageous and should be outlawed immediately. Healthy people paying $8,000 for young blood.

Sick!

Story here.

Now money-grubbing Hillary blames Democrats' data operation, complains she had to pay

It's all about the money with the Clintons.

Reported here:

"I set up my campaign and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination. So I'm now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party," Clinton said. "I mean, it was bankrupt. It was on the verge of insolvency. Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it."

A conservative makes an appearance at The American Conservative

Not in the articles line-up, but in the comments section, here:

"Every able-bodied Christian man should learn to shoot a rifle, because it will come to that if we live uncompromising lives."

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Did I mention all these men received more votes for president than Hillary Clinton in 13 states?

Obama

Trump

Bush

Kerry

McCain

Romney

On top of coming in 8th out of 8 since 2004 in 13 states, Hillary came in 7th in nine, 6th in two, and 5th in three, losing them all to Trump

Hillary 7th out of 8 since 2004: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Wisconsin (where Trump barely won coming in sixth in the last four races there).

Hillary 6th out of 8 since 2004: Utah and Michigan (where Trump barely won coming in fifth in the last four races there).

Hillary 5th out of 8 since 2004: Georgia, Pennsylvania (Trump third) and Texas.

In other words, half the country found Hillary revolting.

Last but not least, Trump destroyed Hillary in Wyoming 3.1:1 where she came in dead last since 2004

Donald J. Trump 2016: 174,419 votes
Mitt Romney 2012: 170,962
George W. Bush 2004: 167,629
John S. McCain 2008: 164,958
Barack Obama 2008: 82,868
John Kerry 2004: 70,776
Barack Obama 2012: 69,286
Hillary Clinton 2016: 55,973

Trump creamed Hillary in West Virginia 2.5:1 where she brought up the rear in popularity since 2004

Donald J. Trump 2016: 489,371 votes
George W. Bush 2004: 423,778
Mitt Romney 2012: 417,655
John McCain 2008: 397,466
John Kerry 2004: 326,541
Barack Obama 2008: 303,857
Barack Obama 2012: 238,269
Hillary Clinton 2016: 188,794

Hillary in Tennessee: The least popular candidate for president from 2004

Donald J. Trump 2016: 1,522,925
John S. McCain 2008: 1,479,178
Mitt Romney 2012: 1,462,330
George W. Bush 2004: 1,383,336
Barack Obama 2008: 1,087,437
John Kerry 2004: 1,035,160
Barack Obama 2012: 960,709
Hillary Clinton 2016: 870,695

Trump beat Hillary 1.7:1.

Yep, you guessed it, Hillary was 8th out of 8 in South Dakota, too

George W. Bush 2004: 232,584 votes
Donald Trump 2016: 227,721
Mitt Romney 2012: 210,610
John McCain 2008: 203,054
Barack Obama 2008: 170,924
John Kerry 2004: 149,244
Barack Obama 2012: 145,039
Hillary Clinton 2016: 117,458

Trump beat Hillary 1.9:1 coming in second.

Laugh of the Day: Chris Plante says SECDEF Ashton Carter, unlike Mattis, never made it to Rolling Thunder because . . .

. . . he was too busy organizing his sock drawer.

In Oklahoma 7 other presidential contenders since 2004 got the OK above Hillary

John McCain 2008: 960,165 votes
George Bush 2004: 959,792
Donald Trump 2016: 949,136
Mitt Romney 2012: 891,325
John Kerry 2004: 503,966
Barack Obama 2008: 502,496
Barack Obama 2012: 443,547
Hillary Clinton 2016: 420,375

Trump crushed Hillary 2.25:1 coming in third.

Hillary didn't just lose Ohio, she placed last there from 2004

Barack Obama 2008: 2,940,044 votes
George Bush 2004: 2,859,768
Donald Trump 2016: 2,841,005
Barack Obama 2012: 2,827,709
John Kerry 2004: 2,741,167
John McCain 2008: 2,677,820
Mitt Romney 2012: 2,661,437
Hillary Clinton 2016: 2,394,164

Hillary bombed in North Dakota, coming in 8th out of 8 from 2004

Donald Trump 2016: 216,794 votes
George Bush 2004: 196,651
Mitt Romney 2012: 188,163
John McCain 2008: 168,887
Barack Obama 2008: 141,403
Barack Obama 2012: 124,827
John Kerry 2004: 111,052
Hillary Clinton 2016: 93,758

Trump crushed Hillary 2.3:1.

In Missouri Hillary was the losingest loser, coming in 8th out of 8 from 2004

Donald Trump 2016: 1,594,511 votes
Mitt Romney 2012: 1,482,440
George Bush 2004: 1,455,713
John McCain 2008: 1,445,814
Barack Obama 2008: 1,441,911
John Kerry 2004: 1,259,171
Barack Obama 2012: 1,223,796
Hillary Clinton 2016: 1,071,068

In Louisiana Hillary was the biggest loser in 12 years

Donald Trump 2016: 1,178,638 votes
Mitt Romney 2012: 1,152,262
John McCain 2008: 1,148,275
George Bush 2004: 1,102,169
John Kerry 2004: 820,299
Barack Obama 2012: 809,141
Barack Obama 2008: 782,989
Hillary Clinton 2016: 780,154

Monday, May 29, 2017

Hillary's performance in Kentucky was the worst in 4 elections

Donald Trump 2016: 1,202,971 votes
Mitt Romney 2012: 1,087,190
George Bush 2004: 1,069,439
John McCain 2008: 1,048,462
Barack Obama 2008: 751,985
John Kerry 2004: 712,733
Barack Obama 2012: 679,370
Hillary Clinton 2016: 628,854

Trump beat Hillary in Kentucky 1.9:1.

I guess we all died a little in that damn war

Here.

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Hillary 2016 came in last in Kansas behind John Kerry 2004

George W. Bush 2004: 736,456 votes
John S. McCain 2008: 699,655
Mitt Romney 2012: 689,809
Donald J. Trump 2016: 671,018
Barack Obama 2008: 514,765
Barack Obama 2012: 439,908
John Kerry 2004: 434,993
Hillary Clinton 2016: 427,005

Who knew there were so many Russians working to steal the election from Hillary in Iowa?

Barack Obama 2008: 828,940 votes
Barack Obama 2012: 822,544
Donald Trump 2016: 800,983
George Bush: 2004: 751,957
John Kerry 2004: 741,898
Mitt Romney 2012: 730,617
John McCain 2008: 682,379
H. R. Clinton 2016: 653,669

Saturday, May 27, 2017

When it comes to Hillary Clinton, Arkansas knows best

Donald Trump 2016: 684,872 votes
Mitt Romney 2012: 647,744
John McCain 2008: 638,017
George Bush 2004: 572,898
John Kerry 2004: 469,953
Barack Obama 2008: 422,310
Barack Obama 2012: 394,409
Hillary Clinton 2016: 380,494

Mencken: No decent man would accept a degree he hadn't earned . . . honorary degrees are for riffraff

Mark "open borders" Zuckerberg

John "served in Vietnam" Kerry

Frank Bruni of The New York Times

Friday, May 26, 2017

Fourth Quarter GDP By Presidential Term

Third Quarter GDP By Presidential Term

Second Quarter GDP By Presidential Term

Lock him up: FBI under Comey committed hundreds of 4th Amendment privacy violations

From the story here:

For instance, a ruling declassified this month by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) chronicles nearly 10 pages listing hundreds of violations of the FBI’s privacy-protecting minimization rules that occurred on Comey’s watch.

The behavior the FBI admitted to a FISA judge just last month ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight the bureau promised was in place years ago.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

First Quarter GDP By Presidential Term

The trend for second quarter GDP doesn't look good for Trump

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Melania and Ivanka in Saudi Arabia vs. at The Vatican: Capisce?

In Saudi Arabia

At The Vatican

Laugh of the Day: Harvard-Harris poll has Trump job approval at 45%, Comey at 40%

Heh, heh.

Story here.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

An ideology which deliberately lets killers into your country isn't a better ideology

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.

Monday, May 22, 2017

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.

Sunday, May 21, 2017

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.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

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.

Friday, May 19, 2017

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.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

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.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

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!

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

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.

Monday, May 15, 2017

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.

Sunday, May 14, 2017

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.

Saturday, May 13, 2017

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.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

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.

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

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.