Oh yeah? Bring me his head on a platter

Laugh of the Day: CNBC/Reuters headline blames 0.38% decline in .DXY on Donald Trump Jr. emails

Yes, yes you are

The Denver Post defends the right of anyone to request and receive public voter records, including President Trump

Here:

Withholding public records simply because you don’t like the president or because he is investigating election fraud sets a terrible precedent and is perhaps illegal.

At this point in the Obama administration the Senate had confirmed 202 appointments, in the Trump just 50

Story here.

And Republicans are in the majority in the Senate.

The immediate effect of NAFTA passage in late 1993 was pushing 2.3 million more Americans into part-time employment by the end of June 1994

Laugh of the Day: NYT calls blaming Palin for Giffords' shooting for six years "an honest mistake"

Comey's "private" memos were government property, contained classified information which he may have mishandled, improperly stored or shared

From the story here:

FBI policy forbids any agent from releasing classified information or any information from ongoing investigations or sensitive operations without prior written permission, and mandates that all records created during official duties are considered to be government property. ... 

[T]he revelation that four of the seven memos included some sort of classified information opens a new door of inquiry into whether classified information was mishandled, improperly stored or improperly shared. 

Ironically, that was the same issue the FBI investigated in 2015-16 under Comey about Clinton’s private email server, where as secretary of State she and top aides moved classified information through insecure channels.

Russia derangement syndrome, from the pen of David Frum . . .

Here:

Trump’s not wrong to perceive a threat to the Euro-Atlantic from the south and east. But the most recent and most dramatic manifestation of that threat was the Russian intervention in the U.S. election to install Donald Trump as president.

John O'Sullivan still refuses to accept the meaning of "ourselves and our Posterity"

Here:

Notice that Ronald Reagan did not say that the great civil ideas of the West were the property of those Notre Dame graduates who were descended from the Founding Fathers and their generation. Nor did he say that they were the property of white Anglophone Protestants who had fetched up on these shores in the meantime — since that would have excluded the son of an Irish Catholic father like himself. Nor that the children of black slaves or other non-white migrants were excluded from that same moral and intellectual Western inheritance which the black former slave and passionate reader, Frederick Douglass, so cherished and claimed as his own.

Kevin Williamson of National Review, CNBC's kind of conservative, tries out for job with better liberals, calls Trump a coward and a fool

Here, saying Trump is no different than Obama for being all talk and no action.

Williamson is unhappy that Trump hasn't yet started a shooting war with North Korea, which makes Williamson actually little different from Trump, who gave China all of two months to get North Korea under control.

Williamson has a BA in English from UT-Austin. Travis County Texas, home of UT, went for Hillary over Trump by nearly 66% to 27% in 2016, and gave libertarian crank Gary Johnson over 4.5% of its vote.

Over 42,000 still without power in southwest lower Michigan 42 hours after storm

Full-time jobs still haven't recovered after 10 years: We are at least 4.6 million behind

Full-time jobs in June 2007 stood at 122.2 million.

40.58% of the population then had full-time jobs.

In June 2017 127.3 million had full-time jobs, but that is only 39.16% of the population.

At the 2007 rate, 131.9 million would have full-time jobs in June 2017.

One can say the level has recovered, but the percentage sure hasn't.

We are at least 4.6 million full-time jobs behind what could reasonably be called full recovery, after 10 long years which millions will never get back:

Like people with already long careers which were cut short in their peak earning years, to the stillborn careers of young people whose college preparations got them ready for nothing but debt payments, to the people who finally found full-time jobs again but at salaries 20% behind what they were paid for the same work a decade ago, to the many millions who struggled through income stagnation throughout the period.

That's just some of the true crime of what has just transpired, and it's all on Barack Obama, the enemy of the middle class.

Have you noticed that all the dumb ass conservatives in talk radio have stopped talking about this number?

And it's not because they have finally come to understand what this number means. No, it's because they have a different president now, and they're not going to beat him over the head with it.

That's all.

Hey Rush, 94.8 million people not working but still eating! Take the food away! Kids in high school and college and retired people on Social Security have no right to eat if they're not working!

Dumb ass.

About 27 hours after the storm hit, nearly 100,000 are still without power in southwest lower Michigan

Loretta Lynch may have testified falsely before the House in July 2016, may have spoken with Amanda Renteria

From the story here:

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which has launched a bipartisan investigation into Lynch for possible obstruction of justice, recently learned of the existence of a document indicating Lynch assured the political director of Clinton’s campaign she wouldn’t let FBI agents “go too far” in probing the former secretary of state.

CNN: Clown Network News, where everyone follows the company dress code

Linda Sarsour, co-chair of Women's March on Washington, says fighting Trump is Jihad, must protect the Muslim Community and not assimilate

Here.

I'm guessing "Shinnecock Hills" Man is an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, but that's just me

Steve Scalise back in intensive care after being shot by left-wing extremist supporter of Bernie Sanders

Reported here in WaPo, which never mentions Scalise was shot by a left-wing extremist supporter of Bernie Sanders.

Bet you didn't know this: Vladimir Putin gave John Podesta's company Joule Unlimited $35 million

Democrats colluding while accusing others of what they do themselves.

From the story here:

[W]hen he joined the Obama White House, Podesta transferred his Joule shares to an LLC controlled by his adult children. He also resumed communicating with Joule and Joule investors after leaving the White House and joining Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In fact, he received an invoice from his lawyers in April 2015 — a consent request for Dmitry Akhanov of Rusnano USA to join Joule’s board.

But nothing to see here, Podesta insisted. ...

In 2012 the company claimed it had raised $110 million to date.

That meant the Kremlin-backed $35 million investment given to Joule after Podesta’s board appointment represented over 30 percent of Joule’s outside financing.

Infections kill 380,000 in nursing homes annually, mostly Medicaid recipients

Forget dying in the streets, they already drop like flies on Medicaid and no one gives a rat's rear end.

From Betsy McCaughey, here:

The real threat to seniors isn’t Medicaid funding levels. It’s that Medicaid officials tolerate substandard nursing-home care, when they could use the program’s market clout to demand better conditions. About 66 percent of long-term patients are paid for by Medicaid.

Trump's right, gas should go lower

After all, gasoline was $1.02 as recently as January 2002.

After just 5 months Trump has ISIS, the JV team, surrounded in Raqqa and Mosul

"This is good! How many did they behead as Obama played Golf?" 

Story here.

John Batchelor: The professors are lying about the Medicaid "cuts"

Here, where we learn that the Obamacare Medicaid expansion actually was UNFAIR because it is far more generous, by 100%, to childless, non-disabled, non-elderly adults earning less than $16,000 a year than it is to poor children, the disabled and seniors who were already on Medicaid.

The Republican Senate plan cuts that back 50%, equal to the existing, traditional reimbursement for poor children, the disabled and seniors on Medicaid.

Equality. It's a bitch brought to you by Republicans, not Democrats. 

AEI is full of crap: This country was formed for "ourselves and our posterity", not for the sake of ideas, or hordes of future immigrants

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

What's not to like this July 4th: Hillary's not president and gasoline averages $2.22 nationally

The American Revolution: Not an upheaval, but a return, a restoration

From the story here:

First, there were those who admired the English constitution that they had inherited and studied. Believing they had been deprived of their rights under the English constitution, their aim was to regain these rights. Identifying themselves with the tradition of Coke and Selden, they hoped to achieve a victory against royal absolutism comparable to what their English forefathers had achieved in the Petition of Right and Bill of Rights. To individuals of this type, the word revolution still had its older meaning, invoking something that “revolves” and would, through their efforts, return to its rightful place—in effect, a restoration. Alexander Hamilton was probably the best-known exponent of this kind of conservative politics, telling the assembled delegates to the constitutional convention of 1787, for example, that “I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever produced.” Or, as John Dickinson told the convention: “Experience must be our only guide. Reason may mislead us. It was not reason that discovered the singular and admirable mechanism of the English constitution…. Accidents probably produced these discoveries, and experience has given a sanction to them.” And it is evident that they were quietly supported behind the scenes by other adherents of this view, among them the president of the convention, General George Washington.

The revolving revolution of 1776

From an op-ed in The Washington Times here:

"This was the object of the Declaration of Independence," [Jefferson] wrote in a letter to Henry Lee in May 1825. "Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take."

In that vein, the "revolution" was conservative and indeed conforms to Edmund Burke's original use of the word with its common meaning of something revolving. A full revolution returns affairs to an original condition.

It wasn't about being original in the sense of being new; it was about telling the world who we are as Americans. "Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion," Jefferson added.

Tens of thousands of refugees stuck in Italy

From the story here:

With France and Switzerland closing their borders to migrants since last year, the tens of thousands in Italy have nowhere to go. The EU came up with a plan to relocate around 160,000 asylum seekers stuck in Italy and Greece but so far only 12,000 have been resettled. Italy says it can no longer be expected to deal single-handedly with the vast number of asylum seekers, most of them economic migrants, streaming across the Mediterranean. ... 

The Italian government has warned that after years of taking in hundreds of thousands of migrants, the country is now at breaking point.

Italy's jobs debacle continues while stupid leaders let in refugees by the millions

From the story here:

Italy's chronic unemployment problem has been thrown into sharp relief after 85,000 people applied for 30 jobs at a bank – nearly 3,000 candidates for each post. ... It is not the first time that huge numbers of young Italians have applied for a small number of posts. When the region of Umbria advertised 94 public administration jobs in 2015, more than 32,000 people applied. A hospital in Milan that needed to recruit 10 nurses was inundated with more than 7,000 candidates.

Remember when Obama boasted of creating 2.1 jobs?

Six years ago at Real Clear Politics:

Employers immediately panicked after Obama was elected, shedding jobs by the millions

From November 2007 through October 2008, there were 19.6 million first time claims for unemployment.

Not good, but nothing like what followed.

Immediately after Obama was elected, the figure jumped by over 52% in November 2008 and never looked back. For the first twelve months after Obama's election, jobless claims jumped by 56% to 30.6 million.

The average per month jumped from 1.6 million per month to 2.6 million.

And in the first eight months since Trump was elected?

The average is 1.1 million per month.

Happy Independence Day!

Rahm Emanuel just lies about economic growth in Chicago: He's presiding over decline, not growth

Here:

Cities with reliable, modern mass transit are more economically competitive, have higher productivity, fewer carbon emissions and a better quality of life. And as we have seen in Chicago, mass transit not only connects people to opportunities, it also fuels growth. Modernizing our existing mass transit is one reason Chicago’s economy has expanded faster than the economies of New York and Washington, and faster than the national average for the last five years.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for June 2017

Mean average temperature was 69.5 degrees F in June 2017 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The mean is 67.6.

The lowest minimum temperature was 46. The mean is 43.

The highest maximum temperature was 93. The mean is 91.

Precipitation was 4.88 inches. The mean is 3.55.

Snowfall was zero. Seasonal snowfall 2016-2017 ends at 60.1 inches. The mean is 66.6.

Heating degree days came to 22. The mean is 54. The season ends with 5635, the fifth warmest on record. The mean is 6703. Seasonal maximum is 7712. Seasonal minimum is 5253.

Cooling degree days to date come to 162. The mean to date is 139. Seasonal maximum is 1200. Seasonal minimum is 316. 

Fake wrestling doesn't exist, you see: Disinformation radio news media keep referring to Vince McMahon in 2007 Trump wrestling video as "a man"

The C-students in the media, all descended from Piltdown Man and with faces made for radio, don't want anyone to make the connection with fake news and maybe laugh at Trump's joke. This is about VIOLENCE against the media dontchaknow!

Ohio Man, Pennsylvania Man, Michigan Man, Asian Man, and Gun Man all get arrested for terrorism according to news reports but have absolutely nothing in common. Hm. What could it be?

And now Vince McMahon is just A Man and can't get no respect!

He might as well be Muslim Man.

"Ohio Man" is terrorist born in Somalia, trained in Syria

Trump's funniest stunt yet: Mocks fake news with fake wrestling

Here.

Better than "only Rosie O'Donnell" and giving out Senator Grahamnesty's phone number.

There's no business like the loan shark business: Federal student loan rates jump 18.4% effective July 1

The 10-year Treasury pays barely 2.3% but the Feds will now gouge students over 93% more than that.

From the story here:

For new loans disbursed from July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2018, undergraduates will pay 4.45 percent. That's an increase from this year's rate of 3.76 percent. ... [Graduate students] will pay 6 percent for a direct unsubsidized loan — which begins accruing interest as soon as the borrower takes out the loan — an increase from 5.31 percent this year. Finally, rates on direct PLUS loans, which both graduate students and parents of undergrads can use, will rise to 7 percent from the current 6.31 percent. ... Last year, the average college graduate owed $37,172, up 6 percent from 2015, according to data from Student Loan Hero. ... Total student debt in the United States is now over $1.4 trillion — the majority of which is from federal loans.

Hey Mark Warner, these are the only Trump words that matter!

I got your frickin' CBO score right here

Government at all levels now costs 36% of GDP.

We can't afford another pencil.

Reuters gets it exactly backwards on $1.42 billion Taiwan arms deal: It pressures China to help on North Korea

Trump is playing chess with China, which has been provoking the free world by building illegal islands in the South China Sea and militarizing them. Arguably Trump needs to move even more pieces in their direction on the board.

Here:

China's anger over the U.S. plan to supply Taiwan with weapons risks undermining Trump's attempts to press China to help on North Korea. ... The sales, which require congressional approval, would be the first since a $1.83 billion sale that former President Barack Obama announced in December 2015, also to China's dismay.

Reuters should stick to reporting the news instead of opining about it.

Sigmar Gabriel, Vice Chancellor of Germany, calls refugees more German than Germans critical of them

Here.

I'm practising my kneeling position before the king this weekend

CNBC's Jake Novak says Trump finally came to his senses with Obamacare "clean" repeal tweet

Here:

[I]n a tweet Friday morning, President Trump strongly suggested the Republicans just repeal Obamacare and worry about the replacement later. Thank you for finally coming to your senses, Mr. President!

Dan Bongino for Sean Hannity brings on Mark Meadows to talk about Obamacare repeal, and do they discuss Trump's clean repeal tweet?

No. Zip, zero, nada, bupkis.

Unbelievable.

Worthless.

This is talk radio malpractice.

OK, we're basically 0-5: Neither Michael Savage nor Dan Bongino on Hannity are leading with Obamacare repeal

We'll see about Levin in three hours.

It's pretty disappointing that conservative talk radio can't follow President Trump's talking points even when he spells them out on Twitter.

Trump has made a YUGE move to the right and everybody's just shrugging their shoulders today.

Gallup: Middle-class self-identification normalizes at 62%, same as in 2003 after bottoming out at 50% under Obama

Here.

Mark Belling turns to Trump Obamacare repeal tweet

Finally. Right now.

We didn't elect a king to worship like Obama's slaves worship him, we elected a fighter

Not to be outdone by P. J. O'Rourke, libertarian Mark Perry also genuflects toward the hypocritical French today

Namely toward Frederic Bastiat, here, who wrote against "legal plunder", never once mentioning that the estate off of which Bastiat derived his living had been stolen from the aristocracy during the French Revolution.

Mark Perry is not just a one-off, either. Bastiat is a hero to libertarians generally. For example, to Rep. Justin Amash, who not coincidentally owes his fortune to the family business in tools, which are manufactured in China, not the united States.

Protestations against legal plunder, my foot.

And Mark Belling also wastes our time defending Trump in L'Affaire Joe Mangina

Filling in for Rush Limbaugh today.

Trump hands off the rhetorical baton on repeal of Obamacare, and so far today 3 talk radio hosts have dropped it.

Trump moves far right on Obamacare, morning talk radio gives us crickets

Both Laura Ingraham and Chris Plante had more important things to talk about today than President Donald Trump expressing willingness to forego Obamacare replacement for simple repeal.

Idiots.

P. J. O'Rourke discovers the limits of individualism, gets wet for (French) state capitalism

Arianespace.

Here.

When regular capitalism won't do, there's always the comparatively smaller French state capitalism:

"An individual could not build a rocket like these, no matter what his wealth or how much time he was allotted." 

Hey, P. J., would it be too much to ask you at least to admire our own?

Yes, it would be from a frog-licker.

Justin "Might as well be a Democrat" Amash also voted against "No Sanctuary for Criminals Act"

Amash and six other Republicans (Curbelo of FL, Diaz-Balart, Donovan, King of NY, Reichert, Ros Lehtinen) went down to defeat with 188 Democrats.

HR 3003.

Here.

Republicans Chaffetz, Gosar, Long, Mark Meadows, Nunes, Scalise, Smith (NJ) and Stivers did not vote.

Defeated Leader of the Party of Street Violence and Abortion Death calls the kettle black

Laura Ingraham is ripping Justin Amash as an embarrassment right now, the only Republican to vote against Kate's Law

HR 3004.

Here.

If you're a big fan of John Locke, you're not a conservative

Read What is Conservatism? to understand why.

FINALLY: Trump tweets support for full repeal of Obamacare without "replace"

Here.

Send him HR 3762, stat.

Laugh of the Day: Traitor Joe is bleeding from his mangina

Seen here, in the comments section.

"Sorry mom"!

The servile Kim Strassel has no fight in her, thinks the Senate healthcare bill simply comes down to pre-existing conditions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the story here, where Strassel counsels bowing to federal mandates, which means bowing to the left-wing extremist who bankrupted America:

Republicans lost this argument nearly a decade ago, when Mr. Obama won. More than 90% of Senate Republicans understand this.

Which is another way of saying that protections for pre-existing conditions are here to stay, and conservatives face a choice. They can work with their colleagues to minimize the costs of the mandates (there are innovative ways to do this) and build in different free-market reforms to lower premiums. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the current Senate bill will reduce premiums by about 30%, and the GOP can and should build on this.

Yes, the simple solution is always to bow, to submit, whether to the king, or to Allah.

Real Americans don't settle for easy.

Elmo says Syrian children like to learn just like Elmo, learns how to submit to Allah in prayer

Story here.

Walmart bathrooms evidently don't get a very thorough daily cleaning

Your fair share in taxes in 2015 was 21.3%: Did you pay it?

Obama expanded Medicaid on the backs of taxpayers who also buy health insurance, making them pay twice

Betsy McCaughey, here:

Who's picking up the tab for this vast Medicaid expansion? You. Worse, you pay twice -- once as a taxpayer, and then again as an insurance consumer. Families with private insurance pay $1,500 to $2,000 or more in added premiums yearly already to keep Medicaid afloat. The more Medicaid expands, the higher their premiums will go. That's because Medicaid shortchanges hospitals and doctors, paying less than the actual cost of care. They make up for it by shifting the costs onto privately insured patients. Ouch.

For some unknown reason The American Conservative decided to remind us today about the crack-up of Bruce Bartlett

They reran his 2012 piece detailing his several intellectual crises, in which the libertarian finally gave up and became the liberal, although he denies it.

Nostalgia on the editors part, no doubt, for wound-licking in defeat.

Day 159

Obama October 2016: The idea the election is rigged "happens to be based on no facts"

Imagine that. No facts! Even though his intelligence community says there are facts! So sure was he that Hillary would win.

Here (the provided transcript occasionally fails to represent exactly what Obama actually said):

"I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place. It is unprecedented. It happens to be based on no fact. Every expert regardless of political party... who has ever examined these issues in a serious way will tell you that instances of significant voter fraud are not to be found. Keep in mind elections are run by state and local officials."

Just words, no doubt.

Laugh of the Day 2.0: Obama said no serious person would suggest you could rig America's elections

Except for Trump, after which Hillary took the bait, as did the DNC, and then the Obama intelligence community and the entire establishment media, all blaming Russia for interfering and causing Hillary to lose in the process.

Here, in the Rose Garden three weeks before Election 2016:

Obama echoed those sentiments Tuesday, saying there's "no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America's elections." ... "It doesn't really show the kind of leadership and toughness that you'd want out of a president. You start whining before the game's even over? If whenever things are going badly for you and you lose you start blaming somebody else? Then you don't have what it takes to be in this job," Obama said. 

You said it, buddy.

How to reform Medicaid before Obamacare is even repealed and save $48.3 billion: Kick out all the illegal aliens

We don't need no stinkin' Medicaid

CIS estimates that 51% of illegal aliens are enrolled in Medicaid, here.

That's 6.12 million illegals receiving Medicaid out of 70 million total receiving Medicaid in 2015.

Medicaid outlays in 2015 came to $552 billion, or $7,886 each. 

Bernie Sanders says his wife Jane is the most honest person he knows

Here.

Hm, does that include Hillary?

Laugh of the Day: The S&P 500 since CNBC's Jim Cramer's panicked "sell" on NBC on October 6, 2008

The French are building a wall . . . around the Eiffel Tower

And you thought no one had their priorities straight.

Supreme Court to hear Trump travel ban case in October, lifts injunctions giving Trump a big victory

From the story here, nineteen lines in:

The action by the court is a victory for President Trump in the biggest legal controversy of his presidency so far.

There's no way Republicans will take away Medicaid from 25 million people, 11 million or whatever

Just a fact, not a statement of approval.

If Trump wants to win on Obamacare, he should propose a Medicaid tax in exchange for repeal

If Trump wants to win on Obamacare, he should propose a Medicaid tax in exchange for repeal of Obamacare's individual and corporate mandates instead of the stinker bill now being proposed by the Republicans in the Senate.

That way those of us who can obtain real insurance like we did before will obtain it again but at a cheaper cost than now, and those who can't will still have Medicaid, but funded by dead certain payrolls instead of the hodge podge of state and federal funding now.

Because of Obamacare, those who have insurance are subsidizing at enormous expense to themselves those who have become covered since 2009 under the plan, mostly under Medicaid. Medicaid alone has swelled by 25 million people thanks to Obamacare. It's a massive income redistribution scheme from those who have insurance to those who don't, which is manifestly unfair. There are easily 48 million people in this country making less than $15,000 a year who have no skin in this game yet qualify for Medicaid.

The answer, short of returning to the status quo ante where millions are kicked off of Medicaid, is to make more people pay their fair share. This means taxing every dollar of compensation with a Medicaid tax, just like we do with Medicare. The burden should be born by everyone, including those now receiving Medicaid.

Currently we have about 55.5 million enrolled in Medicare, supported by a 1.45% payroll tax. It isn't enough support, but there it is.

Medicaid on the other hand has exploded under Obamacare to coverage of 75 million, but state budgets, like individuals' budgets under Obamacare's outrageously expensive health insurance, are breaking badly under the burden. 33 will fall short of revenue targets in the current fiscal year.

The proportional Medicaid payroll tax rate implied by 75 million program participants is at least 1.95%.

This is Trump's opportunity to put Medicaid on a sounder footing.

Republicans won't like this plan because it involves a new tax, even though many people are already paying this tax to one degree or another depending on their tax obligation in their state of residence. The revenues, insufficient as they are, are already collected at the state level, but variably.

So it's not really a new tax. It's a new collector.

Democrats ought to love this idea, for the obvious reason. It codifies the nation's "obligation" to the poor's healthcare in the form of a tax, just as Medicare codifies the nation's obligation to the elderly's healthcare. With it they can claim Obamacare is still the law of the land in some form.

Pelosi and the House Democrats are well positioned to deliver this in the form of a bill to send to the more evenly divided Senate because Paul Ryan and a coalition of 75 or so liberal Republicans could get it over the goal line, just like they did so many times before in league with the Democrats, making an end run around the House conservatives.

The Senate would go for the bill because it is simply more liberal all around. Democrats there would vote for this, along with liberal Republicans.

Trump needs to get this done and off the table.

We've been arguing about it now in earnest for 8 years already and are just plain sick of it.

Enough already!

Repeal Obamacare root and branch, and institute a Medicaid tax.

Modern economists are unfamiliar with the Christian, his horse, plow, ax and box of dynamite

California, home of the 9th Circuit which shot down Trump's travel ban, bans travel to 8 states

From the story here:

California is restricting publicly funded travel to four more states because of recent laws that leaders here view as discriminatory against gay and transgender people. All totaled, California now bans most state-funded travel to eight states. The new additions to California’s restricted travel list are Texas, Alabama, Kentucky and South Dakota. They join Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee as states already subjected to the ban.

Wind energy turbines kill 368,000 birds annually, but kitties kill far more

Reported here in early 2015:

Now, federal wildlife officials are cracking down on wind farms caught killing bats and birds. A peer-reviewed study issued last summer estimated turbines kill as many as 368,000 birds annually. ... House cats kill at least 1.4 billion birds annually, and possibly up to 3.7 billion birds, according to a 2013 federal study. And a single natural-gas flare at a liquid natural gas plant in Canada killed an estimated 7,500 birds in a single night.

38% of Americans shun crowds in 2017, up from 23% in 2006

Gallup poll, here.

Laugh of the Day 2.0: Karen Handel wins by nearly 4 points in Georgia, Rachel Madcow blames the weather

Story here.

Laugh of the Day: Mueller to investigate whether Republican winner in Georgia last night colluded with Russia

63% of Hispanic immigrants are illiterate in English, 41% of all immigrants are

Story here.

Democrats and Republicans look set to agree on something: A ban on travel to North Korea

Story here.

Uh oh, Trump gives up on China doing anything about North Korea after just two months

Trump met with Xi Jinping in April, here, after which he expressed the hope that China would lean on Fatboy.

Didn't work, but he sure didn't give it very long now did he?

Tucker Carlson skewers the libertarianism of Bret Stephens, who thinks you are nothing but a widget in the machine of global capitalism

Here:

He also shows little care for Americans as anything besides units of economic productivity, widgets to fuel the machine of global capitalism that pays Bret Stephens many thousands a year to write mediocre opinion columns in a dying newspaper. 

Finally somebody at National Review gives libertarianism the what-for and really, truly gets it

Here:

The alliance that has united conservatives and libertarians in common cause against bureaucratic bloat and its soft despotism is crumbling; indeed, it could never be maintained. The identity confusion that manifested as the splintering of the Right into neo-conservatives, paleo-conservatives, crunchy conservatives, tea-partiers, Trumpists, and all the rest is, in large part, the tension between the conservative and the libertarian minds. The individualism and myopia of the libertarian vision of society — atomized individuals self-defined and free from every native context in a world where everything is earned and nature mastered — is at fundamental odds with the conservative reverence for ties to family, place, and history, with its hope for nature in harmony, man’s with himself and the rest of creation. ... the fissure widens and the semantic gap between “liberal” and “libertarian” shrinks . . ..

SECDEF Mad Dog Mattis is mad as a hatter: Imposes mandatory transgender training on the US Army

From the story here:

As part of the Pentagon’s attempt to create an accepting environment for transgenders, the Army held a session Tuesday teaching officers and others how to implement existing military policy, particularly how to “assist soldiers who have a medical diagnosis indicating that gender transition is medically necessary through the gender transition process,” USA Today reports. ...

Conservative leaders have asked Secretary of Defense James Mattis to rescind directives allowing transgenders to serve, as “costly and distracting social engineering” that is standing in the way of combat effectiveness and readiness.

Pat Buchanan remembers a score of violent leftist attacks in America, and more

Here:

The campus violence and urban riots of the decade, from Harlem to Watts to Newark and Detroit, to Washington, D.C., and 100 cities after Dr. King’s death, were not the work of the Goldwater right.

F. H. Buckley doesn't have a clue how to kill the administrative state

Here. And I won't bore you with any of the impotent suggestions.

The only way to kill the administrative state is to cut off its food supply, which is taxes in quantity. That's why it took so long to get to the administrative state: The constitution effectively outlawed taxes in quantity by outlawing any taxation save for direct taxation and excises and tariffs.

We could start by abolishing withholding, on our way to abolishing the income tax. But frankly, this will require a revolution, including in thinking. And you won't find anything revolutionary from F. H. Buckley.

Real conservatives know that without the income tax there would be no administrative state to speak of. Fake conservatives pretend that we can have limited government short of abolishing it.