The cost of the war in Afghanistan since 2001 is $1.1 trillion, but The Wall would be a waste of money

Roseanne should have said she was hacked, you know, like Joy Reid

Valerie Jarrett inherited her looks from her dad

Valerie Jarrett

James E. Bowman

ABC should put Roseanne on The View next

She could reprise Ted Danson and see how Whoopi likes it now.

Laugh of the Day: Hollywood Reporter closes Disqus comments on Roseanne tweet story without showing even one

"This discussion has been closed".

What discussion?! (in my best Roseanne voice)

Cowards. You know everyone's laughing at Roseanne. Well, everyone with a sense of humor anyway.

Story here.

With every new story about JFK we hate him all the more, and his enablers and worshippers

From the story here:

“If the world had any idea how much of his time was focused not on NATO or Algeria or Vietnam, but on a hot date from Madame Claude, the perception of history would have been dubious, to say the least,” Stadiem writes.

Italy, the hysteria du jour

"Dow is set to drop 200 points at the open as worries about Italy roil world markets"

The Italian bond market, from the perspective of yields over the last ten years, is just shrugging. Yield on the short end is still negative:

6-month

1-year

10-year

30-year

Laugh of the Day: Chinese communism with curvy butt characteristics

South China Morning Post, here.

We don't want 'em either

Story here.

The story behind "I Drive Your Truck"

Here.

Everyday is Memorial Day for Stephen Newman, 67

Editorial: 'Every day is Memorial Day': A lifetime of grief for a soldier's son

This guy's kidding about Amazon, right?

From the story here at CNBC:

Most people who cook and who don't leave the house often can probably get by pretty well using only Amazon services. You get can clothes, food and entertainment all from a single company, which is pretty wild. Who else offers that?

This guy obviously never heard of Meijer, a big box store where you can get your eyeglasses, prescriptions, haircut, banking, groceries, books, entertainment, electronics, hardware, automotive, pet supplies, flowers and on and on. And they deliver. There are others, and were.

Like Prange's.

Prange's was a department store in my hometown back in the 1960s. It had everything, from toys, sporting goods and groceries to shoes, clothing and furniture, and it delivered. My mom used it all the time. And for fun we went there, on the bus. It had a lunch counter where you could sit down and eat, and an express counter for fast food like foot long hot dogs, and right across from that a wonderful bakery, too.

What goes around comes around. 

Trump has cut federal employment by a miniscule 0.3% November 2016 through April 2018

9000 jobs, a fart in a windstorm.

Federal employment peaked in 1990 at 3.2 million and hasn't averaged below 2.7 million since the mid-1960s.

As with ending abortion, cutting federal spending is only aspirational for Republicans in the same way that ending poverty and securing equal pay are only aspirational for Democrats.

Actually delivering on these promises would mean having to come up with new ones, which is too much like work.

James Woods: Scum pardons scum

A Democrat is troubled by the FBI's excuses for Hillary's crimes

Saritha Prabhu in "I’m A Democrat, And The Left’s Russia Gaslighting Scares Me More Than Trump Does":

But I sense a bigger problem on the Democratic side, both among ordinary Democrats and prominent left-leaning pundits. In the Trump era, many seem unable to grasp irony and facts as it applies to their own side. For instance, when they talk about Trump violating the rule of law or obstructing justice, don’t they realize that some of us are thinking: Yes, but where were you when the FBI didn’t apply the rule of law to Hillary Clinton, and why didn’t you object when Hillary obstructed justice by deleting emails under subpoena? Shouldn’t the rule of law apply to everyone?

Despite what The New York Times now says, "Russia-Gate" has always been about the Steele dossier

So says Lee Smith for The Federalist in "How The Code Name ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ Undermines The FBI’s Russia Story":

After an October news report showed his dossier was funded by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, facts that further challenged the credibility of Steele’s research, the FBI investigation’s origin story shifted.

Meanwhile the trend toward lower minimum temperatures and lower maximum temperatures remains pronounced in Grand Rapids, Michigan: 3 degrees F lower over the last 120 years

Trend for average temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan, indicates warming of about +0.5 degrees F over the last 120 years

That's it.

The not-much-of-a-muchness of it suggests that the growth of heat island effects could easily account for the observed results.

How the failed North Korean summit is just like Election 2016

The North Koreans simply failed to show up, as did Hillary's voters.

But as with the election, everyone will go on interminably with other attempts at explanation.

The idiots at Politico call the Hermit Kingdom "hermetic" after North Koreans fail to show up in Singapore

Hermits are recluses, the followers of Hermes something else again. Apparently the editor never learned the difference at Carleton College, or is himself a hermit, employing himself elsewhere.

Here:

The scuttling of the summit, which had been scheduled for June 12 in Singapore, is a blow to U.S. efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, as well as Trump’s desire to land a legacy-making deal with the hermetic nation. ...

A senior White House official said the [North Korean] statement was simply the latest in a “trail of broken promises“ that led Trump to abandon the talks. Last week, North Korean officials failed to show up in Singapore for a series of meetings to lay the groundwork for the presidential summit, the official said, declaring: “They simply stood us up.“

In recent days, the North Koreans have also been unresponsive to U.S. attempts to reach them. “We simply couldn’t get them to pick up the phone,“ the official said. In addition, the North Korean government did not keep its promise to invite experts to observe what it has said was the closure of one of its nuclear test sites, casting doubt on what really happened, the official said.