Finally Italy has a leader in Matteo Salvini: They have to go back! Italians First!

47% of legal aliens in US receive at least one form of public welfare, compared with 32% of the native born

Mostly in the form of Medicaid.

The story is here.

Trump may have kept the issue of US troops in South Korea separate from the North Korea talks, but he still wants them out

Removing US troops from the peninsula will only give China what it wants. A robust US presence in South Korea, Japan and Guam helps ensure the security of Taiwan, not simply the security of South Korea. The end game is Taiwan. Trump is misguided to think otherwise.

Quoted here before 6:30 this morning:

“I want to bring our soldiers back home,” Trump said, although he added that it’s “not part of the equation right now.” Then he said: “We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should. But we’ll be saving a tremendous amount of money. Plus, I think it’s very provocative.”

Trump's determination eventually to remove US troops from South Korea isn't what the South wants or the North demands

From the story here in early May:

The South Korean government reiterated this week that the troops were still needed and would not be pulled out as a result of a peace treaty with North Korea. ...

Mr. Kim recently declared, through South Korean officials, that he would drop the North’s longstanding insistence that American troops leave the peninsula. Some experts argue that watching American soldiers depart is far less important to him than winning relief from economic sanctions.

Italy for Italians, Africans out!

Like they don't have enough room in Africa.

The Clapperism Laugh of the Day: FBI seizes reporter's records in order to protect her

Unnamed sources say the records were suspected to be highly toxic weapons of mass destruction.

Just remember: The House Freedom Caucus is no friend of ours, so to stop amnesty all you can do is call 202 224 3121

"The Club for Growth and Koch Industries — both pro-amnesty — are the biggest donors to Freedom Caucus members."

Slow wage growth remains a mystery to economist Noah Smith

Here.

And they call economics a science.

It's not a mystery if you question your presuppositions, for example that the economy is strong, and that the unemployment rate tells you something meaningful. But that might be too much to ask of an economist.

Strong growth is relative. Economic growth in the post-war began with a big bang and has been cooling off ever since. Compared to the beginning, we're half as robust today. So the economy is not strong, just operating in concert with inertia.

The unemployment rate is very low, but only because so many people have dropped out of the labor force at the same time that the slowest jobs recovery in the post-war has occurred. The low unemployment rate is an artifact of this concurrence.

Presently there are over 16 million people unemployed, underemployed, and not in the labor force who want to work. That's why wages aren't growing. We're still flush with labor, and business knows it.

You can be replaced.

Republican corporate tax cuts = record stock buybacks in May 2018 = corporate insiders selling to profit BIGLY

From the story, "Corporate executives are using stock buybacks to pad their own compensation, according to the SEC", here:

Indeed, buybacks totaled $178 billion during the first quarter, hit a record $171.3 billion in May alone and have seen $51.1 billion announced so far in June, according to market data firm TrimTabs. At the same time, insider selling has totaled $23.6 billion.

Meanwhile Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports total hirings in the first five months of 2018 are down 48% from the first five months of 2017.

The Republican tax cuts are working out as predicted: Failing to provide jobs while enriching elites.

Texas alone has 251,000 criminal aliens who aren't good people, committing 663,000 serious crimes since 2011

From the story here:

According to the DHS and the Texas Department of Public Safety, over 251,000 criminal aliens have been booked into local Texas jails between June 1, 2011, and April 30, 2018. They have been charged for a total of 663,000 offenses including:

1,351 homicides;

7,156 sexual assaults;

9,938 weapons charges;

79,049 assaults;

18,685 burglaries;

79,900 drug charges;

815 kidnappings;

44,882 thefts;

4,292 robberies.

The Answer: Because they are slaves

The Question:  Why middle-aged women with kids make the best employees

"... the group that is most discriminated against when it comes to jobs."

Reihan Salam: Permanent normal trade relations with China fostered its tyranny

Well duh. We sell them the rope to hang us with, but first they hang their own.

From the story in The Atlantic, here:

What might the world have looked like had the U.S. never granted PNTR to China? One possibility is that China would have pursued an economic strategy built around fostering indigenous entrepreneurship and bettering the lives of its own workers, as it did in the 1980s. Instead, Beijing chose to transfer wealth from ordinary Chinese citizens to its politically powerful export sector, a path made possible by PNTR. China might very well have become just as rich by embracing a more balanced and humane approach to development. Doing so, however, would have required that its central government surrender a measure of control to its citizens. Rather than foster liberalism and openness in China, I suspect PNTR did exactly the opposite—creating the conditions for China’s central government to exert tighter control over the Chinese populace.

Sheldon Richman, a progressive, Marxist libertarian

 "Most of the old rules are rubbish ... divisions ... wither away with each generation".

Funny how Enlightened England became hostile to American Presbyterianism, and so ruined itself

The ruin of a state is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners, and contempt of religion, which is entirely our case at present.

-- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Buzzfeed attacks Disqus for its alt-right hangouts

The marginalization war continues, and the herding instincts of the targets makes them easy prey. The irony of their ghettoization is lost on them.

Here:

A number of pro-white and alt-right users have created their own bloglike communities inside Disqus’s platform in order to share stories, comment, and coordinate influence trolling campaigns (which the trolls dub “raids”). One channel called Mickey’s Clubhouse — whose popular topics include Jews, Holohoax, Censorship, White Genocide, and Jew World Order — appears to be home to a number of users coordinating the infiltration of comment sections on Breitbart and other conservative publications. The goal, as evidenced by their comments, is to flood conservative-leaning publishers with pro-white and anti-Semitic content in order to win hearts and minds and indoctrinate others to their politics.

Jim Goad's just upset because readership at takimag has dropped off a cliff

Like Rush Limbaugh, he blames his base:

'I’d like to cheerfully suggest that you take that finger you’re always pointing at others and stick it up your ass. With the way you’re always talking about “degenerates,” you’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?'

SECDEF Mattis explicitly states US troops in South Korea are not a bargaining chip in North Korea denuclearization talks

Quoted here:

However, Defense Secretary James Mattis said recently at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that any discussion about U.S. military presence in South Korea will be "separate and distinct" from the negotiations with Pyongyang.

"That issue will not come up in the discussions with [North Korea] and as you all recognize; those troops are there as a recognition of a security challenge," Mattis said.

Our political opponent Charles Krauthammer, unlike John McCain, shows us the way home

Showing gratitude, not acrimony.

Here.

May G-d be with you, Charles.

Just 16% of junior US Navy officers completely competent at ship-handling

But I'll bet the rest know everything there is to know about equality between the sexes and sexual preference.

The story is here.

More US Navy shame, more proof China's our enemy: Chicoms successfully hack 614 gigabytes of highly sensitive data from contractor

WaPo reports here:

Chinese government hackers have compromised the computers of a Navy contractor, stealing massive amounts of highly sensitive data related to undersea warfare — including secret plans to develop a supersonic anti-ship missile for use on U.S. submarines by 2020, according to American officials. ...

In September 2015, in a bid to avert economic sanctions, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to President Barack Obama that China would refrain from conducting commercial cyberespionage against the United States. Following the pact, China appeared to have curtailed much, although not all, of its hacking activity against U.S. firms, including by the People’s Liberation Army. Both China and the United States consider spying on military technology to fall outside the pact.