Congress may end up getting rid of Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein if Trump won't

The window for that, however, closes if Republicans lose the House in November. Reps. Jordan and Nunes ought to consider that the Department of Justice will continue to slow-walk this just enough to get them there.

From the story here:

Although the DOJ cooperated with the lawmakers Wednesday, the department has still failed to fully comply with congressional subpoenas for thousands of documents. Thus, Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed U.S. Attorney John Lausch of the Northern District of Illinois to speed up efforts to deliver documents lawmakers have been seeking for months. But if the process drags out too much longer, [Rep.] Jordan said there would be severe consequences for Rosenstein, Wray and Sessions.

"My attitude is just like [Nunes']. If things don't change dramatically — and I'm talking days, not weeks or months — if they don't change dramatically, then impeachment and contempt and resignations should all be on the table," Jordan warned. "Because we're tired of it, and more importantly the American people are tired of it."

Two US guided-missile destroyers never fired a shot, Syria attacked instead from three other directions

Bloomberg reports here in "Warship Ruse and New Stealth Missiles: How the U.S. and Allies Attacked Syria":

While both vessels carry as many as 90 Tomahawk missiles -- the main weapon used in the Friday evening strike on Syria -- neither ship in the end fired a shot. Instead, according to a person familiar with White House war planning, they were part of a plan to distract Russia and its Syrian ally from an assault Assad’s government could do little to defend itself against.

The Laugh of the Day: Trump 2013 says Obama must get Congressional approval b4 attacking Syria

Miloš Forman has passed away at 86

The Czech director of Amadeus (1984, won 8 Academy Awards) and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975, won 5 Academy Awards) had made his American home in Connecticut. 

The LA Times has the obit, here.

SECDEF Mattis has called the joint missile strike on Syria a "single shot", not an opening salvo in a war

Reported here:

Mattis said the strike was a “single shot” aimed to deter the Syrian regime from using chemical weapons. Whether the United States and its allies will pursue further action in Syria would “depend on Mr. Assad should he decided to use more chemical weapons in the future," the secretary said. 

Critics will no doubt say the April 2017 missile attack was a one-off, too. How many one-offs does it take before we're at war?

US, France and Great Britain attack Syrian chemical facilities after 6th Russian veto at the UN on Tuesday

From the veto story here:

Washington (CNN) -- Russia vetoed a US draft resolution at the UN Security Council Tuesday that would have established an independent investigation into the suspected use of chemical weapons in Syria. ... In November, Russia blocked the renewal of the independent panel investigating chemical weapons in Syria, and British Ambassador Karen Pierce reminded the council that Tuesday's vote marked Russia's sixth veto related to chemical weapons in Syria. Seven nations -- including the US -- voted against a Russian resolution that would have set up an investigation overseen by the Security Council. According to Haley, that draft was designed to give Russia a chance to approve the investigators who were chosen for the task and allow the Security Council to assess the findings of the investigation before any report was released. A second Russian resolution that only supported the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons fact-finding mission in Syria also failed to pass. The organization is made up of an international team of investigators but it cannot on its own determine who was responsible for the attack.

If we really had full employment in America, we wouldn't be missing 7.6 million working

The difference between 63.2% working before 2009 and 60.2% working in March 2018 is 7.6 million.

China has 350,000 students in the US, many of them spying and reporting to 100 "Confucius Institutes" at US universities

Bill Gertz reports here.

Former British Ambassador to Syria says first responders to gas attacks on which the West relies are themselves Islamic fanatics who beheaded their enemies

Watch here.

He says the video evidence is unverified and probably staged and that the West should get inspectors in there.

It's April 12th but snow remains in the forecast for Grand Rapids, Michigan

John Boehner joins board of marijuana company

These people don't care about anything except cashin' in.

Here.

Dershowitz meets with Trump, accuses Mueller of laundering info he's not allowed to pursue to SDNY

Reported here.

150 big spending House Republicans gave away the store in December 2015 in exchange for lifting the oil export ban

The Roll Call vote is here.

Since the vote on Dec. 18, 2015 what we got in return is US debt to the penny increasing by $2.33 trillion through 4/9/18, or 12%, and the price of a gallon of gasoline climbing by 65-cents, or 33%.

Way to go, Brownie!

Hungary completes second border fence with Serbia in less than two months for 120m Euros

The second fence was begun in late February, according to Politico here.

The 3-meter high 155km barbed barrier is already finished, according to Reuters here.

That's 96 miles in two months for the equivalent of $149 million.

That would come to $3.1 billion for the equivalent of 2,000 miles of US barbed barrier with Mexico. To match the Hungarian pace the US would need to finish the 2,000 miles in 3.5 years.

Somebody tell Trump the election is 2.5 years away.

Fine, Mueller's had bupkis all along, but unscrupulously rummaging through information privileged between client and attorney might lead elsewhere

That's why someone has to stop Mueller.

Law and order costs money, which implies taxation and government

And that's this morning's reason why I'm a conservative, not a libertarian.

We wouldn't need to increase law and order if men were increasingly demonstrating that they were angels, but because they are not, we do. Simple as that.

Now, on to my coffee.

Violence on the right: Takimag author floods the zone with the bilge of his own irrationality

He's no different than Antifa. Giving up on reason is never the answer.

Here:

Anyone who, like me, has spent a lot of time in discussion and argument with other people can easily see how little the rational avails. ... And that is precisely why we need a civil war. ... There are so many bad ideas, and such moral rot, that only war can rid us of the many pathologies that obviate culture and democracy alike. Only war can bring us to a state of affairs in which people, having serious problems to face, will have a more reasonable perspective and stop griping about safe spaces, white supremacy, toxic masculinity, and all the tiresome rest. Only war will send our politicians the message that Americans will not abide their cynical manipulations and refusal to do what is best for us.

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, But down in the bilge, and with just one foot, Pumping away was Chris DeGroot, says Johnny.

Levin calls for Sessions to step down as AG in wake of FBI raid on Trump's personal attorney

Says Trump "can put Dershowitz in there for all I care."

Dershowitz for his part called the raid dangerous for the future of attorney-client privilege.

The whole thing makes us want to puke. The affair is completely out of control, and there's no one in the amusement park to turn off the ride.

Don't be fooled: Our communist enemy Xi Jinping Pong is still after our high-tech

Quoted in the story here:

"We hope developed countries will stop imposing restrictions on normal and reasonable trade of high-tech products and relax export controls on such trade with China."

Disqus' Jewel Box and Channel Z don't believe in freedom of speech anymore than Takimag does

Hillary's pal in California Party of Censorship introduces bill requiring fact-checking before posting

Publius Decius Mus exits the Trump Administration

Michael Anton.

Story here.

Laugh of the Day 2.0: Holocaust survivor born in 1938 or 1939 warns America under Trump feels like 1929 Berlin

Here in "Holocaust survivor: America under Trump feels like 1929 Berlin".

The story references Newsweek as the source, here:

At 79 years old he is among the youngest of the Holocaust survivors still alive. But Jacobs can remember life in the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald; what the Nazis did to him, his family, his friends. ...

“It feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin,” Jacobs says, ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2018 on Thursday.

Laugh of the Day: What happens to your ad copy when it's proofread by the Chinese

New lightweight cookware "provides price control of the cooking process".

Precisely. Price control is always at the top of my list when I'm trying not to overcook the scrambled eggs.

So-called Alt-right Takimag commits suicide, drops popular Disqus Comments after three month slide in Alexa traffic rankings

And that's after the big decline from the summer of 2017 after the loss of the popular Gavin McInnes. Replacement with a dark, combative author in his place hasn't helped, either.

The celebrated comments section, a veritable maelstrom of unparalleled wit, wisdom and waywardness, was unceremoniously ended over the Easter weekend, scattering its loyal denizens like ants.

They have been welcomed by Disqus' Jewel Box and Channel Z, but will be m o d e r a t e d.

Rotza ruck.

The dumbest headline of the day comes from The New York Post

Headline:

GOP’s tax cut isn’t a gift to the rich, analysis finds

Paragraph six of the story:

The biggest beneficiaries of the new tax structure are those earning between $300,000 to $733,000, according to the analysis. They’ll see an average tax cut of about 3.4 percent, taking home an extra $11,200 this year on average.

I guess the Post doesn't know that 90% of individual wage earners make less than $100,000 per year.

Loretta's been having lunch again, a lot of it

Immigration raid sends shockwaves through packing industry happy to hire people from shit-hole countries

Neil Munro reports for Breitbart, here:

The raid is sending shock-waves through the meatpacking industry which is being caught between marketplace pressure to keep costs low and the federal laws barring the employment of cheap foreign migrants.... For many years, the industry has relied on a mix of immigrants, illegal migrants and legal refugees from Syria, Somalia, and other unfortunate countries. The resulting marketplace pressure is pressuring reluctant meatpackers to raise their salaries. ...

Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.

But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting roughly 1.1 million new legal immigrants, by providing work-permits to roughly 3 million resident foreigners, and by doing little to block the employment of roughly 8 million illegal immigrants.

The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration floods the market with foreign labor, spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.

Fake jobs boom: Just 23,000 full-time jobs were added in March 2018

We're still missing about 6.2 million full-time jobs . . .

. . . and the pace of additions has slowed to recession-like levels.

YouTube shooter was Iranian refugee, follower of Baha'i faith

The LA Times reports here:

Aghdam entered the country as a refugee roughly two decades ago, a family member said. In one of her videos, she said she was born in Urmia, Iran — where she and other members of her Baha'i faith face discrimination — and that her family had spent a year and a half in Turkey.

Trump plays hardball with China, latest threatened tariffs impossible to match

Bloomberg reports here:

President urges levies on $100 billion more of Chinese goods . . . Were China to want to match Trump’s latest threat, it wouldn’t have enough American goods imports to target. It could take other measures like curbing package tours or student transfers to the U.S., or hamper American companies operating in China.

And just like that The Atlantic fires Kevin Williamson

Reportedly, here, after learning that Williamson advocates that women who abort their babies should be hung for homicide.

Sounds more like a convenient "discovery" after The Atlantic realized it had made a mistake hiring him in the first place. One almost gets the feeling that Williamson was set up.

Meanwhile The Atlantic tolerates women who actually kill their unborn children, but not someone who merely thinks that's a capital offense.

John Gray identifies the apocalyptic faith animating Antifa

Here, in The Times Literary Supplement:

The hyper-liberal demand that public spaces be purged of symbols of past oppression continues a post-Cold War fantasy of the end of history.

Adam Winkler: The British colonies in America were created and governed by corporations

Discussed here at TNR as if this were news to them:

Winkler’s approach is different from the outset. He does not see corporate behemoths as a deviation from the ideal of a land of small entrepreneurs. Nor does he see the corporate form—the structure that allows a business entity to have a degree of independence from those individuals who found it—as inherently menacing. The British colonies, he points out, were settled by private organizations such as the Massachusetts Bay Company and the Virginia Company, entities that had stockholders and were governed by charters—essentially, by corporations. “Democracy and constitutionalism,” as he puts it, “were intimately tied up with the corporation from the very beginning.”

Kevin Williamson laments the passing of classical liberalism, the soil in which libertarians got rich

Well, at least we finally know whose side Kevin is really on. His own. 

Here:

[L]ibertarianism has benefited from the fact that American elites are notably more libertarian in their views than is the median American voter. That dynamic was explored by the economist Bryan Caplan under a typically bold title (“Why Is Democracy Tolerable?”) with a typically needling conclusion: “Democracies listen to the relatively libertarian rich far more than they listen to the absolutely statist non-rich … Democracy as we know it is bad enough. Democracy that really listened to all the people would be an authoritarian nightmare.” ...

[T]he United States is for the moment left with two authoritarian populist parties and no political home for classical liberalism at all.

Coulter after The Oval: I don't think we're getting The Wall

Here:

COULTER: . . . I said you're not doing what you promised to do.

Where's the end of NAFTA? Where's the wall? Where are the deportations? What are you doing talking about the DREAMers?

CARR: To which he responded? 

COULTER: [Does Trump impersonation] I appointed Gorsuch.

That's all we're getting.

Winnie Mandela, vicious animal, meets her maker at 81

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for March 2018

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for March 2018

Max temp 56, Mean Max temp 66

Min temp 17, Mean Min temp 7

Av temp 34.3, Mean Av temp 34

Precip 1.16, Mean precip 2.45

Snowfall 4.9, Mean snowfall 9.1, Snowfall season to date 71.7, Mean Snowfall season to date 63.6

Heating Degree Days 943, Mean HDD 955, HDD Season to date 5599, HDD Mean Season to date 5850

Using HDD, the cool season to date has been 4.29% warmer than the mean.

Trump blames Mexico, our own laws and his powerlessness, the Limbaugh Theorem in action

“opposing everything that’s happening, even the things he is causing to happen. He is on a perpetual campaign.”

Laugh of the Day: Snow for Easter

Snow for Christmas

snow for Easter

livin' in Michigan

frosts my keister

Maybe David Hogg would be accepted by more colleges if he learned how to write the English language

The redundant "only" is also indicative.

Treated I bad did they.

You sound like Yoda.

A gypsy detects a fascist in David Hogg

Trump promised The Wall, celebrates a fence

Story here.

Trannies for Kevin Williamson: National Review thinks Ta-Nehisi Coates' favorable opinion of Kevin Williamson is a good thing

David French, here:

If Ta-Nehisi Coates can see the virtues of his work, then perhaps there’s room for you [progressives] to open your minds. National Review’s loss is The Atlantic’s gain, but even more importantly, the marketplace of ideas benefits from his transition.

Coulter at Columbia: I knew Trump was a shallow, lazy ignoramus, and I didn't care

At a debate with Mickey Kaus.

Story here.

Trump lazy? Now you've gone too far, Ann Coulter, too far!

National Review's Kevin Williamson looks left and heads to The Atlantic

Where Kevin and his sneering elitism will find a larger audience. Slate's Jordan Weissmann pretends not to get it: "Above all else, Williamson is something fairly rare in U.S. media: an explicit, unrepentant elitist."

After three revisions, 4Q2017 real GDP still comes up short at 2.9% annualized

That's up from 2.5% in the second estimate, but still down from 3.2% in 3Q.

That means that despite the holiday shopping season and all the expenditures of hurricane recovery, the economy still slowed down in the fourth quarter of last year. It should have been the best quarter yet if the economy were truly on the upswing.

To make matters worse, 1Q2018 is shaping up to be a horrible 1.8%.

BBC calls convicted, mostly Pakistani, grooming gang 'Oxford Men', which ought to outrage the elite university's graduates everywhere

Laugh of the Day, Stormy Daniels edition: If you want Trump to screw you repeatedly, you have to be one of his voters