Laugh of the Day: It's much cheaper to teach a machine common sense than a liberal

Sweden's immigrant crime problem: Nothing's a problem until The New York Times says it's a problem

Flashback: "The polls, they say I have the most loyal people . . . where I could . . . shoot somebody . . ."

The Des Moines Register, January 23rd, 2016, here:

SIOUX CENTER, Ia. — Donald Trump told a crowd in Sioux Center on Saturday that he could "shoot somebody" and not lose traction with voters.

“You know what else they say about my people? The polls, they say I have the most loyal people," Trump said. "Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s like incredible.”

Trump doubles down on autocratic rule in China, says "I think it's great"

If you're not offended by Trump's casual flaunting of the seriousness of his role as "leader of the free world" by now, then you are as un-American as he is and deserve to be ruled by a dictator.

Watch for Rush Limbaugh to dismiss this as just yet one more instance of Trump trolling his mostly liberal opposition in order to dominate the news cycle.

The news cycle.

That remark by the press during the 2016 campaign that Trump could shoot someone in the street and still get elected has drilled itself down into Trump's brain and has become a veritable axiom and exemplar to Trump about his invulnerability, which explains the freedom with which he has so many times gone off the reservation of his own supposedly strongly held beliefs: "They say I have the most loyal people -- did you ever see that? -- where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters".

Obviously, he doesn't have any strongly held beliefs, except the belief in his own greatness which his twisted sense of self has from the beginning latched on to in the flimsiest of quarters, the news cycle.  

From the story here:

"He's now president for life, president for life. And he's great," Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump's remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN. "And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday," Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.

It is not clear if Trump, 71, was making the comment about extending presidential service in jest. The White House did not respond to a request for comment late Saturday.

U.S. Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat, said on Twitter that "whether this was a joke or not, talking about being President for life like Xi Jinping is the most unAmerican sentiment expressed by an American President. George Washington would roll over in his grave."

South African parliament votes to violate post-apartheid agreements and confiscate white-owned farms without compensation

The story is here.

South African GDP has contracted by a whopping 29% as black radical Marxists have gained the upper hand there since 2011.

The country is following the pattern of neighboring Rhodesia, which willingly embraced Marxist Robert Mugabe in 1980.

Keep letting into America 1 million non-whites a year and the same will happen here.

It's just a matter of time. In South Africa, it took just 24 years.

How about no VOTE under 21, and no car, no job, no credit card and no COLLEGE LOANS either?

Grow up already you bunch of babies.

Story in The Atlantic cherry picks data about senior poverty

The Census Bureau's new (since 2011 but fiddled with again in 2013) Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) shows senior poverty in slight retreat since 2009, but you wouldn't know that from the story here (you'd have to look at the chart to the left here) which says it's up between 2015 and 2016, which it most certainly is, but hey, c'mon. The fact is, the "official" measure shows that senior poverty has dropped big time since the mid-1960s when the rate was knocking on the door of 30%, stabilizing in recent years in the 8, 9 and 10% range:

The problem is growing as more Baby Boomers reach retirement age—between 8,000 to 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day, according to Kevin Prindiville, the executive director of Justice in Aging, a nonprofit that addresses senior poverty. Older Americans were the only demographic for whom poverty rates increased in a statistically significant way between 2015 and 2016, according to Census Bureau data. While poverty fell among people 18 and under and people 18 to 64 between 2015 and 2016, it rose to 14.5 percent for people over 65, according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which is considered a more accurate measure of poverty because it takes into account health-care costs and other big expenses. “In the early decades of our work, we were serving communities that had been poor when they were younger,” Prindiville told me. “Increasingly, we’re seeing folks who are becoming poor for the first time in old age.”

Once again Trump demonstrates that he has no principles: Confiscate guns without due process

It didn't take long for the office to go to his head, but go it has. The man is now a clear and present danger.

Who will stop him? Mike Pence? Paul Ryan? Mitch McConnell?

Here:

“I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida ... to go to court would have taken a long time,” Trump said at a meeting with lawmakers on school safety and gun violence.

“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said.

Some roaring economy: 4Q2017 real GDP revised DOWN today to 2.5% in second estimate

That's down from 2.6% in the first estimate.

3Q2017 real GDP was 3.2%, indicating the economy slowed down on an annualized basis in the fourth quarter by almost 22%.

Blame it on the hurricanes if you want, but growth for all of 2017 comes in at a paltry 2.3%. That's up from 2016's measly 1.5%, but so far, Trump's 3%-4% growth is nowhere to be seen.

And neither is The Wall.

Leader of the free world my foot: Trump White House says it's up to China if it wants to turn back toward autocracy

Li Datong, a former editor at the state-run China Youth Daily, posted a draft letter urging legislators to vote against the move -- which would abolish term limits set in 1982 under Deng Xiaoping to prevent a return to the decades of chaos under Mao Zedong.

"It was the highest and most effective legal restriction meant to prevent autocracy or putting individuals above the party and the state," said the letter. It was not sent to legislators but shared with hundreds of people in a private group on China's WeChat phone messaging app.

"Lifting the term limits of national leaders will be ridiculed by civilised nations all over the world and also sow the seeds of chaos for China," said the text posted on Monday. ...

"The president has talked about term limits in a number of capacities during the campaign and something that he supports here in the United States, but that's a decision that's up to China," said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.

More here.

Supremes decline to rule on DACA ahead of court of appeals, could take another year to reach Supremes again

Illegality isn't an emergency to the Supremes. Neither is the challenge to the Executive branch's constitutional authority in the matter.

You live by the courts, you die by the courts.

If Trump had any balls, he'd ignore the courts and deport them all. Let the courts try to enforce their rulings.

Story here.

Peter Morici: Republican opposition to regulating prices will bring Medicaid-like single payer to USA

Here.

To Richard Brookhiser of National Review, illegal immigration isn't even a thing, and conservatism's biggest hypocrites are among the Religious Right

Here, where strong national defense, cultural and New York intellectual conservatives, and free-marketeers all receive his scorn:

Trump’s conservative admirers have had to abandon and contradict what they once professed to hold most dear.

The most egregious example is the religious Right. The religious Right is the latest version of an old model of American politics, variously incarnated by Puritans, abolitionists, and William Jennings Bryan. It, like its predecessors, has argued that America and individual Americans need to have a godly or at least moral character to thrive. Now the religious Right adores a thrice-married cad and casual liar. But it is not alone. Historians and psychologists of the martial virtues salute the bone-spurred draft-dodger whose Khe Sanh was not catching the clap. Cultural critics who deplored academic fads and slipshod aesthetics explicate a man who has never read a book, not even the ones he has signed. Followers of Harry Jaffa, the most important Lincoln scholar of the last 60 years, rally round a Republican who does not know why the Civil War happened. Straussians, after leaving the cave, find themselves in Mar-a-Lago. Econocons put their money on a serial bankrupt.

Poor fella. No one listens to him anymore.

Laugh of the Day: Incompetent Sheriff Israel thinks he's Sheriff Joe

Quoted here:

"Jake, I can only take responsibility for what I knew about. I exercised my due diligence. I've given amazing leadership to this agency—" Israel started.

The tongue really had to lube the lips for that one.

Nikolas Cruz called the cops on himself, but not even they listened, or cared

Are you listening, America? To anyone?

The New York Times reports, here:

Mr. Cruz, 19, himself called the authorities just after Thanksgiving, describing how he had been in a fight and was struggling with the death of his mother. “The thing is I lost my mother a couple of weeks ago, so like I am dealing with a bunch of things right now,” he said in a childlike voice, sounding agitated and out of breath.

The problem with Trump at CPAC is that he made it sound like the Second Amendment is negotiable

“By the way, if you only had a choice of one, what would you rather have — the Second Amendment or the tax cuts?”

More here.

I don't know what's more revolting, Rubio and Sheriff Israel appearing with Trump, or Trump proudly featuring the photo

Hey Trump, why not make 'em wait 'til 26?

There's no there there, just pure, unadulterated reaction.

Not only does Florida's Broward County Sheriff have four incompetent deputies, his political loyalties are to incompetents, too

More here.

Marco Rubio entertains infringing the Second Amendment

How about the First Amendment, Marco? Or the Sixteenth? or the Fourteenth? You skull full of mush.

Here:

"If we are going to infringe on the Second Amendment, it has to be a policy that will work," Rubio said in an interview Thursday with AP.