Openly business hostile states

Investors Business Daily points out that New York has lost far more than Amazon's HQ2.

From 2010 to 2017, New York lost 1 million people to other states. In 2017 alone, it lost more than 160,000. And with them went tens of billions of dollars in taxable income.

And once Amazon learned that Democrats in the state senate might scuttle the massive incentive package it had arranged, it fled New York, too.

The same thing is happening in other openly business-hostile states. California saw 556,000 leave from 2010 to 2017. Illinois lost 642,000, New Jersey 201,000, Connecticut 153,000.

...If New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to bring companies like Amazon to the state, here's an idea. Cut New York's taxes across the board, rein in the state's regulatory behemoth. And then get out of the way. Same goes for other anti-business states.

Read more here.

"Shame on all these failed conspirators and their abettors, and may these immoral people finally earn a long deserved legal and moral reckoning.

In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson writes,

...There are many elements to what in time likely will become recognized as the greatest scandal in American political history, marking the first occasion in which U.S. government bureaucrats sought to overturn an election and to remove a sitting U.S. president.

...The “counterintelligence” investigation subverted two years of the Trump presidency by constant leaks that Trump soon would be indicted, jailed, disgraced, or impeached. As a result, Trump’s stellar economic and foreign policy record would never earn fifty percent of public support.

Second, Mueller’s preemptive attacks offered an effective offensive defense for the likely felonious behavior of John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, and a host of others. While the Mueller lawyers threatened to destroy the lives of bit players like Jerome Corsi, George Papadopoulos, and Roger Stone, they de facto provided exemption to a host of the Washington hierarchy who had lied under oath, obstructed justice, illegally leaked to the press, unmasked and leaked names of surveilled Americans, and misled federal courts under the guise of a “higher loyalty” to the cause of destroying Donald J. Trump.

...The newly promoted McCabe apparently felt that it was his moment to become famous for taking out a now President Trump. Thus, he asse"mbled a FBI and DOJ cadre to open a counterintelligence investigation of the sitting president on no other grounds but the fumes of an evaporating Clinton opposition dossier and perceived anger among the FBI that their director had just been fired. In addition, apparently now posing as Andrew McCabe, MD, he informally head counted how many of Trump’s own cabinet members could be convinced by McCabe’s own apparent medical expertise to help remove the president on grounds of physical and mental incapacity under the 25th Amendment. This was an attempted, albeit pathetic, coup against an elected president and the first really in the history of the United States.

...McCabe was iconic of an utterly corrupt FBI Washington hierarchy, which we now know from the behavior of its disgraced and departed leadership. They posed as patriotic scouts, but in reality proved themselves arrogant, smug, and incompetent. They harbored such a sense of superiority that they were convinced they could act outside the law in reifying an “insurance policy” that would end the Trump presidency.

...sanctimonious arrogant bureaucrats in suits and ties used their government agencies to seek to overturn the 2016 election, abort a presidency, and subvert the U.S. Constitution. And they did all that and more on the premise that they were our moral superiors and had uniquely divine rights to destroy a presidency that they loathed.

Shame on all these failed conspirators and their abettors, and may these immoral people finally earn a long deserved legal and moral reckoning.

Read more here.

"Since the Republican Party is part and parcel of the ruling class that is ruining America, relying on it to make America great again was doomed to be self-defeating."

In American Greatness, Angelo Codevilla writes about the bind President Trump has gotten into by compromising with the Washington D.C. Uniparty.

Trump slid into this bind as more than half his presidency slid by because he relied on the Republican Party’s establishment. This reliance was his choice. Nobody else’s. Recall that Trump won both the nomination and the presidency by running as much against the Republican part of the ruling class as against the Democrat part of the ruling class.

Since the Republican Party is part and parcel of the ruling class that is ruining America, relying on it to make America great again was doomed to be self-defeating.

...Regardless of what Donald Trump will do, we know that our ruling class has no way of moderating the course on which it has set itself, and that, hence the rest of Americans have no choice but to fight for their own freedom, whether under Trump’s leadership or whomever’s.

Read more here.

Biden: "America is an embarrassment!"

Jay Greenberg reports in Neon Nettle,

Former Vice President Joe Biden has blasted the United States to European leaders while speaking at an annual foreign policy conference, declaring that America "is an embarrassment."

READ MORE: https://neonnettle.com/news/6547-joe-biden-tells-european-leaders-america-is-an-embarrassment-
© Neon Nettle

A smart cow

Today's Democratic Party

Vivek Saxena reports in BPR,

In a mega viral tweet posted early Sunday morning, outspoken Hollywood actor James Woods managed to sum up the contemporary Democrat Party in under 280 characters.

“Nigerians and fake nooses, MAGA hats and a #CraftyBeaver. #CowFarts and trains to Hawaii. A lying Senator saying she’s a Cherokee. A #HeelsUp Senator sleeping her way to the bottom. Congresswoman married her own brother? Governor in a KKK robe. Ah, #Democrats!!! Gotta love ‘em!” he wrote.

What if?

In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson wrote on January 20 an imaginary scenario in which all of the things that the Deep State has done to President Trump would have been done to President Obama. Imagine here.

Seinfeld: How it began, and what it became

Another huge failure by the media

In PJMedia, Debra Heine explains how the media failed once again to challenge dubious claims.

Empire actor Jussie Smollett's weeks-long reign as (liberal) America's intersectional sweetheart came to an inglorious end this weekend when it was revealed in multiple reports that he paid his two Nigerian pals to stage a fake hate crime against him last month in Chicago.

Many (perhaps most) Americans from the beginning suspected that Smollett tried to manufacture a hate crime to make Trump supporters look bad. But not the mainstream media. They fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

You would think that after falling for "tribal elder" Nathan Phillips' dubious claims last month -- to the point of being legally culpable -- the media would be a bit more circumspect.

But no. When presented with another enticing opportunity to demonize Trump supporters, they jumped like Pavlov's dogs at the chance.

TMZ broke the original version of the story late last month in a report alleging that Smollett was the victim of a vicious hate crime:

Upon leaving a Chicago Subway sandwich shop circa 2 AM one sub-zero night in late January, two masked men recognized him as the openly gay black actor starring in Fox’s ‘Empire,’ hurled racist and homophobic slurs at him, beat him to the point of breaking his ribs, doused him with bleach, tied a noose around his neck, before pronouncing “This is MAGA Country!” and fleeing.
Detectives now have a receipt for the rope found on Smollett's neck showing that his Nigerian friends bought it.

There were inconsistencies in Smollett's story from the beginning, not to mention a continuous flow of leaks from Chicago cops indicating that they were investigating a potential hoax.

Why didn't Smollett mention that the attackers yelled, "This is MAGA country!" during his first interview? How did he know the race of his attackers if they were completely covered and wearing face masks? Why was he still holding his Subway sandwich when he got back to the apartment? Why did he wait more than 40 minutes before calling the police? Why did he still have the noose around his neck when the police came? Why did he ask them to turn off their body cameras? Where did TMZ get the idea that he had broken ribs? (He didn't.) Is it really plausible that these racist, anti-gay Trumpies would be out hunting for Smollett at 2 a.m. on one of the coldest nights of the year?

Local reporters did an excellent job of looking for answers to those questions and bringing out the facts before they were officially confirmed by the Chicago Police Department.

But amid all of the questions and inconsistencies, most of the national media *still* uncritically reported Smollett's tale of being "brutally assaulted" by racist, homophobic Trump supporters -- right up to the bitter end.

As Grabien notes, "The national media owed it to their viewers to give this story the circumspect coverage responsible journalism demands."

But instead, we saw journalists in many cases report Smollett's highly dubious claims as facts -- not allegations. And as his story was rapidly falling apart, Smollett was granted a softball interview on Good Morning America, where he was treated with kid gloves.

..."This is America in 2019," CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin lamented in response to the Smollett's hate crime story.

She's actually right about that. But not in the way she thinks.

Read more here.

What is manhood?

In his opening remarks, Andrew seems to be having a good time explaining the events surrounding the budget resolution funding the building of a wall on our southern border.

Fiction is meant to tell the truth about the world. Fantasy tells the truth about the person who is having the fantasy! Fantasies in the media tell of the all-consuming evil of Donald Trump, the realism of the Green New Deal. The problem of dealing in fantasy: reality will just keep on unfolding without us! When you buy into fantasies, you lose your own life.

Have you heard of PostTrumpSexDisorder? Good, that means you don't read Salon.com! Andrew reads from an article there. But there is also the opposite fantasy, in which men and women who are attracted to bad boys are turned on by Trump!

Andrew talks about Andrew McCabe's bombshell to be revealed tonight on 60 Minutes. Andrew thinks cops should have arrested McCabe immediately after his confession to violating every principle of American governance! These FBI guys are so surrounded by people appointed by Obama, everyone believing in the same fantasies! They truly believe they are the good guys and the Trump team are the bad guys. They convinced themselves that a coup would be a valid thing for them to participate in! Rosenstein says McCabe is lying. Yeah, somebody is lying. Is it McCabe or Rosenstein? Or both!

What is the scandal? Russian collusion, or this coup? The scandal, overlooked all these months by the media, is this coup! CBS inadvertantly reveals it in order to get viewers for tonight's show! It is a disgrace that the media has spent all this time trying to prove a Trump-Russian collusion, when the biggest scandal in American history is the story of how Obama turned our national government and media into a Democrat machine!

Dr. Warren Farrell is Andrew's guest. He is co-author of a book entitled, The Boy Crisis: Why our Boys are Struggling. I first heard of Dr. Farrell in the 1970s when he was on the board of the National Organization for Women (NOW). At that time, he self-identified as a feminist. No longer! Why? Because feminists have framed the world as men are oppressors and women are the oppressed. The boy crisis resides where dads do not reside! Suicides: dad-deprived boys. Shooters: dad-deprived boys. Opiate endemic: dad-deprived boys! Is it "male privilege" to sacrifice your life in war so somebody else will live?

Andrew summarizes: "Manhood is being yourself, having integrity!"

Tomorrow is what day? What is a president?

Nancy Pelosi first wishes everyone Happy Valentines Day, but then seconds later changes it to "Happy Thanksgiving!"

"Trump asked for the moon and the stars and the Milky Way. Pelosi said you'll get nothing. He'll settle for the moon then."

Don Surber reports in his blog,

The budget resolution was supposed to be filled with landmines that would thwart President Trump's efforts to protect the nation. The rumor mill went into overdrive on Thursday and Friday.

I waited to see what was in the budget before I reacted.

Paul Bedard, now with the Washington Examiner, said none of the poison pills made it, and the president did far better than the media reported.

When was the last time the media got anything right about President Trump?

Read more here.

The not-so-silent coup

Has there ever been a Sixty Minutes show more hyped than tonight's interview with Andrew McCabe? Stephen Nemo summarizes what is at stake here.

What leadership looks like

Another excellent opening statement by Judge Jeanine...except she made a boo-boo at the 2:35 mark, saying "ISIS arrested" when she meant to say ICE arrested.

However, her comments about Trump's leadership and fake news from the Left are spot on.

Sessions and Kelly?

Daniel Chaitin reports in the Washington Examiner,

Former FBI general counsel James Baker testified to Congress last fall that he was told by two officials that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said a pair of Cabinet officials was "ready to support" an effort to remove President Trump from office.

Addressing a joint task force of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, Baker did not name the Cabinet officials. Baker did identify the two FBI officials who informed him of Rosenstein's talk of invoking the 25th Amendment: Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, whose anti-Trump text message with ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok has fueled concern among GOP lawmakers that there is rampant bias in the FBI.

“I was being told by some combination of Andy McCabe and Lisa Page, that, in a conversation with the deputy attorney general, he had stated that he — this was what was related to me — that he had at least two members of the president’s Cabinet who were ready to support, I guess you would call it, an action under the 25th Amendment,” Baker said in a closed-door testimony, according to Fox News.

...McCabe also said Rosenstein suggested that sympathetic Cabinet members who might join their cause included the attorney general and homeland security secretary, who at the time were Jeff Sessions and John Kelly, respectively.

Read more here.

"Remarkably Arrogant!"

Andy McCarthy wrote yesterday in Fox News,

Ever wonder why people hate lawyers? Consider Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s non-denial denial of his participation in discussions of an attempted coup against the duly elected president of the United States.

The story is being given a second life thanks to the hype surrounding the rollout of a new book by Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI.

McCabe, of course, was fired after an inspector general investigation found that he leaked investigative information and then lied about it. He has been referred to the Justice Department for consideration of a false-statements prosecution.

...There are really no new revelations in this week’s breathless reporting. The story is a retread, trotted out again because CBS is hoping to generate ratings for its “60 Minutes” interview of McCabe on Sunday night, the launch of the McCabe book tour.

...The 25th Amendment was adopted in the years shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination to address the potential problem of a president who is rendered physically or mentally unable to perform his duties – as, for example, President Woodrow Wilson was by a stroke.

The amendment is not a substitute for the Constitution’s impeachment process: If you believe a president is guilty of maladministration – of criminal, abusive, or incompetent behavior – the remedy is for Congress to impeach him, not to declare him physically or psychologically unfit.

Moreover, McCabe and Rosenstein were in no position to invoke the 25th Amendment. By its own terms, it can only be invoked by the president himself, or by the vice president in conjunction with a majority of the Cabinet (or a congressionally authorized committee).

Neither McCabe nor Rosenstein was a Cabinet officer. All they could do was speculate about which Cabinet officials might be amenable to considering a 25th Amendment ploy; and they quickly dismissed the idea because they realized they were nowhere close to a Cabinet majority, let alone to a green light from the vice president.

So yes, it was a serious discussion; but it was also an ill-conceived discussion.

...It is understandable that the deputy attorney general wishes he hadn’t talked about removing the president. Legally, it was a harebrained idea. As a matter of civics – unelected bureaucrats brainstorming about how to reverse a democratic election – it was remarkably arrogant. But it happened, nonetheless. Rod Rosenstein’s lawyerly evasions can’t change that.

Read more here.

"The Democrats are telling us just who they are and what they’d do with more power."

In the Washington Times, Larry O'Connor explains how the past two weeks have been revealing. Read more here.

"uneasy lies the head that wears the crown in the nation-state of California."

Toni Williams writes in Victory Girls,

One must ask at this point, what are California values? Highest state income tax in the whole country, check. Banning of plastic bags and straws, check. Casting couch cretins, check. Number 15 state for violent crime, check. Highest poverty rate in the country, check. Number four state for income disparity, check. Number two for highest cost of living, check. Number 35 in education, check. Fuhgeddaboud building a new house. Oh, and remember when the state lawmakers partied while California burned? Read Nina’s post here. But, the orange man is bad and doesn’t represent California values. Thank goodness.

Read more here.

"At the moment, tech has no obvious political allies.

Megan McArdle writes in the Washington Post,

...Though Amazon won’t lose much by redirecting expansion elsewhere (including adding personnel to its offices elsewhere in New York), Big Tech should be worried about the company’s experience. Once viewed by the left as the Good Big Business, Big Tech has now been reclassified to the ranks of the rapacious monopolists. Meanwhile, the right is also getting less tech-friendly as it perceives Big Tech taking the other side in the culture wars. At the moment, tech has no obvious political allies.

...Thus the only clear winner this week is the city set to become the primary battleground: Washington, where Amazon is going ahead with plans for its other new East Coast outpost in nearby Crystal City. The best-case scenario is that HQ2VA anchors the area’s growing tech sector, helping the city diversify away from government services and toward a new, more varied economy that could remake Washington in the image of other world cities that are economic as well as political capitals. But even if that doesn’t happen, there will still be that war coming, and old Washington can fall back on its traditional business of selling ammunition to both sides.

Read more here.