Regulate them, Break them up, or let the free market tame them?

IBD editorializes,

Calls to break up tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Google have been increasing. But while the sentiment is understandable, the free market is far more likely to tame these giants without any government intervention.

We can remember when everyone was promising that the internet would unleash competition by lowering barriers to entry and often by cutting out the middle man. But in some ways the opposite has happened, as three companies wound up controlling the lion's share of online advertising and commerce.

That, in turn, has generated growing interest in breaking these companies up, or heavily regulating them as monopolies.

...History shows there's a better, faster, more efficient and more direct way to deal with companies that are "too big." Let the free market work. Time and again, giants of industry get toppled not by government regulators, but by new disruptive competitors.

Sears in its heyday, for example, was essentially a combination of Walmart (WMT) and Amazon. It had a massive retail presence, and a massive mail order catalog (the internet of the day) business. Today it is barely breathing.

The government never did break Microsoft up. But new competitors like Google (GOOGL) and Apple (APPL) fundamentally reshaped the marketplace in ways that severely hampered it.

...Of the 500 companies that made the Fortune 500 list in 1955, only 53 remain on that list, notes economist Mark Perry.

Only two of the companies that ranked in the top 10 in 1955 are still on the list. And of the top 10 companies today, four didn't even exist in 1955.

It's a virtual certainty that decades from now, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and others will have gone the way of Microsoft or IBM or Sears or Zenith Electronics or Kodak or Bethlehem Steel. Once mighty companies brought to heel by a dynamic, ever-changing and fiercely competitive market.

Unilateral disarmament doesn’t work.

In Town Hall, Kurt Schlichter writes,

...being “better than that” means being willing to allow other people to control you by defining you, and the definition is always “a pushover.” You’re supposed to be “conservative,” our conservasuperiors tell us, and we must therefore rigidly adhere to their precious “conservative principles.” But these bear no resemblance to real principles, much less conservative ones.

...Last week, the NFL, broken by our informal boycott, took action against those kneeling jerks, and the elite – including its True Conservative™ collaborators – wet their collective panties all over the Internet about it. How horrible – we flexed our muscles, stopped watching these pampered jerks’ antics, and the NFL caved. We’re not supposed to do that. We’re supposed to behold these goofs’ glorious free speech, which consists of waving middle fingers in our mugs, and just nod politely. We aren’t the ones who should be exercising our freedom of expression. We are the ones who are supposed to cave. We are always the ones who are supposed to cave.

I guess we missed the memo.

...This kneeling thing was mindless performance art designed by these leftist jerks, and enabled by the liberal elite and its slobbering media lapdogs, to insult us to our faces by committing an act of calculated disrespect to our country and to the Normal Americans who built it, feed t, and protect it.

...Here’s how we roll. When the enemy deploys its power against us, whether it’s some football jerk dissing us via Old Glory or some tech titan deciding to not allow us access to social media, we will fight back using whatever power we have. We’ll bankrupt the NFL before we just sit there watching them flip us off. And we’ll leverage our political power to regulate the Twittfacegrams into submission if they keep trying to exclude us from participation in our own culture. There is no conservative principle that requires you to not use your most effective weapon in your own self-defense. None.

...The simple, undeniable fact is that punishment works. Retaliation works. If you want the Old Rules back in effect – I’d prefer that – then you need to teach the enemy that it can’t apply New Rules without feeling the same pain it inflicts. That’s a real conservative principle.

Unilateral disarmament doesn’t work.

Read more here.

What roles are Obama and Jarrett playing in Spygate?

At American Thinker, Daniel John Sobieski writes about Spygate,

This scandal did not occur in a vacuum any more than did the weaponizing of the IRS to target the Tea Party and other conservative groups before Obama's 2012 re-election campaign occurred in a vacuum. The agencies under Obama's control have been politicized before and used to intimidate and destroy his political opponents.

...National Review contributing editor Andrew McCarthy has long argued that Obama was the ringleader in obstructing justice in the Hillary email investigation

McCarthy wrote at National Review,

From the first, these columns have argued that the whitewash of the Hillary Clinton-emails caper was President Barack Obama's call – not the FBI's, and not the Justice Department's[.] ... The decision was inevitable. Obama, using a pseudonymous email account, had repeatedly communicated with Secretary Clinton over her private, non-secure email account.

If Clinton had been charged, Obama's culpable involvement would have been patent. In any prosecution of Clinton, the Clinton-Obama emails would have been in the spotlight. For the prosecution, they would be more proof of willful (or, if you prefer, grossly negligent) mishandling of intelligence. More significantly, for Clinton's defense, they would show that Obama was complicit in Clinton's conduct yet faced no criminal charges.

Sobieski cautions us not to forget Valerie Jarrett's role:

Valerie Jarrett's hold over President Obama is as mysterious as it has proven dangerous. She is Obama's Rasputin and will have great influence as the former community organizer wages guerrilla warfare from his Washington, D.C. bunker, an operation that includes Spygate.

Remember?

Thanks to CBD at Ace of Spades

President Reagan on remembering

Remarks by President Ronald Reagan
Veterans Day National Ceremony
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington, Virginia
November 11, 1985

It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country, in defense of us, in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our mind as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray-haired. But most of them were boys when they died, and they gave up two lives -- the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered, old men. They gave up everything for our country, for us. And all we can do is remember.

Read the whole address here.

What we do know

Victor Davis Hanson writes at Intellectual Takeout,

...we do know that U.S. officials, including the head of the FBI and chief deputies in the Justice Department, misled a FISA court to obtain intelligence surveillance on U.S. citizens, by providing information that they knew at the time, but did not disclose to the court, was by their own private admission unverified, compiled by a foreign national whom they had used and fired as an unreliable informant, paid for by the Clinton campaign, and served as the basis for news accounts that were used in circular fashion to verify to the court the dossier’s contents.

We do know that members of the Obama intelligence and national security teams—Susan Rice and Samantha Power among others—requested the names of American citizens surveilled (likely obtained through improperly obtained FISA warrants) to be unmasked. Then someone illegally leaked their names to the press to damage the Trump campaign and his presidential transition.

We do know that FBI Director James Comey, in succession, has admitted that he in singular fashion took notes of a confidential one-on-one meeting with the president, briefed him on the existence of a campaign dossier on him, did not disclose that it was purchased by the Clinton campaign, assured him that he was not the subject of a FBI investigation at a time either he or his subordinates were leaking the opposite to the media, and then, after being fired, leaked those memos (at least one of which was classified) to the media to ensure the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the president, who turned out to be a friend of Comey’s, Robert Mueller. Comey by his own admission has also stated that he calibrated the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton to the likelihood of her election to the presidency. FBI directors in a lawful society are not supposed to do such things.

We do know that the FBI placed some sort of an informant in the camp of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign in association with gathering information about data used by a foreign national and a paid operative of the Clinton campaign, Christopher Steele, in his effort to collude with Russians against the campaign efforts of Donald Trump.

We do know that the deputy director of the FBI is currently under investigation for lying to federal investigators, on at least four occasions, about his own conduct in investigating candidate Hillary Clinton—at a time not long after Clinton-related political action committees gave several hundred thousand dollars to the political campaign of his wife.

We do know now that both James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, and John Brennan, head of the CIA, knowingly gave false testimony under oath to Congress. Clapper has previously lied about the surveillance of American citizens; he has lied about his knowledge of the Steele dossier, and likely also lied about leaking its contents. Brennan had lied under oath to Congress about the U.S. drone assassination program, lied about CIA surveillance of computers used by U.S. Senate staff, lied about leaking the existence and promulgation of the Steele dossier, and lied yet again to Congress that the dossier was not used to prompt a CIA investigation into so-called collusion.

...This is the way democracies end—not with a loud boisterous bang, but with insidious and self-righteous whimpers.

Read much more here.

Cleanup in the dairy aisle

Razor tweeted,

#YouMightBeALiberal if you honor leftists pretending to be dead in a supermarket more than veterans actually deceased in our cemeteries.

Heather Champion tweeted,

I think we need a national discussion about bad day care centers.

How they lied (and continue to do so)

Why is Judge Jeanine Pirro number one across all cable news on Saturday nights? Watch her opening monologue as she explains how Comey, Rice, Clapper, Obama, Brennan, and Lynch each lied!

Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York is a guest on the program talking about the need for a second Special Counsel. Zeldin wants the president to declassify the FISa application.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders joins Jeanine to talk about the North Korea summit possibility.

Rolling Thunder Tribute

President Trump tweeted out a welcome to over 400,000 bikers who rolled into Washington D.C. today to demonstrate on behalf of veterans, especially Missing in Action and Prisoners of War vets.
Read more here.

"You have our backs!"

Josh Holt became the 17th person being held hostage in a foreign country that President Trump has freed. If you watch this video, I recommend the remarks by Congresswoman Mia Love which begin at about the 9-minute mark.

Disabled Walmart Greeter Honors Veterans With National Anthem

In Town Hall Beth Baumann brings us the story of Freddy Davidson.

A Walmart greeter in Ohio has become known in his small town for doing something amazing: paying tribute to Americas' veterans.

Every time Freddy Davidson sees a veteran walk through the doors of his Chardon, Ohio Walmart store, he stands and sings the National Anthem. Shoppers and employees alike stop, place their hand over their heart and pay tribute to those men and women as well. Some even sing along.

Read more here and watch the video of Freddy singing our national anthem.

Collusion: American environmental groups and Russia!

Walter Williams writes at The Daily Wire,

Robert Mueller's investigation into whether President Donald Trump and the Russians colluded to rig the 2016 presidential election so far has borne little fruit. The Democrats and their media allies would love to find some Russian collusion and interference. I can help them discover some, but I doubt that they will show much interest. Here it goes.

...A U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee report, titled "Russian Attempts to Influence U.S. Domestic Energy Markets by Exploiting Social Media," details that the environmental groups used the Russian money to protest the process of fracking and fight the building of the Keystone XL pipeline. If environmentalists can thwart U.S. oil production, Russia, which is a major energy supplier to Europe, stands to gain greater economic and political power.

Russia is also a major supplier of natural gas to all of Europe. U.S. natural gas producers long wished to export some of their product to Europe and Japan to take advantage of higher prices. But up until 2016, they were blocked by natural gas export restrictions. In the case of natural gas, the Russians didn't have to bribe environmentalists to do their dirty work. They had willing support from U.S. industrial giants such as Dow, Alcoa, Celanese and Nucor, members of America's Energy Advantage. These U.S. companies lobbied against natural gas exports, saying that it would be unpatriotic to allow unlimited natural gas exports. Export restrictions kept natural gas prices artificially low and gave U.S. manufacturing companies a raw material advantage. The lifting of export restrictions has raised natural gas prices in the U.S. but lowered them in the recipient countries and weakened Russia's economic and political hold on Europe. In my book, that's a good thing.

Read more here.

Mark muses about Memorial Day and Decoration Day

Mark Steyn writes,

...More than 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War - or about 1.8 percent of the population. Today, if 1.8 percent of the population were killed in war, there would be 5.4 million graves to decorate on Decoration Day.

But that's the difference between then and now: the loss of proportion. They had victims galore back in 1863, but they weren't a victim culture. They had a lot of crummy decisions and bureaucratic screw-ups worth re-examining, but they weren't a nation that prioritized retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville over all else. They had hellish setbacks but they didn't lose sight of the forest in order to obsess week after week on one tiny twig of one weedy little tree, as the Democrats do over Abu Ghraib.

Read more here.

"In undercover work, bad character, mendacity, and survival instincts are tools of the trade.

Andrew McCarthy writes at National Review,

...We are to understand the bureaucracy’s work as unimpeachably noble and that so, therefore, are its tactics. Consequently, the government’s “cooperator” is never to be called a spy. He’s a “confidential informant” or, as the FBI’s former Director James Comey put it in a tweet this week, a “confidential human source.”

These are not neutral terms. The implication is that these operatives are always benign, even vital. A “source” is that most treasured of intelligence assets, to be protected at all costs — even the need for accountability when power is abused must give way to the confidentiality of intelligence “methods and sources.” “Source” connotes a well-placed asset who has bored into the inner sanctum of jihadists or gangsters — an “informant” whose information saves lives.

But there is another side of the story.

...By and large, “confidential informants” do not emerge from the womb with a passion to protect the United States. Quite often, they become informants because they’ve gotten themselves jammed up with the police. Some are sociopaths: shrewd enough to know that the only way out of either a long prison term or a short life expectancy is to become the government’s eyes and ears; self-aware enough to know that, in undercover work, bad character, mendacity, and survival instincts are tools of the trade. Not many Mother Teresas can infiltrate hostile foreign powers, drug cartels, and organized-crime networks.

According to the government, these effective but unsavory operatives are “confidential human sources,” too. To the rest of us, spy may be too nice a word for them. The printable labels are more like “snitch,” “rat,” “Judas,” etc. “Isn’t it a fact that you’re a scumbag?” Yeah, it’s a fact — and yeah, he probably knows.

...In the Trump–Russia affair, officials of the Obama-era intelligence agencies suggest that there are grounds to believe that the Trump campaign was in a traitorous conspiracy with the Kremlin. What grounds? They’d rather not say. You’ll just have to trust them as well-meaning, non-partisan pros who (all together now) can’t be expected to divulge methods and sources.

Countering that are not only Trump fans but growing ranks of security-state skeptics. The Obama administration blatantly politicized the government’s intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus. Their Chicken Little shrieks that public disclosure of FISA warrants and texts between FBI agents would imperil security have proven overblown at best (and, in some instances, to be cynical attempts to hide embarrassing facts). “Trust us” is not cutting it anymore.

In the end, it is not about who the spies are. It is about why they were spying. In our democratic republic, there is an important norm against an incumbent administration’s use of government’s enormous intelligence-gathering capabilities to — if we may borrow a phrase — interfere in an election. To justify disregarding that norm would require strong evidence of egregious wrongdoing. Enough bobbing and weaving, and enough dueling tweets. Let’s see the evidence.

Read more here.

Missing St. Patrick

Monica Showalter writes at American Thinker,

Ireland's stunning vote to amend its constitution to end equal protections for the born and unborn, opening the gate to abortion on demand, pretty well ends its exceptionalism among nations and makes it just another European Union state with that organization's rootless values. It's sad, because up until now, the country has been unique, its founding values derived from its ties to the Catholic Church. The Church in fact, seems to have failed by failing to stand up for its values, leaving the internationalist state to take over.

How George Soros, the stateless statesman who bankrolled much of the early abortion effort, has to be smiling.

Read more here.

"Clapper is a Liar, Leaker, and Crap Weasel!"

Michelle Malkin talks to Fox 'N Friends from her home near Pikes Peak. Here are the definitions of crap weasel I found online:

Any worthless individual who tries to steal credit for someone
else's work; also someone who tries to pass blame on others.

“Crapweasel” is a compound of the words “crap” and “weasel” (defined by Merriam-Webster as “a sneaky, untrustworthy, or insincere person").

Saudi Arabia cutting ties with Germany

Don Surber points out that the Saudis are no longer doing business with Germany. They don't like the way Angela Merkel kisses up to Iran.

Which side are we on?

U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grennell tweeted on May 8, "As @realDonaldTrump said, US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately."

Germans can trade with Iran or Saudi Arabia, but they no longer can do both.

Read more here.

We know who did it, but who asked them to?

Chuck Ross writes at The Daily Caller,

The core questions are: Who tasked Halper, a former University of Cambridge professor, with contacting Trump campaign advisers Carter Page, Sam Clovis, and George Papadopoulos? What did they tell Halper, and what did he, in turn, tell his FBI/CIA handlers? And how was that information used by government officials in their investigation of possible Russian meddling in the 2016 election? Was Halper a credible source?

Carter Page holds the key to many of those questions.

An energy consultant and former Naval officer, Page was the first Trump associate known to have made contact with Halper. He also stayed in touch with the 73-year-old the longest of any of the three Trump advisers — from July 2016 to Sept. 2017. The pair met multiple times, including at Cambridge and at Halper’s farm in Virginia.

...But it is now clear that Halper was collecting some information on Page. And there has been speculation that whatever information he collected was provided to the FBI for use in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants granted against Page.

...The first FISA warrant authorizing surveillance on Page was granted on Oct. 21, 2016. Three renewals were granted in January, April and June 2017. They expired in September 2017, the same month that Page and Halper fell out of contact. As has been widely noted, FISA renewals require additional evidence showing probable cause that a surveillance target is acting as an agent of a foreign power.

Read more here.

1984

Bookworm has a post up on the latest events in Britain. Outside of a courthouse, Tommy Robinson was livestreaming a trial of Muslim gang members. He was arrested and sentenced to 13 months in prison. There is a gag order preventing British media from reporting any of this. Read her excellent post here.

Trump the negotiator, Michael the married man

In the first part of the podcast, Michael analyzes Trump's negotiations skills.

In the second part, his guest is Patrick Coffin. Michael is getting married soon, and Patrick has some advice from GK Chesterton:

Marriage is a dual to the death no man of honor should decline!

The highest adventure imaginable: the union of two sinners. Your fiance will be your introduction to the real you! And likewise to you. The engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering.