Are you Trump-rallied-out?

At about the 7 minute mark, Greg Gutfeld does a superb job of analyzing what is going on with the Trump haters.

I haven't watched The Five in a while, but I see that Juan Williams is still defending the Left to the hilt. Greg stands up to him while Juan mocks Greg. I really like Jedediah Bila. She also stands up to Leftist Williams. I watched tonight because I am a big fan of both Mark Steyn and Greg Gutfeld.

Greg is a little (Trump) "rallied out." He wants Trump to add a couple of new rallying points because he has heard all the other rallying points ad nauseum.

I had never seen Emily Campagno before but I liked her a lot, too.

Records

CNN's "multiple sources"

hat tip Oregon Muse

I STILL Like Trump!

Guest post by Suzann Darnall

When all is said and done, I still like President Trump. Is he perfect? No. Is he making things better for Americans? Yes. In my book, that is ‘nough said!

More importantly might be the following question: could he make things even better if his own party would support him? Absolutely!!! So, if conservatives wanna be upset about things not going as well as they’d like, don’t blame President Trump! Instead, look at who is refusing to work with him as he strives to Make America Great Again. Much of the blame can be squarely laid on the swamp monsters of the dark lagoon known as Washington, DC.

We really need to make sure we get as many Republicans into office as possible. Then we need to make sure they realize we sent them to do a specific job. That job is to help Make America Great Again. So far as I can see, President Trump seems to be the only one who is actually taking steps in that direction. Therefore, I say we should all follow his plan and help him accomplish his Make America Great Again goals. Hope all y’all agree!!!

Let’s vote in November like there is no tomorrow! ‘Cause if we do not give President Trump the tools he needs to Make America Great Again, we might soon see the sun set on our “shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.” Donald Trump may well be the closest we ever get to another Ronald Reagan. Let’s not lose him before he achieves the most he can do for America. So, remember, every vote will count as we strive to fight against government corruption and election tampering. We well and truly might be fighting for life as we know it!!!
Suzann blogs at WoolyMammoth.org

Is Joe DiGenova the only guy we can count on to tell the truth?

The only place we can find the complete set of Hillary's emails is Beijing, China!

A disconnect!

We are the clouds from which the snowflakes fell. What have we done! Not knowing what's around the corner used to be part of the fun of it. We've arbitraged the fun out of uncertainty!

Meta liars

Mark Steyn: "The government's star witness is a liar whose deal is conditional on these new lies. I thought Lanny Davis was just passing on his client's lies. But, in fact, he is lying about what the liar lied to him about that day!"

The president wakes up in the morning and tweets exactly what he is thinking. Could he be any more transparent? The media hate it!

Tucker believes Carl Bernstein is a "fraudulent character."

"FB’ers for Political Diversity"

At Zero Hedge, Tyler Durden reports on a New York Times article about a senior Facebook engineer named Amerige who is speaking out against the Leftist bias at Facebook. The engineer says the bias has gotten exponentially worse in the last two years (Trump presidency).

Amerige wasn't alone in his criticism of Silicon Valley's liberal bias, and as the NYT reports, since the post went up, "more than 100 Facebook employees have joined Mr. Amerige to form an online group called FB’ers for Political Diversity." The aim of the initiative, according to Mr. Amerige’s memo, is to create a space for ideological diversity within the company.

Read more here.

"The grandparents of today’s Antifadas"

At PowerLine, Steven Hayward adds his words to the fifty-year remembrance of the 1968 riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention. He draws from volume 1 of his Age of Reagan books.

...It is not hard to make out the close parallels between the radical left then and the left today—the Chicago protesters were, perhaps literally, the grandparents of today’s Antifadas.

Read more here.

Monkeying around with the truth!

Ron DeSantos has been an excellent Congressman and now is running for Governor of Florida this fall. He made a statement using the phrase "monkeying around," and the media is jumping all over it because his Democrat opponent in the fall is a black man. Apparently, Democrats think black people resemble monkeys. Andrew Klavan plays a clip of Barack Obama using the same phrase, about which the media said nothing in 2008.

Carl Bernstein got embarrassed by Lanny Davis big time, because Davis was his source for a CNN story that turned out to be fake! CNN stands by their story! Maybe Nixon wasn't so bad after all! The Washington Post also knew about Kennedy wrongdoing, but covered it up. Andrew's point here is "What are the rules?" Does everybody play by the same rules? No!

Andrew's guest is superb author Heather MacDonald, author of The Diversity Delusion. She talks about the huge lie that the Left is promulgating that America is fundamentally racist and sexist. Campuses are the guardian of that lie. Heather also spends a lot of the interview explaining how diversity rules have victimized minorities.

Glenn Reynolds says this is a big moment in anti-racism

In the New York Times, Katie Benner reports,

The Justice Department lent its support on Thursday to students who are suing Harvard University over affirmative action policies that they claim discriminate against Asian-American applicants, in a case that could have far-reaching consequences for the use of affirmative action in college admissions.

In a so-called statement of interest, the department supported the claims of the plaintiffs, a group of Asian-Americans rejected by Harvard. They contend that Harvard has systematically discriminated against them by artificially capping the number of qualified Asian-Americans from attending the school to advance less qualified students of other races.

Read more here.

Sanders and Bezos butt heads

At Instapundit, Spen Green uses this headline to link to a story: THAT SEEMS A BIT HIGH: Amazon and Sanders Butt Heads as Senator Prepares 100 Percent Tax Bill. In the linked story at PJ Media, Bridget Johnson reports that Sanders accused Amazon founder Jeff Bezos of making in ten seconds what the average Amazon employee makes in a year!

Last week, (Bernie) Sanders sent out an email to supporters asking them to sign a petition that declares in part, "I don't believe that ordinary Americans should be subsidizing the wealthiest person in the world because you pay your employees inadequate wages."

By Friday, Sanders said he had collected more than 100,000 signatures and would introduce legislation in September "to demand that Mr. Bezos and other billionaires get off welfare and start paying their workers a living wage."

That bill would require companies to pay, in the form of a 100 percent tax, for any public assistance programs used by their lower-wage workers

Read more here.

Jeff Sessions, Where are you?

Did you know that

When Justice Department official Bruce Ohr testified before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees on Tuesday, no actual Democrat congressmen or women showed up. They likely would claim it wasn't necessary. This was all old hat and there was no there there.

The opposite is true. There's plenty there -- to wit, the potential weaponization of the FBI, and by extension the Department of Justice, to prevent the presidency of Donald Trump and later to undermine it.

From whom do we learn this? From Roger L. Simon writing at PJ Media!

Whether you like Trump or not, if true, that's nothing short of sabotage of American democracy as we know it, the Sovietization of the prosecutorial wings of our legal system. But never mind. When party politics is involved, best to ignore it. What Ohr knows about who, what, where, why, when and how the nefarious Steele dossier was conceived and then promulgated -- to the FBI, media and even to the supposedly sacrosanct FISA court -- is, at least to those congressional Democrats, of no consequence.

But not to those of us who actually care about this country, not just holding onto power and/or upending the dreaded Donald by any means necessary, ends justifying means.

When we heard AG Jeff Sessions had appointed an FBI agent in relatively far away and therefore free of influence Utah, John Huber, to deal with this, we heaved the proverbial sigh of relief. Something was finally being done to investigate the possible misuse of our premier law enforcement agency that could result in actual prosecutions. Rumors were even circulating in certain conservative circles that Trump and Sessions were actually secretly in cahoots, that Trump's angry tweets at his former ally were a masquerade for the coming settling of accounts. All were finally to be treated equally under the law.

But that was way back in March and now we learn, via members of the committees, that Huber has not even bothered to interview the very Bruce Ohr -- the covert point man to Christopher Steele after the FBI officially severed its links to the British former spook for leaking to the press. Say what?

As of now, there has not been a peep out of Huber, no criminal charges thus far even for Andrew McCabe, whose indictment was recommended by the inspector general, not to mention a whole host of other FBI officials who appear to have lied to Congress and elsewhere, including James Comey, Peter Strzok and others less well known.

Jeff Sessions, where are you? What is going on? Do you want the FBI to remain an organization disdained and distrusted by literally half the country? What kind of prescription is that for our national health?

...Sessions recused himself early on from the Russia investigation. With twenty-twenty hindsight, he should have resigned completely at that point because an attorney general unable to oversee that politically-fraught investigation is not an attorney general at all. Hands tied, he is a bystander to the most significant and controversial issue in his department.

Not only has this turned Ron Rosenstein into a quasi-AG, a job to which he was not appointed, it has added to the already pervasive suspicion of the investigation and therefore of the Justicee Department in general. Beyond a house-cleaning of virtually all upper executive personnel, it's hard to see how this would ever be corrected.

Jeff Sessions should be the first to go. It would be good if he set an example and did this voluntarily.

Read more here.

People Magazine says Sarah Palin not invited to McCain funeral

Susan Keating reports at People Magazine,

President Donald Trump and former John McCain presidential running mate Sarah Palin are not invited to memorial services for the iconic Arizona senator, multiple sources tell PEOPLE.

“Two names you won’t see on the guest list: Trump and Palin,” says a Capitol Hill source with knowledge of funeral plans for McCain, who died of brain cancer Saturday at age 81.

“Invitations were not extended” to the two political figures, confirms Carla Eudy, a fundraiser who has worked with and been friends with the McCain family for decades.

A source with knowledge of the funeral arrangements adds that several longtime McCain staffers were also removed from the invite list in recent days by Eudy.

The fundraiser, who helped plan the memorial services, did not specifically address where the requests originated, nor how they were conveyed.

Speculation in Washington, D.C., is that they came from “the family.”

“My guess is, it came from Cindy,” says a source close to the McCain family. “She is very protective of John’s memory and legacy. She’s also a grieving widow. I think she wants to get through this as best she can.”

Speculation also has focused on the process of disinviting someone to a funeral.

“Donald Trump and Sarah Palin were not served official notice outright,” says the source close to the McCain family. “I want to make that clear. It wasn’t a no-trespass order. They won’t be turned away by guards if they show up at the funeral.”

The stay-away messages were sent through intermediaries, the friend tells PEOPLE.

The messages were received, sources say.

Palin tweeted her condolences: "Today we lost an American original. Sen. John McCain was a maverick and a fighter, never afraid to stand for his beliefs. John never took the easy path in life - and through sacrifice and suffering he inspired others to serve something greater than self."

After now

Seth Godin writes in his blog,

That’s a recent idea. To imagine the world in twenty, fifty or a hundred years. Later than later. To consider the long-term impact of our actions. History as a concept is recent and thinking about the future is even more recent.

Of course, future generations will be mature enough to think even further ahead. Either that or there won’t be future generations…

Many of the long-term forecasts we’re seeing today aren’t particularly rosy. But at least we’re having them, now, when we still have a chance to do something.

And yet, some of the long-term forecasts are rosier than we can even imagine. The leaps forward in medicine, energy production and AI are transforming our world even as we live in it.

When you’re just a little kid, the idea of thinking about “when I grow up” is mostly an ill-formed fantasy. And of course, a teenager simply lives for today, and perhaps the weekend.

Once you’ve made the choice to be a productive artist, though, someone who seeks to make an impact over time, time is either your friend or your opponent. Time is either something you use as a tool or something that works against you.

Part of the appeal of the Focus journal that I did with Moo is that it gives you leverage in your work to shift time. It doesn’t automatically give us long-term thinking, but it plants a seed, a seed that helps us realize that we’re on a journey, not simply at an event.

You currently work with people who will be productively working a hundred years from now. In fact, you might be one of those people. When I started posting these notes in 1992, I had no idea I’d be doing it 26 years later. And now I’m hoping that perhaps I’ll be doing it for at least another quarter century.

Drip, drip, drip.

Time doesn’t fly, not if you refuse to let it. But it does keep moving.

PS Ignore Sunk Costs, the latest episode of my podcast Akimbo, is out now.

We will miss him!

My son Jon is off to college today. Yesterday, his brother and I noticed the heart-shaped reflection from the sun passing through Jon's truck window onto our house and we asked Jon to sit down in the chair for a quick picture!

Teaching students to give in to bullies

Faith Moore writes at PJ Media,

“The more you act like a lady, the more he’ll act like a gentleman.” This was one of the quotes on the wall of Gregory-Lincoln Education Center for the Performing and Visual Arts, an elementary and middle school in Houston, Texas. Though the quote had been displayed there for the past five years, it was removed last week after Twitter user Lisa H. Beckman, whose child does not go to the school, saw the quote, found it offensive, and posted a photo of it on Twitter. Her accompanying comment called the quote “sexist, mysogonistic [sic], and discriminatory!” The quote was removed from the wall within 10 hours of Beckman’s tweet.

...If the school is trying to teach values — which the inclusion of these wall quotes would imply that it is — perhaps they should have thought more clearly about what this blanket capitulation teaches their students. Hold a debate, have a discussion, ask the students to weigh in, but don’t give in to bullies. That is a lesson middle schoolers ought to learn.

Read more here.

On the take!

hat tip CBD

"What hasn't been told is terrifying!"

Margot Cleveland reports at The Federalist,

...Too busy Stormy-chasing, the entire mainstream media has ignored the recent developments in the Wahhaj case in New Mexico. And what hasn’t been told is terrifying.
An FBI agent testified that two of the malnurished children said “they had been trained in advanced firearms handling and had been instructed to shoot law enforcement personnel when the time came and that they would be instructed in the future to attack specific targets such as teachers, schools, banks, and other ‘corrupt institutions.’”

In his motion, the prosecutor stressed that the defendants possessed an arsenal of weapons. He included evidence from a neighbor stating that the group used the shooting range on the compound excessively. Add to that the seizure of a DVD that describes how to build an “untraceable assault rifle” at home and a book on the psychology of combat, and the picture of a group bent on a terrorist attack forms more clearly.

There is more: The prosecutor presented to the trial court a letter Morton delivered to Muhammad, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj’s brother. That letter encouraged Muhammad to follow Allah “until he makes you die as a martyr as you wanted and the only way is by joining the righteous (us).” The letter added that Muhammad should “take all your money out [of] the bank and bring you guns,” showing the Wahhajs intended to grow their fighting force beyond the 16 residents of the compound.

Agents also recovered a ten-page, handwritten document, titled “Phases of a Terrorist Attack,” from the compound. That document included instructions for “the one-time terrorist” and provided detailed instructions on determining ideal attack locations, using “choke points,” defending “safe havens,” escaping perimeter rings, and detecting sniper positions. This document indicates the defendants were not merely talking a deadly talk, but had been carefully planning an attack.

Follow-up interviews with some of the children garnered more evidence, including statements that Morton told them he “wished to die in jihad, as a martyr,” and Leveille and Subhanna Wahhaj joking about dying in jihad. The children also relayed that Leveille and Suraj intended to confront “corrupt” institutions, such as the military, CIA, and American schools, and reveal to them “the truth.” If they refused to accept the message, the children said, Leveille would provide a signal to Suraj, who would attack the individual.

The DA’s motion also states “Siraj told the group that if police ever came to the property at night, they were to defend the property using firearms.” A search of the compound revealed numerous guns located at the end of a tunnel. The children told officials the tunnel served as an escape route should authorities raid the compound.

Additionally, the government detailed several passages in a journal recently recovered from the compound, written by Leveille. Leveille’s journal makes quite clear that she is delusional. For instance, she believes that Suraj’s son, Abdul Ghani, was originally conceived in her womb, but that Hakima Ramzi used black magic to remove the fetus from Leveill’s womb and transfer him to Ramzi’s womb. Leveille’s journal also detailed the circumstances of Abdul Ghani’s death, and her revelation that “ghani would be resurrected as Jesus.”

Whether motivated by mental illness or an extremist view of violent jihad, the Wahhaj family presents a serious risk to the community. Hopefully, when the state court holds a hearing on August 29 at 1 p.m. on the DA’s motion to reconsider, the judge will agree and assure that none of the defendants remains free to execute their plans. Also, hopefully the FBI, which reportedly was monitoring the compound, doesn’t wait so long to intervene next time.

Read more here.

Train yourself to respect your Creator (by not using His name in vain), How the Left reports their agenda, not the actual story!

"At CNN, America's most trusted source for hysterical mendacity,"

The Left is trying to gin up fear against the Russians just like Joe McCarthy did on the Right in the "Red Scare of the fifties." Why? To silence the people who elected Trump! Trump is ticked off that Google and Facebook and Twitter are silencing conservative voices. Google sent out a spokesman to deny, but if you have ever googled a news story, you know that it is unlikely that a conservative source will be found on page one. The first ten or more sources cited by Google are likely going to be Left-of-center. The Left-wing prejudices are so baked in to our communications culture that they may not even realize what they are doing. They are privileging mainstream outlets. They rely on hate groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center to do their fact-checking for them. The media have put their Left-wing agenda above their values. They report the agenda, not the story! Elevating Stormy Daniels into a feminist hero because they want to get Trump!

Apparently they are having a movement within Facebook to stop the bias. Just tell the truth and it will set you free!

Mailbag letters asking Andrew questions. Andrew explains to one aspiring writer that he should just listen and look at people to try to understand what is going on with them. You don't create characters when you sit down to write. You keep your eyes open and try to understand people. Store up those insights. Try to get things right. Describe the world as it really is. Look at people without passing judgment. Look at how they act, how they behave and see if you can translate that onto the page.

He also stresses the importance of an outline scene by scene.

Another person asks about the debt. Andrew says the problem is electoral politics favors stupid spending.
He gives the example of pensions on the local and state levels and "free" something on the federal level.

A person asks about the common use of God's name in vain. We have allowed our language to get degraded!
Train yourself to respect your Creator! It will make you happier, smarter and wiser!

Isn't he the guy who recently said "America never has been great?"

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo halted an investigation into the Manhattan DA’s handling of the Harvey Weinstein case just as the law firm representing the Hollywood producer gave Cuomo’s campaign $25,000.

David Sirota reports in Capitol and Main,

Last year, a political firestorm erupted when journalists revealed that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer David Boies gave $10,000 to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in the months after Vance declined to prosecute the movie producer on sexual assault charges. Now, less than a year later, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has halted an investigation into the handling of the Weinstein case just as Boies’ law firm gave Cuomo’s campaign $25,000, according to state records reviewed by Capital & Main and Sludge.

The controversies spotlight ongoing questions about whether law enforcement actions in New York are being inappropriately influenced by campaign donations.

Read more here.

Wyoming traffic stop yields over $7 million worth of marijuana!

Madeline Farber reports for Fox News,

Officials with the Wyoming Highway Patrol seized more than $7 million worth — about 1,849 pounds — of marijuana during a traffic stop on Wednesday.

Around 11:30 a.m., a trooper with the state’s highway patrol stopped a Dodge Ram pickup truck that was pulling a flatbed trailer. During the inspection, the trooper’s K-9 officer was “alerted to the odor of narcotics within the load of the trailer,” the Wyoming Highway Patrol said in an online statement.

Read more here.

"One set of rules?"

Director Blue has an article by Kimberley Strassel, originally written in the Wall Street Journal.

If there is only “one set of rules,” where is Mr. Mueller’s referral of a case against Hillary for America? Federal law requires campaigns to disclose the recipient and purpose of any payments. The Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to compile a dossier against Mr. Trump, a document that became the basis of the Russia narrative Mr. Mueller now investigates. But the campaign funneled the money to law firm Perkins Coie, which in turn paid Fusion...

...The campaign falsely described the money as payment for “legal services.” The Democratic National Committee did the same. A Perkins Coie spokesperson has claimed that neither the Clinton campaign nor the DNC was aware that Fusion GPS had been hired to conduct the research, and maybe so. But a lot of lawyers here seemed to have been ignoring a clear statute, presumably with the intent of influencing an election.


Prosecutions under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) are also exceptionally rare, though Mr. Mueller is getting media kudos for hammering the likes of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates for failing to register as lobbyists for foreign entities. The law is the law.

But under this standard, where are the charges against the principals of Fusion GPS, who Sen. Chuck Grassley has said look to have been lobbying on behalf of powerful Russians against a U.S. sanctions law, with its payment again funneled through a law firm? This was a sideline to its dossier work, but Mr. Mueller usually has no issue with sideline charges.

Or what about an evenhanded look at dossier author Christopher Steele ? FARA also requires foreigners to register if they act on behalf of a foreign principal. Recently disclosed emails from senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr show the British Mr. Steele pleading the case to the Justice Department on behalf of a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska.

Of the seven U.S. citizens Mr. Mueller has charged, five have been accused of (among other things) making false statements to federal officials. But there have been no charges against the partisans who made repeated abjectly false claims to the FBI and Justice Department about actions of their political opponents. There have been no charges against those who leaked classified information, including the unprecedented release of an unmasked conversation between former national security adviser Mike Flynn and a Russian ambassador. Nothing...

...Prosecutors can claim all they want that they are applying the law equally, but if they only apply it to half the suspects, justice is not served. Mr. Mueller seems blind to the national need for—the basic expectation of—a thorough look into all parties. That omission is fundamentally undermining any legitimacy in his findings. Lady Justice does not wear a blindfold over only one eye.

No bias at Google?

Maybe you, like me, missed this report at the Washington Free Beacon one week after the election of Donald Trump. Joe Schoffstall reported,

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google's parent company, Alphabet, Inc., was spotted at Hillary Clinton's "victory" party last Tuesday wearing a staff badge, according to a picture recently submitted to Politico.

Google came under fire earlier this year for allegedly altering search results to paint Hillary Clinton in a more favorable light than Donald Trump. Schmidt stated at the time that Google did not pick sides in the presidential race.

"We have not taken a position on the American election and nor do I expect us to," Schmidt said at the time.

Despite this assurance, Schmidt provided funding to a tech startup called The Groundwork, one of the Clinton campaign's biggest vendors.

Michael Slaby, the Obama campaign's chief integration and innovation officer, developed The Groundwork through a company he co-founded called Timshel. The Clinton campaign paid the group $600,000 throughout the election cycle.

Following WikiLeaks' release of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign, the Washington Free Beacon discovered that Schmidt was doing more than funding a Clinton campaign vendor—he was working with the campaign on its technology strategy.

The revelation was contained in a memo sent by Robby Mook, Clinton's campaign manager, to Cheryl Mills, David Plouffe, and John Podesta on Oct. 26, 2014. The memo's author was Teddy Goff, Clinton's former chief digital strategist. It was addressed to Clinton.

Goff elaborated on the campaign's early "priorities," as well as developments about those priorities. Several times it mentioned the work that "Eric Schmidt's group" and "team" were doing for the campaign.

"I have been kept apprised of the work being done by Eric Schmidt's group and others working directly and indirectly with your team. On the whole, I am comfortable with where we stand and confident in our roadmap to launch day and beyond," Goff wrote at one point.

Goff boasted about the work Schmidt was doing, saying it would easily eclipse the technology operation of any Clinton opponent.

"Eric's team is also developing products that are not, strictly speaking, critical for launch, but would be extremely useful to have as early in the cycle as possible," Goff wrote.

While the memo did not state the name of Schmidt's group, it was likely referring to The Groundwork.

WikiLeaks, which posted the hacked email, has been accused of working with the Russian government to influence the presidential election.

Schmidt did not return requests for comments on his involvement with the Clinton campaign.

The stash houses of Laredo

Ron Nixon reports here for the New York Times.

The One Great Thing!

Andrew Klavan talks about it on his Daily Wire podcasts, but he also writes about it in PJ Media!

The real issue is this: do we want to preserve American liberty and the constitutional machinery that maintains that liberty — or not?

Any two people who agreed that liberty is the central American good and worth preserving could argue productively. We could compromise on redistribution as long as we both acknowledged how essential private property is to freedom. We could make adjustments in gun control if we both understood that an armed populace is our last defense against tyranny. We could easily confirm Supreme Court justices if we acknowledged that their role was not to make law but to ensure laws are in keeping with the Constitution. We could debate anything as long as we both agreed to our right to speak.

But the moment I know I am talking to a socialist — who believes my work, my time, and thus my life belong to the state — the moment I know I am talking to a leftist — who will not concede my right to self-defense — the moment I know I am talking to a cheat willing to have our founding document rewritten from the bench — the moment I know I'm with a censor who thinks it's fine to silence me whether on social media or in the news media or through the courts — I will not give one bloody inch. Because, in that case, each concession becomes another step to the eradication of the one political asset I hold most dear: my freedom.

That is where we find ourselves. To my mind, our news media, our academies, the corporate culture of Silicon Valley, and the Democrat Party have all lost the plot of American liberty. They believe in socialism. They believe in a disarmed populace. They believe in ruling through the judiciary. And they believe in censorship of ideas they don't like.

Under that circumstance, they can catch Donald Trump paying hush money to the entire Rockettes chorus line. They can shed their crocodile tears over every shooting victim on earth. They can whine about Merrick Garland all the want. And they can curse me out and shut me down on every media vehicle they own. I will not surrender to them even a little.

Until we can agree on the One Great Thing — that Americans should be free — we can't agree on anything. And we are doomed to repeat the same conversations again and again.

Read more here.

It’s deja vu all over again.

Story here.

CRISIS!

CNN and other Left-wing media want you to think there is a crisis all the time. They are doing this so that when the crisis comes it will be like tinder setting your brain on fire.

Who silences whom? It is always the Left!

Resetting to year zero

"This is what leading from in front looks like."

In American Thinker, Thomas Lifson explains the new United States Mexico trade agreement and the prospects for Canada to come knocking at the door.

Media hypocrisy over John McCain

John Nolte writes at Breitbart,

While many found then-candidate Donald Trump’s “I like people who weren’t captured” shot at Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in July of 2015 indefensible, to those of us of a certain age, Trump was simply engaging in the age-old art of breaking balls.
It’s a working class thing, a guy thing, something men do to get under each other’s skin. And Trump works in the art of ball breaking like Sinatra did song.

To the uninitiated, ball breaking sounds shockingly cruel. Oddly enough, though, it is nothing personal. The only goal is to needle around for a weak spot until the other guy loses his composure. It’s a competition, a sport. What’s more, Trump didn’t start it, and in the end, McCain would lose when he voted against the repeal of Obamacare.

There are many ways to lose a ball breaking contest. One is to allow the other guy to burrow so far under your skin, you take things too far. When McCain voted against repealing Obamacare, McCain violated something he held most dear… He broke his word. He lost his composure.

...Trump refusing to apologize to their mob is what the media find unforgivable. The only thing the media find unforgivable is defiance.

We know this for the reasons stated above, and we know this because just a few years earlier, during the 2008 presidential election, this very same media that pretends to cherish McCain as all things wise and wonderful now, most especially in the wake of his death over the weekend, were the same media who savaged his character, his integrity, and his patriotism — and, yes, his military service — in ways that make Trump’s ball break look like a love tap.

As is always the case with our corrupt media, the hypocrisy is audacious and partisan politics purely mercenary. Gushing over McCain (not that he does not deserve legitimate praise for his valiant military service) is nothing less than an easy opportunity for the media to launch yet another Two-Minute Hate against Trump.

When John McCain could be used by the media to achieve their left-wing goals (save Obamacare, a club against Trump), they adore the guy. He’s the “maverick” again, a national hero, a true patriot… But when John McCain stood in the way of the media’s left-wing goals, most especially the goal of anointing the radical left-wing Obama president, McCain was an old, dying, rich, white, adulterous, corrupt, racist warmonger too unstable to be president.

And for the following the media have never apologized…

Nolte gives many, many examples of how the media attacked McCain in 2006, then finishes with

The establishment media’s 2008 jihad to personally destroy John McCain, a legitimate war hero, to annihilate his character, his war record, his sanity, was equal parts appalling and relentless.

And anyone who is still upset over Trump’s remark and makes no mention of the media’s indefensible behavior has no credibility.

Read more here.

America, "a wonderfully mixed up country"

Kevin Williamson writes in National Review about America,

...It’s a wonderfully mixed-up country. Jazz and hip-hop are musical forms with distinctively American roots, but that doesn’t mean that Dave Brubeck or the Beastie Boys were engaged in the musical equivalent of blackface. This is a country in which Ralph Lifshitz, a Jewish kid from the Bronx, could mass produce WASP wardrobe staples, sell the country-club set their own fantasies back to them under the name Ralph Lauren — and become a favorite designer of young black men in the process. Americans, being largely good-natured people, are torn between the desire to learn about and appreciate other cultures (including other American cultures) and the mandate to “stay in your lane.” How that is really supposed to work, I don’t know, but I doubt that Ralph Lifshitz played a lot of polo in the Bronx.

...If only there were some easy way to distinguish between the decent and well-intentioned and the callous and hateful. Perhaps we should consider the philosophical maxim of Raylan Givens: “If you get up in the morning and you meet an a**hole, you met an a**hole. If you meet nothing but a**holes all day, you’re the a**hole.”

Social-justice warriors take note.

Read more here.

1968: Death of the Democratic Party

In National Review, Arthur L. Herman tells us that at the Chicago convention in 1968 the Democratic Party died.

...The friends who joined in the kill were the mainstream media. Their coverage of the riots, that night and later, would make the SDS demonstrators and their violent cohorts — the predecessors of today’s antifa — into martyrs of “police brutality” and Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley’s “Gestapo tactics,” as one Democratic senator from Connecticut put it in a speech to the convention that night, when they had in fact been — like today’s antifa — the deliberate instigators of mayhem and bloodshed. Starting that night the New York Times, the Washington Post, and ABC and CBS News would become the enablers of America’s radical Left, even at its most violent — and in the process cut themselves off from the millions of ordinary working Americans who had made the Democratic party their political home.

Some background is in order. In August 1968, Democratic delegates swarmed to their national convention in Chicago to try to heal the wounds left by a divisive war in Vietnam, riots and assassinations at home (first Martin Luther King in April, then Robert F. Kennedy in June), and a bitter three-way race for the presidential nomination between Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, Vice President Hubert Humphrey (the eventual nominee), and the now-dead Kennedy, after an increasingly unpopular President Lyndon Johnson had withdrawn from the contest.

Also descending on Chicago were thousands of anti-war demonstrators, determined to make the city the scene of confrontation over Vietnam and if possible to spark a violent confrontation with Chicago’s police. “Make sure that if blood is going to flow, it will flow all over the city,” Tom Hayden, one of the demonstration’s principal organizers and a future husband of Jane Fonda, declared to the crowd.

There had been a preliminary clash between protesters and police in Lincoln Park. But it was in Grant Park — a block or so from the Hilton Hotel, where the convention was being held — that the real battle was joined on the night of August 28. Protesters threw bottles and rocks until the police finally fired tear gas and waded into the crowd with billy clubs, while every TV camera and news reporter watched.

The media had shown sympathy earlier with rioters in places such as Watts and Detroit and Washington, D.C., but those rioters had been black, poor, and arguably living under the yoke of white racism. This was America’s privileged white youth attacking the police and shouting “f*** the pigs,” and even threatening to put LSD in the Chicago water supply. But in the glare of TV camera lights as liberals watched their youngsters being beaten by working-class cops, a new media paradigm was born. Left-wing rioters, black or white, urban poor or Harvard grads, became “protesters”; their violence would be downplayed or ignored while underscoring the justice of their cause. At the same time, the police now became the villains of any confrontation, to be portrayed as having a tendency to overact violently to challenges to their authority — and to the oppressive system they defend. A direct ideological line runs from that night to Black Lives Matter a half-century later.

More immediate was the damage the riots, and their negative coverage did to the Democrats. They destroyed Humphrey’s chances in the 1968 election, and Richard Nixon won instead. But the damage ran deeper. Humphrey would be the last Democratic presidential nominee to represent the values of Truman and JFK: compassionate big government at home, and resolute anti-Communism abroad. Instead, a new Democratic party was born, one that increasingly reflected the radical views of the Chicago protesters: that America, not Communism, was the real force for evil that needed to be contained and transformed. That Democratic party would nominate George McGovern in its 1972 convention and become a party obsessed with social justice, identity politics, and America’s past sins — essentially the party it is today. Meanwhile, mainstream Democratic voters began their flight to the Republican party, “Reagan Democrats” who would enable the GOP to win four of the next five presidential elections and who later became the foot soldiers of the Trump insurgency.

In the end, the main ideological battle lines of American politics were drawn that night, and the shadow of Grant Park still hangs over all of us 50 years later.

Read more here.

"China has never seen anyone who has stood up to them like President Trump has."

From about the ten-minute mark to about the seventeen-minute mark is US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. "More US jobs, more Mexican jobs, because we are going to squeeze out people who are not in the region," says Robert Lighthizer on the new United States Mexico trade agreement.

We currently have an $800 billion trade deficit!

Do you want to shut somebody up? Use social media giant corporations to do it!

Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn says the big social media corporations are going to be having a huge effect on elections. Facebook has hired ten thousand new censors on top of another ten thousand! They also have roving censoring bots looking for content! So says Mark Penn. It's a funnel; if you are not at the top, you don't get seen! We need legislation that says free speech is an internet right! Congress is intimidated by the social media giants. They were set up as open platforms but now have become media companies that take ads and have editors and censors and algorithms and bots that run it.

"People do not believe this could happen!"

"There could be a direct correlation between smart phone usage and underinformed mass behavior."

Seth Godin writes at his blog,

Smart phones can hobble us. They connect us, and do it with persistence, drip by drip. But they also push us to make everything fit on a very small screen for a very short time.

Teaching complicated ideas to people on a phone is like trying to teach geography to a bunch of sugared-up kids who just had a triple espresso, while they are standing on one foot being bitten by a swarm of mosquitos.

There could be a direct correlation between smart phone usage and underinformed mass behavior.

Sometimes it’s worth opening up a laptop and slowing down just a bit.

Yes, opening up a laptop might count as slowing down a bit.

A nasty ride coming up!

Excerpts from Michael Goodwin's column in the New York Post,

...The anti-Trump alliance also raises the stakes even higher in the midterm elections. Every match-up will be a referendum on him, and if Republicans lose either house of Congress, his power ebbs and his troubles instantly expand.

...Yet, for all the glee of his opponents and media doomsaying, only a fool would count the president out. He’s bounced back from the brink before and there are three reasons why he could do it again.

First, it will take something more serious than alleged campaign-finance violations to overturn an election through impeachment. The two-thirds majority vote required for conviction in the Senate was designed to be a stumbling block to factions and passions, and it saved Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal.

Second, Trump can cure the injustice stemming from the one-sided probe by declassifying documents the Justice Department is hiding from Congress and the public.

...I have called this power Trump’s ace in the hole because revealing the dirty details of how insiders tried to steal the election could bolster his support. His refusal to play that card is bewildering.

Trump’s third reason for optimism is the possibility that predictions of a blue wave in the midterms will be as far off the mark as many 2016 polls were. Then he had his America First promises, and now he has major successes, especially the jobs boom.

His record, combined with the sense that he is under siege by a corrupt deep state, could motivate his half of the electorate to show up in full force on Election Day and save his neck once again.

All I know is that the coming months are going to be one ­helluva nasty ride. Here’s hoping people of good will on both sides remember that, in the end, we’re all still Americans.

Read more here.

Do you want to keep poor people poor?

At the Foundation for Economic Education, Brian Balfour lists seven things he would do if he wanted to keep poor people poor.

1: An Expanding Welfare State

Case in point: A 2012 study by Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Public Welfare analyzed the decisions confronting individuals and families enrolled in various government welfare programs. Specifically, the study concluded that in the case of a single mother with two children ages 1 and 4 earning $29,000 a year through work would be eligible for government benefits (such as Medicaid, housing vouchers, and subsidized daycare) equivalent to roughly an additional $28,000.

Such a scenario puts this woman in a bind. If she finds a better job paying more, or picks up more hours, she risks losing substantial amounts of benefits. She would make her family financially worse off even though her paycheck would be bigger. Just to come out even, once taxes are factored in, she would need to find work paying about $69,000 a year to compensate for the lost welfare benefits. Not many low-skilled workers can make such a leap.

Confronted with this situation, many individuals understandably opt to continue receiving the government benefits. Rather than help individuals, the perverse economic incentives created by the “social safety net” trap aid recipients on welfare. And the longer they remain out of the workforce, or at lower levels of employment, the less employable they become. It is a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle that keeps people poor and dependent on the state.

Moreover, there is the impact the welfare state has on the family unit. Welfare programs break up families by replacing a father’s paycheck with a government check and benefits. Nationally, since LBJ’s Great Society ratcheted up government welfare programs in the mid-1960s, the rate of unmarried births has tripled.

2: Progressive Taxation Policy
...High marginal taxes on profitable companies and small businesses alike discourage capital investment. As businesses decide to either not expand or take their businesses to more investment-friendly countries, job opportunities dry up.

3: Increase the Minimum Wage
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would advocate for higher government-enforced minimum wages. The law of supply and demand tells us that the higher the price of a good or service, the less of it will be demanded (other things held equal, of course). The demand for low-skilled labor is no exception.
Higher minimum wages will price more and more low-skilled people out of the labor market.

Meanwhile, the higher wages will attract more job seekers willing to supply their labor at the higher price. Employers will be able to be more selective in their hiring, and as such the lower-skilled job seekers will be crowded out of these opportunities by higher-skilled, less-needy candidates. Minimum wage laws are an effective tool to cut off the bottom rung of the career ladder for those most in need of establishing work experience.

4: Support Restrictive “Green Energy” Policies
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would support government “green energy” initiatives that make energy more expensive. State and federal initiatives that mandate more expensive “renewable” energy mean that—in the words of President Obama—utility bills “necessarily skyrocket.” Poor people trying to scrape by just to stay even can scarcely afford higher electricity bills.

5: Increase the Business Regulatory Burden
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would see to it that government imposes many costly regulations on businesses. Such tight restrictions discourage businesses from starting or expanding, meaning fewer job openings for those most in need of opportunity. And mountains of red tape force business to expend scarce resources on compliance costs rather than investing in their businesses and creating jobs. Higher-skilled compliance officer jobs will consume payroll that could have potentially gone toward opportunities for lower-skilled job seekers.

6: Inflate the Money Supply
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, I would support “quantitative easing” policies. Under such programs, the Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air. The inflated money supply then erodes the value of the dollars sitting in your wallet or bank account. The poor are hit hardest by this inflation because their limited skill set makes it far more difficult for their incomes to keep up with the rising cost of living.

7: Impose High Tariffs

Read more here.

What did the Pope know, and when did he know it? Stormy Daniels (feminist hero), Death, CNN's "bombshell report"

New York Times: "Stormy Daniels, Feminist Hero" Her lack of shame for what she has done makes her a feminist hero because now feminists can imitate her by doing immoral, self-destructive and utterly humiliating things without being ashamed. Everything that has happened to Stormy is because of something she chose...so why is everyone trying to blame Trump?

Our reaction to the death of McCain. Andrew explains how Leftists used McCain's death to attack people on the right. People on the other side say, wait a minute, you are praising him now that he is dead but you didn't praise him when he was alive!

Death is appalling. Life takes place in the shadow of appalling death that completely erases people from the face of the earth! So Andrew suggests we stop a minute and take the best look at this man's life, because when we go, and we will, we want people to take the best look at our life. As long as you are alive, you are in the fight! It is dead people who stop fighting!

Andrew calls attention to someone tweeting about Dana Loesch's children being murdered. Twitter says "that doesn't violate our standards!"

We descend into rage and hatred! Yes, we should be fighting, but we should be able to stop for one day! Maybe it is because we aren't talking about the thing we actually disagree about. One side believes in America as the founders intended: to be free, not to be taxed without representation, not to be told what to do by distant rulers who don't have our interests at heart. It has worked for over 200 years!

The other side is saying, "We want to fundamentally transform this country!"

If we can both agree on a baseline such as "capitalism is good" then perhaps we can each stand down a little and make compromises.

Michael Knowles is Andrew's guest. He talks to Andrew about a top Vatican official named Vigano calling on the Pope to resign because he covered for an official who abused children. Vigano's claims have been substantiated. Cardinal Vigano is retired. He has nothing to gain from this. If the claims he has made can be shown to be true, Francis may resign!

When CNN says it has a "bombshell report," Andrew recommends you decide whether or not is a bombshell! They reported that Michael Cohen says Donald Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting in which Russians were supposedly going to offer dirt on Hillary. Trump has said he knew nothing about the meeting until he was approached about it by the New York Times. Cohen's attorney, long time Clinton lawyer, Lannie Davis, told CNN's Anderson Cooper that the story was untrue! What does CNN do? Stand by their story!

"Suffering is what happens when you stop creating."

In Medium, Brianna Wiest writes,

...The part of the brain that controls rumination also controls creativity.

...We weren’t built to be “happy” in the way we think of happiness: carefree, grateful, excited.

We were born to survive, which is to create.

...Everything is creative. You are creating cells and thoughts as you read this. You are creating Co2 as you exhale. When you’re spending time with someone you love, you are creating your relationship. Every time you work, you are creating money, you are creating skill. You are always creating.

Suffering is what happens when you stop creating. Rather than devise the next step for your life, you ruminate on the last one. Rather than imagine previously inconceivable opportunities, you assume nothing better is possible. Rather than taking control of your life, you assume an attitude of powerlessness. You become helpless. Your suffering becomes meaningless.

...Creativity is not exclusive to the arts as we tend to think of it. Everything is creative. Every last second and part of your life. Creativity is not necessarily a burst of emotional passion; it can be a habituated choice.

In that choice, there is a different kind of happiness — one that is not passive, but active. Instead of trying to reap the benefits and joy out of the world other people have created, we embark on our true mission, which is to create ourselves in the world.

That is how we leave a lasting impression. That is how we find real, deep, sustainable happiness — in creating what is inside of us on the outside.

Read more here.

They are publishers, not platforms! And it's time for Congress and courts to recognize that fact!

Ace of Spades writes today,

...Twitter and FaceBook are publishers, not platforms, and should be legally responsible for anything users say on it, just as every other publisher is.

And it's time for Congress and courts to recognize that fact, and let the lawsuits flow.

Oh, and Google has set up its "algorithms" -- I put that in quotes because they say "algorithms" as if these are neutral mathematical protocols, when in fact biased human beings tweak them to achieve the results they want -- to deliver liberal media results nigh-exclusively for searches for "Trump." 96% -- ninety-six percent -- of all searches for Trump return liberal media articles.

Read more here.

False-documented immigrants

In American Greatness, Lloyd Billingsly writes about the murder of Mollie Tibbits who is pictured above.

...The accused Mexican reportedly has been in the United States from four to seven years. A window like that should confirm that federal, state, and local authorities have not the slightest clue how many false-documented illegals are in the United States. The default figure of 11 million is probably not even in the ballpark.

...Mollie Tibbetts’ autopsy says she died from “multiple sharp force injuries,” but other details of the crime remain unclear. As the trial awaits, politicians have been speaking out.

“Nothing To Do With Illegal Aliens”
In an interview with CNN, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has falsely claimed Indian heritage, failed to mention the murder victim’s name. “I’m sorry for the family here,” Warren explained, but the great need was to focus on “real problems,” such as family separation at the border. That is hard to top but a California judge may have pulled it off.

In 2011, false-documented Mexican nationals Saul Isidro-Aucencio and Francisco Delgado chased down Americans Jamir Miller, 15, Richard Ward, 16 and Robert Corpos, 20. Delgado, or whatever his real name is, shot them in the head, from behind, with an AK-47.

In court Melissa Jellison, Jamir Miller’s mother, expressed anger that her son’s killers were in the country illegally. Superior Court judge Helene Gweon, an Arnold Schwarzenegger appointee, told the grieving mother the case “has nothing to do with illegal aliens.”

Mexican officials did not weigh in on the case and thus far have remained silent about the Mexican national accused of killing Mollie Tibbetts. The record $26.1 billion sent back to Mexico last year might help explain the silence. Illegal entry to the United States is an integral part of Mexico’s economic planning. For their part, American Democrats are eager to import voters.

As a State Department investigation discovered, Gustavo Araujo Lerma used false documents to vote in at least five federal, state, and local elections. Technically this is known as “voter fraud” and this fake is hardly alone.

California’s voter registration law kicks in when people obtain a driver’s license at the DMV. More than one million illegals have received such licenses, and secretary of state Alex Padilla refuses to release voter information. So any legitimate citizen or legal immigrant could believe that most if not all of those one million illegals will be voting in November.

Right now it’s all about the election. So false-documented illegal criminals can do just about anything they want and leftist Democrats will look the other way and change the subject.

Read more here.

Sorry, MasterCard

At PJ Media Robert Spencer details how MasterCard, acting on the advice of the Southern Policy Law Center Hate Group is trying to destroy him. I hope that you all know what a courageous man Robert Spencer is.

Today I got a pre-approval notice from MasterCard and wrote them this email: Thank you for pre-approving me for an Indigo Platinum Mastercard. Unfortunately, I just read an article by Robert Spencer explaining how you allowed yourselves to be manipulated by the Southern Policy Law Center Hate Group. Robert Spencer is one of the most courageous of all Americans. I cannot accept your offer unless or until you do your homework and apologize to Mr. Spencer and reinstate his account. His account of your abuse of him is here: https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/robert-spencer-the-left-moves-fast-to-silence-me/

Security clearances

In National Review, Victor Davis Hanson writes,

...The entire issue of security clearances extended to former government officials, especially those who are paid partisan commentators and allude publicly to their connections to establish their fides, has long needed to be addressed.

Almost all retired professionals with clearances have not been previously fired for cause from government, or have not lied to Congress, or have not accused the sitting president of being a traitor to the country, or have not likened him to a Nazi, or have not suggested that the president’s days were numbered and that he might well be assassinated.

But for the small number of those who cannot abide by any of those quite low bars of behavior, there seems little reason to extend such privileges after the completion of their government tenures.

Read more here.

After impeachment

Jim Treacher tweeted, "Here is the current presidential line of succession, libs. Take your pick!

Amen!

Impeached, then...

Caleb Hull tweeted,

1) Trump gets impeached
2) Pence becomes president
3) Pence pardons Trump
4) Pence appoints Trump to VP
5) Pence Resigns
6) Trump becomes president
7) Trump appoints Pence to VP
8) The libs’ heads: pic.twitter.com/upf9Fv7KWA

— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) August 25, 2018

The most complicated word in the English language

Thanks again to Misanthropic Humanitarian

Are you a Democrat, a Republican or a Southerner?

Misanthropic Humanitarian was in a jocular mood last night at Ace of Spades.

Are you a Democrat, a Republican or a Southerner?

The answer can be found by posing the following question:

You're walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children.

Suddenly, a terrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams "Allah ho akhbar!", raises the knife, and charges at you...

You are carrying a Kimber 1911 .45 ACP, and you are an expert shot.
You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family.
What do you do?

THINK CAREFULLY AND
THEN SCROLL DOWN:

Democrat's Answer:

Well, that's not enough information to answer the question!

What is a Kimber 1911.45 ACP?

Does the man look poor or oppressed?

Is he really a terrorist? Am I guilty of profiling?

Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?

Could we run away?

What does my wife think?

What about the kids?

Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?

What does the law say about this situation?

Does the pistol have appropriate safety built into it?

Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children?

Is it possible he'd be happy with just killing me?

Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me?

If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me?

Should I call 9-1-1?

Why is this street so deserted?

We need to raise taxes, have paint & weed day.

Can we make this a happier, healthier street that would discourage such behavior.

I need to debate this with some friends for a few days and try to come to a consensus.

This is all so confusing!

............ .......... ........ ..... ......... ....... ........ ........ .

Republican's Answer:

BANG!


............ ....... ...... ........ ......... ........ .......... ....

Southerner's Answer:

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
BANG ! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Click..... (Sounds of reloading)

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!BANG!BANG!
Click

Daughter: 'Nice grouping, Daddy!'
'Were those the Winchester Silver Tips or Hollow Points?!

Son: 'Can I shoot the next one?!'

Wife: You are not taking that to the Taxidermist!

Drug use by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs

Kara Swisher writes in the New York Times,

Over the past year, at lunches with various Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, I have been told at least four times that magic mushrooms will help me become a better reporter (maybe) and three times that Ecstasy will make me a nicer person (doubt it). I have also been offered several chances to microdose on LSD (pass!) and now that it is legal in California, weed, weed and more weed in every conceivable delivery method (yum, gummy bears!).

And, of course, ayahuasca, a brew made from plants that includes the hallucinogen DMT. The well-known tech exec (who, like most people I interviewed for this article, asked not to be named, for obvious reasons) who urged me to try it with him was nearly ecstatic on the subject. “It is the thing to reach the next level of innovation,” he said. “And you don’t throw up that much.”

He had me until vomiting. Thanks, but no thanks.

Last week The New York Times reported that some on the board of Tesla were worried that the company’s founder and chief executive, Elon Musk, “has on occasion used recreational drugs.” Some were blaming the possible use of Ambien for a series of his ill-conceived and possibly actionable tweets.

Now Burning Man, the annual gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, is about to begin. Techies and many others will flock there to look at art, dress in costumes, burn things and perhaps discover the next great start-up idea with the help of a tiny bit of ketamine.

...It is all, another tech worker said, about the “intellectualizing of drug use as a stimulant for the brain.”

...“It is all about finding a technology to improve biology,” said Mr. Pollan.

Read more here.

Did you know that China controls much of the world's drug supply?

In NBC News, Maggie Fox writes,

...“It’s a major national security risk for us in two ways," said Mike Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and an expert on biosecurity. "We are very concerned about the quality of these drugs.”

..."If we were ever in an international incident with China, they would literally have their hands around our necks in terms of critical drugs. They wouldn’t even have to fire a shot."

Gibson estimates in her book that 80 percent of the ingredients in U.S.-branded pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter drugs start out in either China or India.

“Food has been used as a weapon of war. Our medicines can be used like that, too,” she said.

China made a strategic decision to develop its pharmaceuticals industry and has succeeded, Gibson said, undercutting prices and grabbing market share from other countries.

“Penicillin is a good example,” she said. “We don’t make penicillin ingredients in this country anymore. That happened because Chinese companies came in and dumped it on the global market at a very low price. Now they are the largest producer of penicillin industrial ingredients in the whole world.”

The U.S. market is vulnerable to products that are contaminated but is even more vulnerable if some kind of accident, problem or disaster shuts down factories, Gibson said.

“Imagine if a major earthquake hit or civil war broke out in some of the major pharmaceutical-producing cities,” Gibson said.

“It would be disastrous. India still produces some of the drugs for us but most of the essential compounds for them come from China, so they would shut down too.”

Osterholm points to the damage done in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria last year. Medical supplier Baxter makes a large percentage of saline solution in Puerto Rico, and the 2017 hurricane shut down manufacturing for months, worsening an ongoing shortage of saline intravenous drip bags.

Hospitals scramble to cope with a shortage of saline just as flu season threatens to flood ERs.
“If we think the IV bag situation in Puerto Rico was serious, it pales in comparison with what could happen with any kind of hiccup with China,” he said.

Gibson agreed.

“I can think of nothing that would make us more vulnerable than shutting off all these drugs we depend on every day,” she said.

“Hospitals would become centers of chaos and death. We are not talking about expensive designer drugs. You couldn’t do surgery. You wouldn’t have anesthesia. You couldn’t provide dialysis."

Read more here.

Who provides more effective treatment for mentally ill people, jails or hospitals?

The Virginia Pilot takes a look at mental illness among jail inmates.

...The process of deinstitutionalization sped up rapidly in 1965, when Congress created Medicaid. The new health program excluded payments to large “institutions for mental diseases.” That forced the shutdown of mental hospitals across the country and was designed to create smaller facilities within communities.

In 1955, state mental institutions had about 558,000 beds. There were 337 mental hospital beds per 100,000 people in the United States, according to a 2016 study by the Treatment Advocacy Center.

Far too few smaller community facilities opened to make up the difference. Today, there are roughly 12 beds per 100,000 people.

...More than a quarter of the jail population – roughly 186,000 people – are believed to be in serious psychological distress.

Deinstitutionalization never really happened, said Hall, the Nashville sheriff; the burden of care simply shifted.

“I tell everybody we just reinstitutionalize these people in a different building,” he said. Jails are dealing with a population that has needs beyond what the criminal justice system is able to address.

Read more here.

Terrified of Trump!

Is the Clinton Crime Syndicate ever going to be held to account?

It makes sense

hat tip Steven Hayward

How times have changed

hat tip Steven Hayward

How to avoid negative publicity

hat tip Steven Hayward

Whew!

Hat tip Steven Hayward

Manipulated?

hat tip Steven Hayward

It's only fair

Safe space!

hat tip Steven Hayward

Keep going

Hat tip Steven Hayward

Who killed the liberal arts?

Hurry and watch before YouTube takes it down!

Power brokers like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and their ability — and perhaps even desire — to manipulate public opinion and shape the world into their own Silicon Valley image.

Which publications are biased toward the Left? Which ones are biased toward the right? Sharyl Attkisson prepared this graphic image.


In PJ Media Paula Bolyard did Google searches on "Trump." Guess whose results Google featured? Leftist publications!


Left-leaning sites comprised 96 percent of the total results.


Paula writes,

Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm, and a website's traffic prospects can rise or fall depending on the changes. PJ Media's Google search traffic, for example, dropped precipitously after a May 2017 algorithm change. We have yet to recover the lost traffic. Other conservative sites have reported similar drops in traffic.

Read more here.

China's "magic weapon"

Here is our first collusion story of the day. Guess who is funding DC think tanks? Bill Gertz reports at The Washington Free Beacon,

China's Communist Party is intensifying covert influence operations in the United States that include funding Washington think tanks and coercing Chinese Americans, according to a congressional commission report.

The influence operations are conducted by the United Front Work Department, a Central Committee organ that employs tens of thousands of operatives who seek to use both overt and covert operations to promote Communist Party policies.

...The report said the Johns Hopkins School of Advance International Studies, a major foreign policy education and analysis institute, has received funding from Tung Chee-hwa, a vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the party group that directs the United Front Work Department and includes a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the collective dictatorship that rules China.

...In addition to Johns Hopkins, other think tanks linked to China and influential in American policy circles include the Brookings Institution, Atlantic Council, Center for American Progress, EastWest Institute, Carter Center, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

...According to the report, Chinese President Xi Jinping has elevated the role of the communist influence organs to promote Chinese communism worldwide.

Xi regards United Front work as a "magic weapon" for use in what he has called the rejuvenation of China.

Since becoming Party general secretary in 2012, Xi has added 40,000 more people to the ranks of the United Front Work Department, and added new departments.

...Former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin, who defected to Australia in 2005, said China uses both coercion and incentives to recruit Chinese students as informants.

Read more here.

"Much of what we read about illegal immigration seems to have little to do with the reality of those most directly influenced by it."

Victor Davis Hanson lives on a

farm beside a rural avenue in central California, the fifth generation to reside in the same house. And after years of thefts, home break-ins, and dangerous encounters, I have concluded that it is no longer safe to live where I was born. I stay for a while longer because I am sixty-five years old and either too old to move or too worried about selling the final family parcel of what was homesteaded in the 1870s.

...Globalized agribusiness and unchecked illegal immigration, in different ways, combined to change central California and has made living in rural areas no longer safe.

...A month ago a gang member shot up a neighbor’s house. He was arrested, released, and rearrested in a single night after trying twice to break into the home. The armed homeowner stopped his entry. I know of no nearby resident who is not armed. I cannot remember anything remotely similar occurring before 1980. In the 1970s we had no keys to our doors, and houses were permanently unlocked.

Every once in a while amateur and illegal collectors, who freelance for immigrant households that do not pay for “supposedly” mandated county garbage pick-ups, will come in at night with panel trucks and trailers. They dump literally tons of garbage such as mattresses, sofas, TVs, appliances, tires, junk mail, and car seats on alleyways and in vineyards.

Not long ago someone jettisoned in our vineyard hundreds of used florescent light bulbs, about 100 paint cans, and fifty-gallon drums of used oil and chemicals. Needles and drug paraphernalia are not uncommon. I’ve seen about five stripped-down cars abandoned on our property after being stolen. Last summer a huge semi-truck was left on our alleyway, picked cleaned down to the chassis.

...The Mexican government counts on billions in annual remittances from mostly illegal immigrants in the United States who serve as a safety valve for Mexico City to defer needed social and economic change. (In the first eleven months of 2017 Mexicans living abroad sent home $26.1 billion, most of it from north of the border.) The expatriate community in the United States seems to grow fonder of Mexico the farther it is distant.

...Much of what we read about illegal immigration seems to have little to do with the reality of those most directly influenced by it.

Read more here.

Why waste time on a platform that artificially limits a conservative’s ability to take part in the political conversation?

In The Federalist, Nick Short and David Reaboi write,

Conservatives love using Twitter, but their patience in dealing with the throttling of their content’s visibility through Quality Filter “shadowbans” is wearing thin — and fast. Why waste time on a platform that artificially limits a conservative’s ability to take part in the political conversation?

Read more here.

Impeachment for Dummies

Roger L. Simon writes at PJ Media,

...If you're looking for someone to impeach, how about Dianne Feinstein who, we just learned, had a Chinese spy as her chauffeur for twenty years, even while she was chair of the Senate Intel Committee? At virtually the same time — 2010-ish, when Obama was president — close to the entire U.S. spy network in China, several dozen people, were apprehended by the Chinese on their soil in an unprecedented intelligence disaster. Only a few survived. Connection? Perhaps the New York Times or the Washington Post will investigate (as if).

...So if there's going to be impeachment, I say bring it on. Destroy the country, if you wish. Create a civil war.

But if you do it, remember to buy the book — Impeachment for Dummies. Or is it Dummies for Impeachment? I think it's the latter.

Read more here.

The Best Defense is a Good Offense!

MSNBC and CNN said the word "impeachment" 222 times in 16 hours Thursday! So what does President Trump do? He goes on the offensive! He thrives when there is a fight.

Patrick Madrid is Michael's guest. Michael asks him how to approach politics as a Christian in this absurd political climate.

Patrick asserts that academia has now failed three generations by not enabling students to develop critical thinking skills. Because of that people have resorted to bumper stickers, slogans, thought-stopping epithets. Patrick deals with them by using the Socratic method of asking questions: "Well if that's true, what about this?"

Michael notes that so many Millennials have been raised without any religious tradition at all.

He also notes the "rank bureaucratic corruption in the Catholic Church."

Michael asserts that we are now in a Gnostic age. Gnosticism is salvation by knowledge. Gnostics denied that Christ was a human. Gnosticism is very "New Agey." But we are united as individuals, body and soul.

By banning Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes big tech is interfering in our elections. Obama sent his political people to interfere in Israel's elections.

John McCain died this afternoon.

Google John McCain's death to find the Leftist media's unified sorrow at his passing.

Marijuana. "“The mantra about how this is a harmless, natural, and non-addictive substance—it’s now known by everybody. And it’s a lie.”

With the increasingly permissive cannabis legislation across the country, Annie Lowrey writes at The Atlantic,

self-described cannabis-use disorders are becoming more common.

Public-health experts worry about the increasingly potent options available, and the striking number of constant users. “Cannabis is potentially a real public-health problem,” said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University. “It wasn’t obvious to me 25 years ago, when 9 percent of self-reported cannabis users over the last month reported daily or near-daily use. I always was prepared to say, ‘No, it’s not a very abusable drug. Nine percent of anybody will do something stupid.’ But that number is now [something like] 40 percent.” They argue that state and local governments are setting up legal regimes without sufficient public-health protection, with some even warning that the country is replacing one form of reefer madness with another, careening from treating cannabis as if it were as dangerous as heroin to treating it as if it were as benign as kombucha.

But cannabis is not benign, even if it is relatively benign, compared with alcohol, opiates, and cigarettes, among other substances. Thousands of Americans are finding their own use problematic in a climate where pot products are getting more potent, more socially acceptable to use, and yet easier to come by, not that it was particularly hard before.

For Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, the most compelling evidence of the deleterious effects comes from users themselves. “In large national surveys, about one in 10 people who smoke it say they have a lot of problems. They say things like, ‘I have trouble quitting. I think a lot about quitting and I can’t do it. I smoked more than I intended to. I neglect responsibilities.’ There are plenty of people who have problems with it, in terms of things like concentration, short-term memory, and motivation,” he said. “People will say, ‘Oh, that’s just you fuddy-duddy doctors.’ Actually, no. It’s millions of people who use the drug who say that it causes problems.”

Users or former users I spoke with described lost jobs, lost marriages, lost houses, lost money, lost time. Foreclosures and divorces. Weight gain and mental-health problems. And one other thing: the problem of convincing other people that what they were experiencing was real. A few mentioned jokes about Doritos, and comments implying that the real issue was that they were lazy stoners. Others mentioned the common belief that you can be “psychologically” addicted to pot, but not “physically” or “really” addicted. The condition remains misunderstood, discounted, and strangely invisible, even as legalization and white-marketization pitches ahead.

The country is in the midst of a volte-face on marijuana. The federal government still classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug, with no accepted medical use. (Meth and PCP, among other drugs, are Schedule II.) Politicians still argue it is a gateway to the use of things like heroin and cocaine. The country still spends billions of dollars fighting it in a bloody and futile drug war, and still arrests more people for offenses related to cannabis than it does for all violent crimes combined.

...“The mantra about how this is a harmless, natural, and non-addictive substance—it’s now known by everybody. And it’s a lie.”

Thousands of businesses, as well as local governments earning tax money off of sales, are now literally invested in that lie. “The liquor companies are salivating,” Matt Karnes of GreenWave Advisors told me. “They can’t wait to come in full force.” He added that Big Pharma was targeting the medical market, with Wall Street, Silicon Valley, food businesses, and tobacco companies aiming at the recreational market.

...Perhaps most important might be reintroducing some reasonable skepticism about cannabis, especially until scientists have a better sense of the health effects of high-potency products, used frequently. Until then, listening to and believing the hundreds of thousands of users who argue marijuana is not always benign might be a good start.

Read more here.