E-SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM: What’s Wrong with E-Cigarettes?
https://youtu.be/XW4duMgxEIo
Archive for 2017
May 8, 2017
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why Chris Pratt Must Stand Up to PC Scolds.
BUT OF COURSE: Islamic State Threatens More Attacks on Egypt’s Christians, Obama DHS Adviser Says They Have It Coming.
They shouldn’t have worn such short skirts.
“ANALYSIS”: 11 Million Voters Backed ‘Fascist’ Le Pen on Record Night for Far-Right.
You can be fascist or you can be far right, but you can’t be both.
POP: The debt-bubble landmine Obama left for Trump.
When this debt bubble bursts, just as the last one did, the manufacturing jobs Trump wants to save will be in even greater peril.
The country’s last bubble was in housing. Between 2000 and 2007, Americans nearly doubled their mortgage debt, from $5.9 trillion to $10.6 trillion.
This didn’t bother anyone in a position of power. The housing boom created millions of jobs, from construction to home-furnishing, and people felt rich.
What bothered the pols was when the illusion broke.
Since the 2008 crash, neither Democrats nor Republicans have been interested in creating a sturdier economy. Instead, they’ve built up another bubble, this time in the car and SUV industry.
How? The same way: cheap debt. In 2010, Americans owed $809 billion on their cars (after adjusting for inflation). Today, they owe nearly $1.2 trillion, according to the New York Fed.
That’s a 50% increase in an economy which has barely grown since 2009. And as Glenn likes to remind you, anything that can’t go on forever will stop.
NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL AN ABSENTEE BALLOT: ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet Votes In French Election From International Space Station.
THE $4000 CAR that all the millionaires love.
HEH:
“The old-school viewers were put in a corner and not appreciated with all these other changes,” veteran ESPN anchor Linda Cohn said during an April radio interview when asked if ESPN’s liberal bent hurt the network. “If anyone wants to ignore that fact, then they’re blind.”
Rather than sue Mr. Denton’s bullying internet pirates into submission the way tech billionaire Peter Thiel did, ESPN chose to acquiesce and adopt progressive ideology and diversity as groundbreaking business innovations. ESPN is the exact network Deadspin desired. It’s diverse on its surface, progressive in its point of view, and more concerned with spinning media narratives than with the quality of its product.
The channel has become too handcuffed by politics to protect its most experienced and loyal employees. It’s a massive symbol of everything that fueled Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency.
ESPN NFL reporter Ed Werder, one of the most prominent faces among the layoffs last month, said in a podcast that he heard quality of work would not be a consideration when employees were let go. He lamented that “it seemed to me that quality work should be the only consideration.” Not in this America, the one ruled by social-media perception and dismissive of the real world.
Read the whole thing.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Duck And Cover, All Over Again? Our failed Iran and North Korea policies mean it’s probably time.
MICHAEL VAN DER GALIEN: The Real Reason Le Pen Lost.
KURT SCHLICHTER: For Fussy Liberals, It’s Always Apocalypse Right Now.
So, off we go to the Numbskull Olympics. Taking the gold for Freestyle Idiocy is California Democrat Senator Kamala Harris, who is incredibly stupid even for a California Democrat senator. She tweeted that 129 million people are going to lose their health insurance and presumably die. This is surprising, both because the 129 million figure is so insanely dumb that merely seeing that figure drops the reader’s IQ into freefall, and also because Kamala somehow managed to count past 10 without taking her shoes off.
Kamala also announced, without citation, that health care is “a right for all.” Those of us familiar with the Constitution are confused, since that document is entirely free of any such right, nor of any other right to force others to toil to provide you with things you want for free. What is in there are the rights to speak freely and petition, but Kamala discovered a footnote that says those enumerated rights don’t apply to citizens who dare doubt the other great Mystery Right, the penumbraed and emanated right to freely kill babies. And don’t bother asking about the Second Amendment either; sophisticated folk like Kamala aren’t restrained from indulging their limitless appetite for petty oppression by the express enumeration of rights.
It’s impossible to go over the top when writing about Harris.
POLL: Trump’s Approval Climbs As His Tax Cut Plan Wins Strong Support.
Cut hard, cut deep, cut soon.
UNFORTUNATE COMPROMISE: 2017 Ford C-Max Energi Plug-In Hybrid. “The 2017 Ford C-Max Energi strives to be both a credible plug-in-hybrid gasoline-electric car and a versatile multipurpose vehicle. Instead, it’s a compromised example of both.”
AETNA CEO: Obamacare Will Continue to Deteriorate If Nothing Happens.
Aetna, one of the largest insurers in the United States, announced last week that it planned to exit the Obamacare exchanges in Iowa and Virginia, citing major losses.
“Looking beyond 2017, we continue to evaluate our footprint with a view towards significantly reducing our exposure to individual commercial products in 2018,” said Shawn Guertin, Aetna’s chief financial officer. “We have already disclosed our planned 2018 exit from one of our 2017 state-based exchanges and intend to communicate other 2018 footprint decisions when appropriate.”
Bertolini mentioned that Medica, another health care insurer, notified Iowa last week that it was also pulling out of the exchanges which means there will be no one in Iowa with coverage.
I’m so old I can remember when ObamaCare was touted as the salvation for private health coverage.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How Much Do We Really Know About The Speed of Light?
OH, THAT SOCIALIST ASTROTURF: San Francisco Chronicle Admits: Some Anti-Trump Protesters are Paid.
Follow the money, as Deep Throat never said.
PAUL KRUGMAN: Republicans Party Like It’s 1984.
Krugman conveniently fails to mention that 1984 was Orwell’s dystopian vision of the results of English socialism.
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