Instapundit » 2018

Well. Amazon already is doing a great deal to fend off homelessness. For starters, it is employing tens of thousands of people—thereby providing them with steady income with which to pay their mortgage or rent.

On top of that, Amazon has given millions to the city’s affordable-housing fund and millions more to two organizations that help the homeless. (To which Seattle officials say: Yeah, but what have you done for us lately?)

But more to the point: If Amazon declines to pay the tax, the city will take it to court. If Amazon continues not to pay, then it could be subject to liens on its property and, eventually, seizure of the property. Some people, such as actor Wesley Snipes, have even served time in prison for failing to pay their taxes, but it’s not clear if Amazon’s officers would face similar jeopardy over the head tax.

Extortion is simply obtaining money through force or the threat of force. So if anybody is practicing extortion in this case it is Seattle, not Amazon. Amazon isn’t threatening anyone with force, and it isn’t demanding money from anyone else. (At least not in Seattle; the company’s shameless gold-digging for its second headquarters, known as HQ2, is another story entirely.) Seattle is doing both.

In fact, by debating whether it will continue to grow in Seattle, Amazon is merely taking a page out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: It is, after a fashion, threatening to go on strike.

Reportedly, Rand said she wrote the book to show how badly “the world needs prime movers.” The linguistic overlap with Amazon Prime is coincidental, but apt.

As a wise businessman once said “Get the hell out of my way!”

AT AMAZON, save on books in Health Fitness and Dieting

ANALYSIS: TRUE. France Suffering ‘Intifada,’ Jewish Lawmaker Says Following Paris Attack. “Since 2012, hundreds of people have died in a series of terrorist attacks across France featuring explosives, firearms and vehicular ramming.”

I DON’T EVEN LIKE REAL FLYING INSECTS: The first wireless flying robotic insect takes off. We’re all going to have to have defenses against these things around our homes before this is over, aren’t we?

FASTER, PLEASE: Senators Press FTC to Investigate Google Over Privacy, Data Collection, and Where You Go to Church.

PEACE THROUGH SUPERIOR FIREPOWER: Pivot With a Nuclear Edge: Low Yield in the South China Sea.

Much has been said of the Trump administration, but an area where it has stepped up to the plate is nuclear modernization. The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) released in February 2018 provides answers for not only dealing with the Russian tactical nuclear imbalance but also the South China Sea A2/AD problem. As outlined in the NPR, the Trump administration aims to “expand tailored response options” by developing a low yield sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM), reminiscent of the now retired nuclear tomahawk missile (TLAM-N). In the short term, however, the intention is to modify a small number of submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warheads to significantly lower their yield. These will launch from the Ohio class ballistic missile submarines currently in service.

These tactical nuclear weapons deployed in the Pacific could be used to counter Chinese fortifications by effectively neutralizing the A2/AD capability with the appropriate yield. The thought of having to use any nuclear weapons is nothing to be taken lightly but so is the thought of a U.S. aircraft carrier being destroyed by multiple cruise missiles resulting in the loss of 5000 lives.

Indeed.

SEE, THE NICE THING ABOUT SUPPORTING FREE SPEECH IS THAT YOU CAN TELL THESE PEOPLE TO BUZZ OFF WITHOUT HAVING TO ARGUE CASES: Feminist Group Demands Spotify’s New ‘Hate Content’ Policy Be Applied to Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eminem.

TRAPPED FRENCH HAWKEYE: A French Navy E-2C Hawkeye lands on the USS George H.W. Bush.

French naval aviators and aircraft maintenance crews are using the U.S. carrier to sharpen their skills before France’s big aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, returns to duty this summer. USNI has the full story.

DEMOCRATS KNOW THEIR CORE VOTERS: Felons Voting, as Florida Voters Will Decide in November, Could Flip Major Races. “State Attorney General Pam Bondi and Gov. Rick Scott, two term-limited Republicans, have blocked a federal lawsuit that would force Florida to change the way it restores voting rights.”

Why the hell hasn’t Jeff Sessions stopped the lawsuit?

TRUMP’s INITIAL RESPONSE TO NORTH KOREA’S SUMMIT THREAT AND LIBYA GIMMICK: It amounts to a non-committal shrug until he sees what Kim Jong Un actually does:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday offered a non-committal response to North Korean threats to cancel his planned summit with Kim Jong Un, saying he hadn’t received any information that would put the talks in jeopardy.

“We haven’t been notified at all, we’ll have to see,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, where he was meeting his Uzbek counterpart. “We haven’t seen anything, we haven’t heard anything. We will see what happens.”

But pressed whether he would still insist upon North Korea’s denuclearization as a condition for the talks, Trump nodded yes.

South Korean officials have reacted with similar cool.

Since early March, when North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un told South Korean officials he would discuss denuclearizing his regime without pre-conditions, everyone has known at some point Little Rocket Man and his Pyongyang gang would wiggle and yelp –and possibly stall the process– with the goal of politically dividing Seoul and Washington.

Yesterday Kim Kye Gwan, North Korean First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, wiggled and yelped as he “sharply criticized American officials – especially national security adviser John Bolton – for suggesting that Libya could be a template for denuclearizing North Korea.” Kim added that North Korea’s nuclear program is far more advanced than Libya’s nascent program.

That’s true. However, the vice minister’s complaint ignores several facts, which is a good indication it’s an agitation-propaganda ploy to try to get the Trump Administration to accept something less that complete denuclearization.

Vice Minister Kim attacked Bolton for telling the press that the technical process of denuclearizing North Korea will be very similar that used in Libya — access to sites, verification, removal and disposal of nuclear weapons material and manufacturing capabilities. Bolton also said the deal the Bush Administration struck with Libya is a “template” for the agreement Japan, South Korea and the U.S. seek with the North Korean dictatorship. Bolton expressed an informed opinion. North Korea went ballistic — so to speak.

The Vice Minister’s Complaint could be read as a freudian slip revealing paranoid Pyongyang’s deepest fear: an internal North Korean rebellion. We know Kim Jong Un fears rebellion and coup. He had his half-brother murdered after hearing rumors North Korean expats had asked Kim Jong Nam to help reform the Kim regime. Rebellion and coup connect to Libya. Remember, Libyan rebels killed Libya’s denuclearized dictator Muammar Gaddafi. If Gaddafi had possessed deliverable nukes he might have stopped foreign states from aiding the rebels, but maybe not. A dictator fighting off an internal rebellion is a distracted man. Threatening to nuke powerful states while battling a domestic coup gives the powerful states a great reason to launch an all out attack to eliminate those weapons.

North Korea is guilty of poor timing. The wiggle and yelp routine started too soon. Pyongyang should have waited a couple of more weeks before exhibiting totalitarian pique and threatening to scuttle the Trump-Kim talks.

Now the big question — who’ll be the first person to call the the talks The U.S. Dotard-Little Rocket Man Summit?

MIAMI CHEESECAKE FACTORY EMPLOYEES THREATEN AND HARASS BLACK TRUMP SUPPORTER.

And naturally, the restaurant chain “blames the media for blowing incident with black customer in a MAGA hat ‘out of proportion.’”

Imagine if Starbucks tried to say the incident in Philadelphia was just blown out of proportion?

By not pouring gasoline onto the fire, the incident in Philly would have been out of the news cycle almost as quickly as today’s story will be?

DIRTY MONEY: U.S. Sanctions Iran’s Central Bank Governor, Alleges Hezbollah Ties.

The Treasury Department said that Valiollah Seif, the governor of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, sent the funds to Hezbollah through an Iraqi bank, the al-Bilad Islamic Bank. The funds were sent on behalf of Iran’s Quds Force, an Iranian paramilitary organization fighting in Syria along with Hezbollah to support President Bashar al-Assad.

The sanctions are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to preclude the Quds Force from using the international banking system.

Iran has long been involved in the Syria conflict and has supplied missiles and other weapons to Hezbollah, which is widely regarded as its proxy in the region. The Trump administration is trying to pressure Iran to curtail that support. But it has stopped short of taking military action against Iranian forces and Iranian-backed militias in Syria while defending Israel’s military strikes there.

In the sanctions announced Tuesday, Mr. Seif and Ali Tarzali, the assistant director of the international department at the bank, were named as “specially designated global terrorists.”

The Mullahs Regime is both a criminal and terrorist organization.

I GUESS SAD BUGS LOSE THEIR APPETITES. Lack of ‘happiness’ hormone makes rice plants less attractive to insects.

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