QUESTION ASKED: Is Our Ukrainian Embassy Covering Up Democratic Party Collusion?
Archive for 2019
April 7, 2019
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BY NOT WANTING TO GET IT RIGHT: Bob Kerrey: How did Department of Justice get the Trump-Russia investigation so wrong?
Delusions fascinate me in part because I have so many of my own. Most often delusions are harmless. Sometimes they are not.
At the moment my fellow Democrats are suffering from two that are harmful. The first is that Americans long for a president who will ask us to pay more for the pleasure of increasing the role of the federal government in our lives. That this is a delusion can be seen in the promises made by six successful Democratic candidates in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan: three governors and three senators. Not one of them supported the Green New Deal, a tax on wealth or “Medicare for all.”
The second Democratic delusion is that Americans were robbed of the truth when Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and Attorney General William Barr concluded that President Trump did not collude with Russia in 2016. All evidence indicates that the full report will not change the conclusion that Donald J. Trump did not collude with Vladimir Putin to secure his victory in 2016.
Rather than investigating the president further, Congress needs to investigate how the Department of Justice got this one so wrong. If the president of the United States is vulnerable to prosecutorial abuse, then God help all the rest of us. Members of Congress cannot do this themselves. We do not trust them enough with such a vital mission.
Congress should create a nonpartisan commission to find out what went wrong and to tell us what needs to be done to make certain it never happens again.
Sorry, not crazy enough.
OPEN THREAD: Ring in Monday.
THEY TOLD ME A TRUMP PRESIDENCY WOULD BE MARKED BY RAMPANT ILLEGAL RACE DISRIMINATION. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! NYC Casting Call Says ‘White Artists’ Will Be Paid Less Than ‘POC Artists,’ And Undergo ‘Mandatory’ Session Of ‘Anti-Racism Training.’
SORRY, BUT SARAH’S SHOCKED FACE IS ON BED REST FROM OVERUSE: New Record: Obama Mentions Himself 456 Times During Berlin Townhall [Montage].
CHINA RISING: Spengler: ‘The Quantum Supremacy: A Novel.’
HOW AMERICA’S GUN CULTURE cultivates civic virtue.
BREAKING: KIRSTJEN NIELSEN TO RESIGN FROM DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY.
She will be replaced by Kevin McAleenan, an Obama holdover who, according to the Washington Post late last month, “warned that the U.S. immigration enforcement system along the nation’s southern boundary is at ‘the breaking point’ and said Wednesday that authorities are having to release migrants into the country after cursory background checks because of a crush of asylum-seeking families with children.”
As Twitchy asks, “Exit question: Is he really the best fit at DHS?”
Related: Report: Nearly 20 Percent of Inmates in Federal Prisons Are Criminal Aliens.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: In the Culture Wars, Be a Sancho Panza, Not a Don Quixote.
“Look there, friend Sancho, and behold thirty or forty outrageous giants, with whom, I intend to engage in battle, and put every one of them to death…for, it is a meritorious warfare, and serviceable both to God and man, to extirpate such a wicked race from the face of the Earth.”
“What giants do you mean?” said Sancho Panza.
“Those you see yonder,” replied his master, “with vast extended arms; some of which are two leagues long.”
“I would your worship would take notice,” replied Sancho, “that those you see yonder are no giants, but wind-mills; and what seem arms to you, are sails; which being turned with the wind, make the mill-stone work.”
“It seems very plain,” said the knight, “that you are but a novice in adventures.”
* * * * * * * *
There seems to be a discrepancy here. If all these public intellectuals are as dangerous as these claims suggest, why are we not progressing toward a dystopia—something like Nazi Germany, or Panem from The Hunger Games? Canada, my own country, recently was cited in a Social Progress Imperative report as being among the most progressive countries in the world, according to an analysis of factors that include personal rights, personal freedoms and choice, and inclusiveness. That seems inconsistent with the state of high anxiety that animates Alternative Influence.
There are, of course, dangerous people in the world, spreading genuinely dangerous ideas and doing real damage. Among these are actual white supremacists like the gunmen who shot and killed 50 people at the Linwood Islamic Centre and the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. These concerns are real, and need to be continually confronted. But the existence of such concerns does not explain why mainstream conservatives, libertarians and even classical liberals are now being lumped in with the worst elements of humanity. Why are so many seemingly respectable intellectuals and institutions tilting at windmills?
Don Quixote, I believe, may provide something of an answer. The novel is animated by the juxtaposition between Quixote’s old world of faith and certainty, and the complex modern age that Cervantes and his contemporaries were beginning to embrace in the 17th century.
Read the whole thing.
CHANGE: How Trump’s border policies are boosting wage growth.
Trump hasn’t officially agreed to raise the federal minimum wage above its current level of $7.25 an hour, but then again, he doesn’t have to. His policies are doing it all for him — including restricting illegal immigration.
A piece by The New York Times highlighted what’s happening in construction, where a labor shortage is pushing worker salaries to something like $25 an hour. But because the Times can’t stand to give Trump any credit, the story was framed that this shortage was a bad thing, a terrible burden for wealthy construction companies and contractors. What hypocrisy.
We can argue about efficacies of wall building in curtailing illegal immigration another time, but the numbers don’t lie: Friday’s employment report showed continued jobs gains and, lo and behold, a continued increase in wages. And not for hedge-fund managers, the report showed, but in those industries that employ the vast working class, such as health care, what’s known as leisure and hospitality and, of course, construction.
For years wages and benefits have remained stagnant on the low end despite all efforts by progressives from former President Barack Obama and various elected officials to increase the minimum wage and force employers to offer workers additional perks.
Now that’s changing. Wages and benefits are rising as businesses scramble to find workers in construction, health care and other industries. Government-induced minimum-wage standards and benefits often force employers to cut their payrolls to make a profit. But that’s not what’s happening now. Businesses are growing because of the Trump administration is cutting regulations, and taxes and the labor pool on the low end. . . .
The numbers don’t lie: The double whammy of lower taxes and a decline in the importing of low-wage illegal workers is making life better for the blue collar. The left loves to portray the president as xenophobic, but how is any of this racist if the beneficiaries are minorities and legal immigrants who often work in these jobs and are no longer worried about being replaced by an endless flow of cheap labor?
Pretty positive stuff from Gasparino, who’s no Trump fan.
WELL: Nunes to Make Eight Criminal Referrals to Justice Department This Week. “Rep. Devin Nunes is referring eight people to the Justice Department for prosecution regarding leaks, FISA abuse, and lying to Congress related to the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. . . . This is a fascinating development. Some of the highest ranking employees of the Justice Department may be on that list, including former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe who leaked information to the Wall Street Journal and then lied to his superiors about it. The most explosive cases could be related to how the FBI withheld information and misled the FISA court when requesting warrants to spy on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide.”
IT’S OKAY TO PULL OUT NOW: Microsoft Drops ‘Safe Removal’ of USB Drives As Default In Windows 10 1809.
“HAVE YOU TRIED CALLING THEM RACIST? I HEAR THAT TESTS WELL.” Bridge status = Burned: AP asks how Dems can get the evil, racist, straight, bigoted white man’s vote and it goes so badly.
OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Thousands in Britain left to go blind due to eye surgery rationing: Report.
But last year, former Social Democratic Party candidate Polly Toynbee assured Grauniad readers that “The NHS is our religion: it’s the only thing that saves it from the Tories,” complete with stained glass imagery in the article’s accompanying artwork. The artist who drew it though was more prescient than he could have ever imagined – both patients shown in the bottom left and right-hand panels literally have no eyes!
FASTER (AND MORE) PLEASE: U.S. Ratchets Up Pressure on Maduro by Blocking Oil Shipments to Cuba.
STUDYING SELF DEFENSE: Do Your Homework.
CALIFORNIA’S POTEMKIN ENVIRONMENTALISM: No State Imports More Electricity Than California.
Even during the Schwarzenegger era, Max Schultz of City Journal, who coined this post’s headline, noted that California’s “celebrated green economy produces pollution elsewhere, ongoing power shortages, and business-crippling costs.” Look for those trends to continue to get worse, based on the California assembly’s bill mandating 100 percent clean electricity passed last year.
Eventually, the New York Times and NPR may even dub the results “An ‘Almost Unimaginable’ Crisis.”
WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO drive your supercar off a hill at 70 mph.
