[Daily Caller] President Trump adviser Roger Stone took a crack at one of Washington’s most thin-skinned journalists Tuesday, calling CNN’s Jake Tapper "light in the loafers."
The comment came during a Tuesday morning Breitbart News Daily radio interview on SiriusXM’s Patriot Channel.
Stone was indicted Friday on seven counts of obstruction, false statements and witness tampering. He was arraigned Tuesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., where he pleaded not guilty.
Breitbart News’s Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, who hosts the show, raised the issue of various journalists, such as Tapper, trying to "out him" sexually. During a panel discussion on CNN’s The Lead, Tapper suggested that Stone might reap some enjoyment from being in prison. Stone is married to a woman and has two children. He is The Daily Caller’s men’s fashion editor due to his sartorial expertise. Readers can listen to the full exchange here.
"The media is actually trying to out you Roger?" Marlow asked. "They’re making jokes you’re going to enjoy prison? Some of the sickest stuff I’ve ever seen from our American media and it starts with CNN getting the call early in the morning ... What was your reaction, Roger?"
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The Hospital Visit
Finally, the doctor came in looking tired and somber. "I'm afraid I'm the bearer of bad news," he said as he surveyed the worried faces.
"The only hope left for your loved one at this time is a brain transplant.
It's an experimental procedure, very risky, but it is the only hope.
Insurance will cover the procedure, but you will have to pay for the BRAIN.
The family members sat silent as they absorbed the news. After a time, someone asked, "How much will a brain cost?"
The doctor quickly responded, "$5,000 for a Democrat's brain; $200 for a Republican's brain."
The moment turned awkward. Some of the Democrats actually had to try not to smile, avoiding eye contact with the Republicans.
A man unable to control his curiosity, finally blurted out the question everyone wanted to ask, "Why is the Democrat's brain so much more than a Republican's brain"
The doctor smiled at the childish innocence and explained to the entire group, "It's just standard pricing procedure. We have to price the Republicans' brains a lot lower because they're used."
#2
Our dog died last year. I don't know about our dog being a Dem but I'm pretty sure my wife's eight cats are. Free food, free health care, free entertainment...
#3
It transcends logic, ideology, or common sense. Without a second thought, the paranoid Russian will likely take the track least favored by the west. Being agreeable does not suit them.
See 'curb feeler' theory. Oh never mind, I made it up, but you cannot deny it's existence.
Adam Johnson goes through the history of the New York Times' coverage of US-backed coups in Latin America, finding that it has supported at least 10 of the last 12 coups in the region.
[TruthDig] There’s a familiar script: The CIA and its U.S. corporate partners come in, wage economic warfare, fund and arm the opposition, then the target of this operation is blamed. This, of course, isn’t to say there isn’t merit to some of the objections being raised by The New York Times‐whether it be Chile in 1973 or Venezuela in 2019. But that’s not really the point. The reason the CIA and U.S. military and its corporate partisans historically target governments in Latin America is because those governments are hostile to U.S. capital and strategic interests, not because they are undemocratic. So while the points the Times makes about illiberalism may sometimes be true, they’re mostly a non sequitur when analyzing the reality of what’s unfolding.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
01/30/2019 00:00 ||
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[Hot Air] Back in 2015, the National Labor Relations Board under Barack Obama essentially redefined the word "employer" when talking about franchise agreements by altering definitions in what’s known as the joint employer standard. At the time, I looked over the final changes and simply concluded, "this is going to be bad."
And it was bad. By allowing labor unions to hold franchisers like McDonald’s responsible for labor practices of their franchisees, despite having no direct control over those policies, they opened the door to all manner of lawsuits, government fines, and other mischiefs. Analysts at the time predicted that it would have a trickle-down effect on the franchisees, creating a harsher business climate and leading to uncertainty in hiring and other policies. The NLRB under Donald Trump finally blocked that change and began to unwind it in 2017, but much of the damage was already done. Just how bad was it? A new study from the International Franchise Association and Chamber of Commerce reveals that it led to job losses numbering in the hundreds of thousands. (Free Beacon)
#1
Plus with illegals leaving wages for these jobs can rise in a sustainable market driven way rather than the job killing regulate and min wage disasters.
[FoxNews] Political leaders in a college town in central Texas won wide praise from former Vice President Al Gore and the larger Green Movement when they decided to go "100 percent renewable" seven years ago. Now, however, they are on the defensive over electricity costs that have their residents paying more than $1,000 per household in higher electricity charges over the last four years.
By 2017, the mayor’s green gamble was undercut by the cheap natural gas prices brought about by the revolution in high-tech fracking. Power that year cost the city’s budget $9.5 million more than expected, rising to $10.5 million last year, according to budget documents.
Whether Mayor Ross and his colleagues on the Georgetown City Council were motivated by good intentions, political machinations, or mere vanity is unknown. What is known is that Georgetown’s municipal utility, an integral part of the city budget, is hemorrhaging red ink thanks to those long term renewable energy contracts.
The deficits were triggered by the drop in natural gas prices‐now the mainstay of the U.S. electric grid, having displaced coal‐which caused the city to sell its surplus wind and solar power at a steep discount into Texas' wholesale energy market. City leaders had to lock in a large excess of wind and solar power to be able to lend credibility to their 100 percent renewable claim, since wind and solar power can't be relied on to keep the lights on 24/7/365. And, even with that surplus, there are times when Georgetown draws traditional fossil fuel power from the Texas grid, making the city's "100 percent renewable" claim nothing more than spurious sloganeering.
Most Texas residents have the ability to choose their electricity provider in a competitive statewide market, leading to electricity prices that are among the lowest in the nation: 18 percent below the national average in 2018, and 48 percent below prices in green energy pacesetter California. Fortunately, Californians have more money than common sense, with the exception of those who visit Rantburg.
But Texas' electricity market excludes municipal utilities like Georgetown's from competition, leaving consumers without choice and allowing political decisions – rather than market forces – to determine the mix of electricity suppliers.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/30/2019 00:00 ||
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Whilevisiting Solyndra in May of 2010, President Barack Obama claimed Solyndra was “leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.”
Which is to say: Why do progressives believe that enacting economic policies that harm the wealthy will benefit the middle class? Presumably they believe this would help the poor, too, but Democrats do not talk about the interests of the poor very much of late. The Democrats are the party of the bourgeoisie, and Republicans are the party of the proletariat, or at least of the parts of it that do not live within 200 miles of a subway station.
Last week, I noted that Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren had suggested a new program of confiscating the assets of wealthy Americans on an annual schedule, a "wealth tax" with no constitutional basis and very little to recommend it economically. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has recommended a confiscatory income tax. Progressives have taken to describing the class of people they hate in eliminationist terms: Representative Ocasio-Cortez insists that it is "immoral" for "billionaires to exist." Two influential progressive economic thinkers, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, have written that one of the benefits of confiscatory taxes is that they would cause the class of high-income Americans to "largely disappear." Marshall Steinbaum, the research director of the progressive Roosevelt Institute, wrote: "It’s increasingly clear that having wealthy people around is a luxury our society can no longer afford."
(In a social-media post with more than one exclamation point, Steinbaum complains that I "attacked" him. The above quotation is the entirety of what I have written about him. It is not clear to me that the English word "attack" includes within its meaning quotation without further commentary.)
The rhetoric of elimination and the politics of resentment attached to it are dangerous and unworthy. "Okay," wrote one critic, "but what would you do about inequality?"
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Guess who.. LAND MONOPOLY is not the only monopoly, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies -- it is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly. Unearned increments in land are not the only form of unearned or undeserved profit, but they are the principal form of unearned increment, and they are derived from processes which are not merely not beneficial, but positively detrimental to the general public.
Land, which is a necessity of human existence, which is the original source of all wealth, which is strictly limited in extent, which is fixed in geographical position -- land, I say, differs from all other forms of property, and the immemorial customs of nearly every modern state have placed the tenure, transfer, and obligations of land in a wholly different category from other classes of property.
Nothing is more amusing than to watch the efforts of land monopolists to claim that other forms of property and increment are similar in all respects to land and the unearned increment on land.
They talk of the increased profits of a doctor or lawyer from the growth of population in the town in which they live. They talk of the profits of a railway, from the growing wealth and activity in the districts through which it runs. They talk of the profits from a rise in stocks and even the profits derived from the sale of works of art.
But see how misleading and false all those analogies are. The windfalls from the sale of a picture -- a Van Dyke or a Holbein -- may be very considerable. But pictures do not get in anybody's way. They do not lay a toll on anybody's labor; they do not touch enterprise and production; they do not affect the creative processes on which the material well-being of millions depends.
If a rise in stocks confers profits on the fortunate holders far beyond what they expected or indeed deserved, nevertheless that profit was not reaped by withholding from the community the land which it needs; on the contrary, it was reaped by supplying industry with the capital without which it could not be carried on.
If a railway makes greater profits it is usually because it carries more goods and more passengers.
If a doctor or a lawyer enjoys a better practice, it is because the doctor attends more patients and more exacting patients, and because the lawyer pleads more suits in the courts and more important suits.
At every stage the doctor or the lawyer is giving service in return for his fees.
Fancy comparing these healthy processes with the enrichment which comes to the landlord who happens to own a plot of land on the outskirts of a great city, who watches the busy population around him making the city larger, richer, more convenient, more famous every day, and all the while sits still and does nothing.
Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labor and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived.
While the land is what is called "ripening" for the unearned in-crement of its owner, the merchant going to his office and the artisan going to his work must detour or pay a fare to avoid it. The people lose their chance of using the land, the city and state lose the taxes which would have accrued if the natural development had taken place, and all the while the land monopolist only has to sit still and watch complacently his property multiplying in value, sometimes many fold, without either effort or contribution on his part!
But let us follow this process a little further. The population of the city grows and grows, the congestion in the poorer quarters becomes acute, rents rise and thousands of families are crowded into tenements. At last the land becomes ripe for sale -- that means that the price is too tempting to be resisted any longer. And then, and not until then, it is sold by the yard or by the inch at 10 times, or 20 times, or even 50 times its agricultural value.
[American Thinker] When you come to Congress as a 29-year-old newbie and start throwing your weight around by threatening the careers of some of your party colleagues, you shouldn't be surprised if you make enemies of powerful people.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be a media darling and Twitter sensation, but if she doesn't watch her step, she may end up being a flash in the pan, one-term congressman.
Worse things have happened, though not often more amusing things.
Ocasio-Cortez and the so-called "Justice Democrats" are targeting numerous members of the Democratic establishment by threatening to primary them in 2020. This has angered some powerful members who are now talking about finding a challenger to beat her in her own 2020 primary.
[The Citizen] Well into the autumn of my life, I am occasionally reminded the end is not too far over the horizon. Mortality puts thoughts in my head, like, "What have I done to leave this world a better place?"
There actually are a few things that I think made my existence worthwhile. I will tell you just one of them, because so many of you need to hear it.
No matter how much this rubs the wrong way, I am quite proud to have served my country in the Vietnam War. Yes, I know, most of you were taught there is shame attached to any role in the war that America lost, an unfortunate mistake, an immoral war, an unwise intrusion into a civil war, a racist war, a war in which American troops committed widespread atrocities, where America had no strategic interest, and that our North Vietnamese enemy was innocently striving to re-unite Vietnam.
The problem is, none of those things is true. That didn’t stop America over the last 50 years lapping up this Kool-Aid concocted by the anti-war machine, a loose confederation of protesting activists, the mainstream news media and academia. They opposed the war with loud noise, half-truths and fabrications. They are the ones who still write their version in our schoolbooks, and their account of history conveniently excuses themselves for cowardly encouraging our enemy while we were at war. You see, having the right to protest does not necessarily make it the right or honorable thing to do.
So, yes, I am defiantly proud to have been among those who raised our right hand swearing to do our duty for our country while so many others yelled and screamed and marched, burned their draft cards, declared, "Hell, no! I won’t go!" and some fled to Canada.
In that period of uncomfortable controversy, even patriots tended to look the other way when activists heartily insulted American troops as they returned through California airports from doing the country’s hardest work in Vietnam. War correspondent Joe Galloway summed it up nicely in a column about Vietnam vets in the Chicago Tribune long ago; "They were the best you had, America, and you turned your back on them."
To be sure, there were lots of warts and wrinkles in the war. We were fighting a tough Communist enemy, defending South Vietnam’s right to remain free. At the same time we were betrayed by our own leadership in the White House with their incompetent micromanagement and idiotic war-fighting limitations that got thousands of us killed while preventing victory. And we were betrayed by fellow citizens encouraging our enemy.
I was trained to be an Army Cobra helicopter pilot. I remember many times, with no regrets, shooting up the enemy to protect our ground troops, firing to cover fellow pilots, and firing to keep the brutal enemy away from South Vietnamese civilians. A high school student asked me last year how I deal with the guilt. I answered that I don’t have any guilt, that I was doing my duty and would proudly do it again. Continues
[Center for Strategic and International Studies] When President Trump declared on December 19 that U.S. troops in Syria were "all coming back and coming back now," it plunged the future of the East of the country into uncertainty.1 Dynamics in Syria were already shifting against the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration (AA) in Northeast Syria, as threats from Turkey and the regime increased. The impending withdrawal of U.S. forces eliminates the AA’s main source of leverage over the Assad regime and increases its vulnerability to the Turkish invasion President Erdogan has threatened. Scrambling to avoid conflict, AA officials have turned to Russia to mediate a political deal with President Assad, hoping to restore regime control to Syria’s eastern borders in exchange for self-administration.2
However, the lack of clarity over the timeline of the withdrawal means the United States maintains important influence in eastern Syria.3 Shaping the outcome of the Kurdish question at this critical juncture and preventing a new conflict in Northeast Syria are among the few remaining positive steps it can take in Syria. Although the Kurdish issue seems tangential to U.S. interests, the United States should invest in its diplomatic and military tools to facilitate a limited autonomy settlement in Northeast Syria when the area is formally reintegrated into Assad’s territory. To do so, the United States should work to discourage potential spoilers to such a deal and then forge an international coalition to act as guarantors to the agreement.
Failing to secure an autonomy settlement could sow the seeds of long-lasting instability in Northeast Syria. The experience of autonomy has fanned the flames of Kurdish self-determination, and although the position of Syrian Kurds is now precarious, they are nonetheless stronger and more united than they ever have been. Throughout the conflict, they have won freedoms which Damascus long denied them and built a formidable army: the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) reportedly numbers over 60,000 troops.4 Such self-determination movements do not flare out so easily. A new CSIS edited volume, Independence Movements and Their Aftermath: Self-Determination and the Struggle for Success," shows that from Bangladesh to East Timor, governments’ attempts to curb a minority’s rights have often accelerated their push for independence.5 A U.S. abandonment of Syrian Kurds without facilitating a negotiated settlement could therefore ignite another bloody, long-term struggle for self-determination in the Middle East, with wide-reaching regional implications.
[Plato.Stqnford.edu] Aristotle states that "the politician and lawgiver is wholly occupied with the city-state, and the constitution is a certain way of organizing those who inhabit the city-state" (III.1.1274b36-8). His general theory of constitutions is set forth in Politics III. He begins with a definition of the citizen (politês), since the city-state is by nature a collective entity, a multitude of citizens. Citizens are distinguished from other inhabitants, such as resident aliens and slaves; and even children and seniors are not unqualified citizens (nor are most ordinary workers). After further analysis he defines the citizen as a person who has the right (exousia) to participate in deliberative or judicial office (1275b18‐21). In Athens, for example, citizens had the right to attend the assembly, the council, and other bodies, or to sit on juries. The Athenian system differed from a modern representative democracy in that the citizens were more directly involved in governing. Although full citizenship tended to be restricted in the Greek city-states (with women, slaves, foreigners, and some others excluded), the citizens were more deeply enfranchised than in modern representative democracies because they were more directly involved in governing. This is reflected in Aristotle's definition of the citizen (without qualification). Further, he defines the city-state (in the unqualified sense) as a multitude of such citizens which is adequate for a self-sufficient life (1275b20-21).
Aristotle defines the constitution (politeia) as a way of organizing the offices of the city-state, particularly the sovereign office (III.6.1278b8‐10; cf. IV.1.1289a15‐18). The constitution thus defines the governing body, which takes different forms: for example, in a democracy it is the people, and in an oligarchy it is a select few (the wealthy or well born). Before attempting to distinguish and evaluate various constitutions Aristotle considers two questions. First, why does a city-state come into being? He recalls the thesis, defended in Politics I.2, that human beings are by nature political animals, who naturally want to live together.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Neville Dark Lord of the Wee Folk7365 ||
01/30/2019 00:00 ||
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old dead white man crushing the legitimate aspirations of (fill in the blank).
[NationalReview] The old Democratic party championed the working classes, wanted secure borders to protect middle-class union wage earners, and focused generous federal entitlement help on the citizen poor. Civil rights were defined as equality of opportunity for all.
That party is long dead. An updated Hubert Humphrey or even Bill Clinton would not recognize any of the present "Democrats."
Even the old wing of elite liberals is mostly long gone, with its talk of legal immigration only, opposition to censorship, pro-Israel foreign policy, let-it-hang-out Sixties indulgence, and free speech.
It was superseded by grim progressives who are not so much interested in a square, new, or fair deal for the middle classes, as an entirely different deal that redefines everything from the Bill of Rights and the very way we elect presidents and senators to an embrace of identity politics as its first principle.
Indeed, we are currently witnessing a quite strange series of North Korean–like reeducation confessionals, from repenting erstwhile liberals and now presidential hopefuls such as Joe Biden, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand. They and other would-be candidates parade before show cameras to apologize for their prior incorrect heresies, including their erstwhile support for drug laws, tough sentencing, and border enforcement.
The subtext of these charades is that 28-year-old socialist Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (who won her Democratic primary with 15,897 votes and with that victory an assured congressional seat in a gerrymandered Democratic district) is the new Robespierre ‐ warning that the earth as we know it will end in twelve years, ICE must be disbanded, all student debt abolished, wealth taxes levied, and Medicare provided for all. And her political guillotine awaits any progressive with lingering stains of the Ancien Régime.
Presidential elections are now to be seen by the Left not as the end of a four-year political cycle. Instead, they are the beginning of an any-means-necessary, existential effort to reverse the proverbial will of the people and to remove or delegitimize the president. From now on, if the Left loses, then everything is in theory on the table: seeking removal of the victor by warping the Electoral College vote; or suing under the Logan Act, the emoluments clause, or the 25th Amendment; or cherry-picking federal judges to block presidential orders; or using the Congress to impeach the president; or unleashing a special counsel for years of investigation.
In other words, we are in a revolutionary cycle in which the old idea of Democrat or liberal is being superseded by progressivism ‐ and then going well beyond even that. The new generation of Democrats no longer resents "socialist" as a right-wing slur, and "Communist" may well go through the same rehabilitation.
The new, new Left questions not the operation of American democracy but the very premise of American democracy. When the selection of the Senate leads to something abhorrent like a counterrevolutionary majority, then the Founders are proven wrong after all, and senators should not be apportioned two to a state but by population at large. The Electoral College should be ended entirely, to reflect the reality that America is the urbanized corridors of the East and West Coasts where the right people live. The Bill of Rights, especially the First and Second Amendments, is considered an impediment to social justice.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Daily Caller] President Trump adviser Roger Stone took a crack at one of Washington’s most thin-skinned journalists Tuesday, calling CNN’s Jake Tapper "light in the loafers."
It transcends logic, ideology, or common sense. Without a second thought, the paranoid Russian will likely take the track least favored by the west. Being agreeable does not suit them.
[Hot Air] Back in 2015, the National Labor Relations Board under Barack Obama essentially redefined the word "employer" when talking about franchise agreements by altering definitions in what’s known as the joint employer standard. At the time, I looked over the final changes and simply concluded, "this is going to be bad."
[FoxNews] Political leaders in a college town in central Texas won wide praise from former Vice President Al Gore and the larger Green Movement when they decided to go "100 percent renewable" seven years ago. Now, however, they are on the defensive over electricity costs that have their residents paying more than $1,000 per household in higher electricity charges over the last four years.
The deficits were triggered by the drop in natural gas prices‐now the mainstay of the U.S. electric grid, having displaced coal‐which caused the city to sell its surplus wind and solar power at a steep discount into Texas' wholesale energy market. City leaders had to lock in a large excess of wind and solar power to be able to lend credibility to their 100 percent renewable claim, since wind and solar power can't be relied on to keep the lights on 24/7/365. And, even with that surplus, there are times when Georgetown draws traditional fossil fuel power from the Texas grid, making the city's "100 percent renewable" claim nothing more than spurious sloganeering.
[American Thinker] When you come to Congress as a 29-year-old newbie and start throwing your weight around by threatening the careers of some of your party colleagues, you shouldn't be surprised if you make enemies of powerful people.
General Theory of Constitutions and Citizenship
