Sunday, April 16, 2017

SHOE on the hazards of ageing.
DISPLAYING YOUR “DON’T TREAD ON ME” FLAG may now be a punishable offense. Not where I live, and any snowflake daring to complain would be laughed out of town. Or sent to (his/her/its) room.
DEMOCRATS’ POST-ELECTION PLAYBOOK: forget middle America. Democrats think of themselves as the urban party, destined to lead those 20% (do the research) of non-urban middle-American boobs to their shining city on the hill.

In reality, the Democrats are the inner-city urban party, and their 'shining city' is a slum.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama is America's version of Stanley Baldwin.
Last year, President Obama assured the world that "we are living in the most peaceful, prosperous and progressive era in human history," and that "the world has never been less violent."

Translated, those statements meant that active foreign-policy volcanoes in China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and the Middle East would probably not blow up on what little was left of Obama's watch.

Obama is the U.S. version of Stanley Baldwin, the suave, three-time British prime minister of the 1920s and 1930s. Baldwin's last tenure (1935-1937) coincided with the rapid rise of aggressive German, Italian and Japanese fascism.
Read it all.
DEMOCRAT NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN TOM PEREZ: Trump didn't win the election. Has he been to Mar-a-Lago lately? Or the White House?
HMM: The border wall is problematic because birds and bats might not be able to fly over. They forgot about coyotes, deer, bobcats, snakes, Gila monsters, cats, dogs, armadillos, porcupines, skunks, turtles, ....
AT THE CORNER OF PERCEPTION AND REALITY: PowerLine on ObamaCare repeal's first failure.

It now appears that the Republicans will try again. My preference would be for the House to pass a complete repeal (all three phases of the initial proposal lumped together in one bill) and force the Senate Democrats to attempt a filibuster.
RANDOM THOUGHTS from the PowerLine crew.
JAILS FOR ELITES: “Yale is becoming a kind of jail which hands out professional credentials to those hardy enough to serve out their term.”

And rich enough.
SCOTT ADAMS (DILBERT) on a fake news interview with him.
AN OLD DAVE BARRY COLUMN on how to fix Social Security. Entitlements (Medicare and Social Security) are the big cliff we're soon to be going over, so we might as well start thinking about it again.
POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES has posted, and this weeks theme is 'liberalism for children'. Herewith my favorite:


Such special snowflakes.
JEFF JACOBY: Immigrant heroes save American lives.

While I like Jeff Jacoby, I fall out with him on this one. He's guilty of the very conflating criminal aliens, which the Trump administration is arresting and deporting, with all aliens. The Trump administration (as yet) declared no policy regarding the law-abiding aliens beyond building a 'wall' and not allowing any more to enter.

Of which I wholeheartedly approve. Our immigration system is badly in need of repair such that aliens can only enter the United States through a through a lawful, well-regulated process.

At that point, we can deal with the resident aliens who are lawful, but entered illegally. And I suspect the solution will be to allow them to stay, just not as citizens.
A TWEET you need to read.
POWERLINE: A pro-environment judge is a bad judge. The post isn't really about the environment; it's about whether a Supreme Court Justice should show deference to government experts bureaucrats or to the Constitution.
Today, we are governed mostly by a fourth branch, nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, the permanent federal bureaucracy. These office-holders persist from one administration to another, and in many cases resist any effort to bring them into line with a new administration’s policies. They are unelected, unaccountable, frequently incompetent, and almost always Democrats.
I vote for the Constitution; damn the bureaucrats.
JEEZ, IT'S BEEN TWO WEEKS since my last spring leaf watch post. I'm getting forgetful in my old age. Here's this week's picture:


There hasn't been as much change as I expected. The greens are a bit darker, but the biggest change is that the new buds, which are beginning to be visible, have pushed off the last remaining dead leaves from 2016.

I expect the new leaves will begin to show next week (if I can remember to take the photo).
PREET BHARARA was rightfully fired.
Bharara’s refusal to resign wasn’t about principle. It was about putting himself publicly on the side of anti-Trump Democrats, no doubt in the expectation of future rewards, political or professional. It was not a brave act. It was, in fact, a species of corruption.
And while he's (theoretically) now a law professor, he's widely seen to be running for office in New York. Mayor of NYC. Or Governor.

Perfect jobs for a corruptocrat.
FASHIONWEAR FOR NORTH KOREA: from the (Ivanka) Trump collection.