TAKEAWAYS from Trump's foreign policy speech.

HILLARY CLINTON: Half my Cabinet will be women. So being female is now a job requirement? Do transgenders count? In either direction?

LIVE FROM OMAHA, it’s James Hansen, and "I have never heard such nonsense in my life."

THE SILENT NASTY: Blame the Left for the deteriorating tone of our political discourse.

[T]he Left has felt blithely justified in sneering at opposing opinions it deems racist, sexist, or otherwise hateful. But it just doesn’t work. The eyes see what they see; the heart knows what it knows. Bottle up the human experience in silence, and it will ultimately break forth in rage. Thus, the result of these last 50 years of ceaseless left-wing incivility has been not a rainbow-striped paradise of social justice, but the utter collapse of our civic dialogue as the Right now responds with vulgar cruelty of its own.

The Left has forgotten that the sword is double-edged; the Right is discovering it.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES has stall-to-stall coverage of the bathroom wars. My favorite, though, is this one:

The comparisons of the presidential candidates to Sesame Street characters are also excellent - and apropos.

For your added enjoyment, here are some more "Bernies" from around the intertubes:

Socialism - the gift that keeps on giving (your stuff)....

NEW YORK TIMES: The Death of Liberalism.

Every time I try to reread this article, I keep asking myself "Does this guy even have a clue that there's a world outside his bubble?" Read it for yourself to get a glimpse of 'reality'.

AMMO GRRRLL on one-way streets: "No wonder we’re on the road to perdition and can’t even make a U-Turn."

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT:

Linked from this PowerLine post.

MICHAEL RAMIREZ on the U.S.S. Economy. It would be more accurate if the captain were on the lifeboat looking back at the ship....

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? Nothing; they got welfare right.

LIBERALISM is an umbrage factory.

SECRET SERVICE running out of agents.

[T]he U.S. Secret Service may need to seek outside help to fulfill its mission because agents are leaving the agency faster than they can be replaced.

I wonder why....

THE SCOREKEEPER: Klansmen for Clinton?

TECHNOLOGY: watch heat surge across semiconductors at the speed of sound.

IF IT IS IMMORAL, even criminal or civilly liable for these mom-and-pop Christian businesses to deny services based on their fundamental beliefs, why is it not also immoral or legally actionable for large corporations to refuse their services to the citizens of those states where those who govern choose to pass legislation to protect the religious freedoms of their citizenry?

For liberals, morality is a means, not an end.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: White elites [on both sides of the political spectrum] are the main reason Donald Trump's campaign hasn't sputtered and failed.

Trump is winning because he is the only candidate who was willing to stand up to the professional victims and their PC enablers in the so-called 'ruling class' and punch back. The other Republican candidates should have learned then; they didn't.

ANIMAL RIGHTS GROUPS take aim at zoos, circuses and maybe your pet.

Somehow I don't think my 5 cats, especially the three (formerly) feral ones, would take kindly to being 'freed' to their natural habitat.

LIGHTNING STRIKES A DEMOCRAT: “I thought the Republican Party was full of dog whistles but the Democratic Party has a foghorn.”

Maybe some Democrats can learn after all.

GLOBAL WARMING CLIMATE CHANGE: What do real scientists say?



Linked from this PowerLine post.

VERIFIED: The real minimum wage is zero.

No more jobs for social justice warriors....

BREAKING NEWS: “[T]he National Enquirer is relatively trustworthy compared to the New York Times”.

Heh.

BERNIE SANDERS: I'm behind because 'poor people don't vote'.

Bernie remains solidly astride the "What's the matter with Kansas?" progressive 'deja vu all over again' unicorn. I suspect his solution is for government to assign all 'poor votes' to him as their Lord Protector.

ENVIRONMENTALISM: how the rich wage war on the poor. Linked from this Instapundit post.

DOGBERT ON EARTH DAY: "You can’t save the earth unless you’re willing to make other people sacrifice."

And there's this comment on subsidies: "No government subsidies were needed to get whale oil replaced by petroleum."

CLINTON CAMPAIGN cautiously begins considering running mates.

From the comments: "Killary and Liawatha".

EARTH DAY XLVI was April 22nd:

And environmentalists are still getting things wrong.

Maybe next year....

BERNIE SANDERS rolls out his affordable housing plan. He's my age; doesn't he remember his liberal government's previous failures?

SCHADENFREUDE: watching liberals as the white, slave-holding, elitist founder of the modern Democrat party is replaced by a conservative black gun-owning female former slave.

A delicious twofer.

POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures is up. My favorite this week: Making America Great Again.

Sorry, Canada.

The others are equally good. Go visit.

FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION: It is a federal crime to shoot down drones. Ducks, geese, and quail fly, too. Is it now a federal crime to shoot them down, too?

BACK TO THE FUTURE: living in tents.

WHAT OBAMA REALLY WANTS is to replace Harriet Tubman on the twenty-dollar bill.

HE'S WORRIED Virginia may be turning red again. Gov. Terry McAuliffe permits 200,000 felons to vote in upcoming election.

SHOCKING! Sen. Bob Casey (D., PA.) acknowledges Democrats have a “propensity” to get nasty....

As if this is something new.

ANYTHING MORE than zero accountability is an 'assault' on federal workers. What? You expect us to do our jobs? We're government employees, dammit.

WHAT ARE THEY HIDING? New York AG tried to hide serial litigator's role in his new Climate Inquisition.

It's a last-ditch effort to bail out a sinking ship.

HEH: UC Berkeley greets $15 minimum wage with job cuts.

Guess who's going to lose? [Hint: It won't be the administrators. Or tenured faculty. Or diversity coordinators.]

LIBERALS LOVE THEIR CHILDREN TOO: An old idea — freedom — catches on at schools.

Well, liberals, maybe; progressives, not.

ANN COULTER: New York Commemorates Patriots Day!

BEWARE: the sleeping dogs are waking. And about to bite.

"BREAKING NEWS NARRATIVE REPORTING": Pulitzer committee gets Freddie Gray's death wrong.

Not if you correct the headline, as I just did.

OBAMA'S 'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED' MOMENT:

CULTURE PLANNERS VS. PEOPLE: The people have always won in the past, but with the explosive growth of government, will it last?

LAST WEEK'S DEMOCRAT DEBATE, summarized.

DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Newspaper reporter rated worst job in America. Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it's where you start looking....

DON SURBER: England has snowflakes, too. Maybe not as 'melty' as American snowflakes, but still....

THE DRAWBRIDGE EFFECT, or why rich celebrities love Democrats: “You’ve made your money. Now the very last thing you want is for all those trashy middle class people below you to have a fair shot at getting as rich as you are.”

BERNIE SANDERS: just another craven politician.

I ALWAYS wondered about that.

ANOTHER UNIVERSITY TO AVOID: No sex at the University of Washington.

Plenty of 'gender', though. Here's more (official) gender language than you ever wanted to know. You're welcome.

SCIENCE, THE NORTH KOREAN WAY: Bill Nye, “Science Guy,” open to jail time for climate change skeptics. Nye is a reminder that smart and credentialed are not synonyms. Neil deGrasse Tyson is another example of a credentialed ego who knows far less than he thinks he knows.

THERE'S EDUCATION; then there's special education.

SURPRISED? [Former Attorney General Eric] Holder participated in a coordinated effort to obstruct Congress on Fast & Furious.

No, I'm not. And neither will I be surprised when he gets away unscathed.

THAT'S WHAT OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY IS FOR: Sanders’ supporters want universal health care, free tuition but aren’t willing to pay for it themselves.

'RIGHTEOUS MORAL CRUSADE' is a euphemism for 'self-serving con job'.

HEH: Dozens show up for 'Million Student March'.

Epic fail. My guess is that the protestors won't work for less than the $15/hr minimum wage....

(THANKFULLY DEPARTING) SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D-UNHINGED) earns a PowerLine Green Weenie Lifetime Achievement Award. It takes aggressive stupidity to win a Green Weenie; to sustain that effort long enough to win a lifetime award requires a massive ego as well. Well deserved, Ms. Boxer.

Note: if the audio doesn't work, click on the YouTube link.

POPCORN makes it easier to bear.

DRONE RACES ARE COMING: 2016 US National Drone Racing Championships will be the first event streamed live.



Are those 'drone parts' littering the racetrack?

YES, THERE WAS ANOTHER DEMOCRAT DEBATE ON THURSDAY, summarized this way: [Former] President Clinton, watch out for Hillary's bus.

BLASTS FROM THE PAST: 4 years ago and five years ago today. And still relevant.

THE THIRD-BRAND CANDIDATE: "Coke, Pepsi, or Kasich?"

He seems to have a bit of a problem understanding that people like Coke and Pepsi....

FOX BUSINESS: Are Social Security benefit increases coming?

THE DEMOCRAT DEBATE explained.

LOOK AT how many pages are in the federal tax code.

This growth in the tax code has not come without consequences. "Over the decades, lawmakers have increasingly asked the tax code to direct all manner of social and economic objectives, such as encouraging people to buy hybrid vehicles, turn corn into gasoline, purchase health insurance, buy a home, replace that home's windows, adopt children, put them in daycare, purchase school supplies, go to college, invest in historic buildings, spend more on research, and the list goes on," according to the Tax Foundation's chart book, "Putting a Face on America's Tax Returns."

Do we really need this much government interference in our daily lives?

JOSH EARNEST: A government shutdown is okay ... if Democrats do it.

AMMO GRRRLL: 'Free' college will not end well. She's right on all counts.

CAPITALISM IS ORGANIC:

The point is not just to mock this particular person, although I have to admit that being totally ignorant about agriculture, economics, and history all at once is quite a feat. The point is that the development of modern industrial capitalism really was a logical, natural development continuing in a direct line from the very earliest, most primitive forms of production and trade. Specialization, markets, a medium of exchange (otherwise known as “money”), division of labor, economies of scale, savings, investment, credit, capital—all of it evolved naturally as solutions to problems that arose from a simple agrarian existence.

Can Progressives learn? Not likely (without starving first).

ANOTHER COLLEGE FALLS to social justice warrior intimidation. Higher education is well down the path to self-immolation.

On the bright side, it could save me a whole bunch of tax dollars.

Related item here: Portland Community College Professor Wants a 'World Without Whiteness'.

SO DO I: Jeff Bezos wants "Millions of people living and working in space."

On one hand, I wonder if I was born 100 years too early; on the other, I wonder if civilization will last another 100 years.

WHY SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS HATE THE FIRST AMENDMENT:

THE $15 MINIMUM WAGE: designed to keep people unemployed, dependent on the government, and voting Democratic.

THEY ALREADY DO. NEXT QUESTION? Will Robocars make you puke?

JUST WHEN YOU THINK university administrations can't get any stupider, comes this: DePaul University bans chalk because it can be used to spell ‘Trump.’ Follow the link, and take note of Glenn Reynolds' response, which is mine as well.

NEWT GINGRICH endorses a Georgia spaceport.

TWEET OF THE DAY: "Wish Hillary and Bernie would shut up about politics and do what they do best - entertain us" -- @ benschwartzy

NVIDIA TO SUPPLY robocar brains for RoboRace Formula E Series.

My reaction is the same as in this comment: "So, when self-driving cars start showing up on our highways, how many people will be not wanting to 'lose to a stinking machine'? Trying to outsmart a self-driving car even has some appeal to me, and I left my teen years over half a century ago. Self-driving cars are clearly more logical than human drivers, and therefore should behave more sanely. It's the mix of the logical 'coolly calculating algorithm' with the illogical 'carbon-based nervous system' that scares me."

THE QUESTION would be easy to answer if Progressives could think, even semi-rationally: Why is it easier to buy a gun than it is to buy the NRA’s mascot outfit?

BILL WHITTLE: Appropriate this!



I like the idea of making the culture warriors give up all the 'white culture' they've appropriated from us; then see how how they feel about 'cultural appropriation'.

ENVIRONMENTAL 'PROTECTION' AGENCY: Yes, we have standards; they just don't apply to us.

CLINICAL LAW PROFESSOR questions indoctrinating students with social justice morality and requiring pro bono by students, not faculty and administrators. It's that last phrase (in italics) that's telling about progressives: Do as I say, not as I do.

BELABORING THE OBVIOUS: college isn't alway worth it.

The 'progressive' college experience is never worth it.

RANDOM THOUGHT: Virtue-signaling and hypocrisy are flip sides of the same coin.

FORMER ROMNEY CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Democrats are unfair to Bernie. The hypocrites are on both sides; the establishment politicos don't like sharing the wealth.

The Hill blog doesn't seem to want to let you see its content without making you subscribe; usually a couple of clicks on 'reload' will let you through. Normally I wouldn't bother posting anything from The Hill except for this comment by one David Miller:

First of all, you know s#it about communism if you call Sanders a communist. Secondly, he outperforms Hillary in virtually every single poll against ANY republican.

This "communist" s#it works only on 60+ years old CNN, MSNBC and FOX viewers.

To which I have to respond: Maybe this "communist" sh#t works on us 60+ year-olders because we've experienced communism first-hand. You should respect your elders, son; you might learn something from them.

SMUG AND SATISFIED: “For these people, we are always eco-sinners in the hands of an angry Gaia.”

Don’t discount the smug satisfaction the eco-fascist takes in knowing he’s coerced entire cities to ban shopping bags, begin mandatory composting and in bankrupting entire industries, coupled with the Gnostic belief that he can see the world more clearly than those non-believers, whom he views as the equivalent of Holocaust deniers, if not something even worse. All that crony corporatism means he’s got his — and all the new laws he’s passed are the equivalent of raising the drawbridge up behind him. Not to mention all the exciting cocktail parties with Leonardo, Al, Barry, and the rest of the (private) jet-set in Paris, Davos, and Bali. Sure it’s all nihilism — but nobody said that nihilism couldn’t be awfully swank as well.

And hypocrites to boot....

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION is corrupt to the core, but ...

VIRTUE SIGNALING is more important than actual, umm, virtue.

I'D RECOMMEND cutting students. The fewer Berzerkers in American society, the better.

HAS-BEEN SINGER cancels Mississippi concert over new "anti-gay" law after playing in Egypt.

Virtue stupidity signaling.

MICHAEL RAMIREZ: Lies and liars.

ANOTHER DEMOCRAT WITCH HUNT: Democrat Attorneys General, with the backing of the Obama administration, are mounting a Big Tobacco-style probe of oil companies, alleging that they misled the public about the risks of global warming.

IS OBAMA going on another apology tour? I hope not, and here's why.

WHAT'S NEXT for SpaceX and the Falcon 9 rocket that landed on a barge?

WISCONSIN GOV. SCOTT WALKER confident unions' "right to bleed" will be upheld by the state supreme court:

[T]he state's new right-to-work law ... prohibits private-sector unions from forcing non-members to pay them regular fees....

Walker's Act 10 extended protections similiar to right-to-work to public-sectors workers. The two largest public-sector unions in the state, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Councils 40 & 48, went from having a combined 41,000 members in 2011 when Act 10 was passed to just over 12,000 by the end of 2014, according to Labor Department data. Over the same period, their budgets shrank from a combined $18 million to just over $5 million.

And the Democrat party's coffers emptied by ... how much?

ROY COOPER'S HAWKS: Mike Adams on the North Carolina Attorney General.

The attorney general spent millions trying to protect North Carolina from conservative professors in public classrooms. Now he won’t spend a dime to protect North Carolina from convicted pedophiles in public restrooms. I think that really says it all.

'Nuff said.

LIBERAL ATTORNEYS GENERAL have begun a war against the first amendment. Kurt Schlicter reminds them that the sword cuts both ways.

WHITE CASTLE: a case study on the effect of the $15/hr minimum wage.

“CALL ME OLD-FASHIONED, but I tend to think of people with penises as men.”

TEXAS SUCCEEDS where America's federal immigration system fails.

SO WOMEN ONLY earn 78% of what men earn? They should have it so good; at the Clinton Foundation, they only earn 62% of male salaries.

INCEST: the next transgender right?

"IT’S TIME FOR RACE HUCKSTERS ... to get a life.”

BLACK LIVES MATTER, just not the way the BLM crowd wants you to believe.

THERE’S A PARTICULAR PHOTO that went around the world of a little boy lying dead on the beach. It is true that this photo was very sad and makes you reflect on the distress of these people fleeing their country at the risk of their lives.

Above, a photo showing 10 people walking in light snow to reach the final objective, to live in a European country. Even if this photo is making it around the world, only 1% of the people will notice the whole truth.

In the photo there are 7 men, 1 woman and 3 children. Up to this point – nothing special. But by observing a bit closer, you will notice that the woman has bare feet, is accompanied by 3 children, and of the 3, she is carrying 2. There is the problem because none of the men are helping her.

That is because in their culture the woman represents nothing. She is only good to be a slave to the men. Do you really believe that these particular individuals could integrate into our societies and countries and respect our customs and traditions ?

From my email.

HOW TO REDUCE CITY TRAFFIC: self-driving vehicles or car-free cities?

Umm, can someone explain how those cities are going to get 'stuff' (i.e., food, merchandise) into a vehicle-free city?

STOP TRUMP BECAUSE ... too much democracy.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The next president is going to be hated. So let's elect the most hated candidate by both the Democrat and Republican parties -- Donald Trump -- and get on with "making America great again".

ANALYSIS, TRUE: Socialism is for takers, not makers.

OH, COME NOW: Interviewing candidates through avatars could help more women land tech jobs. Back when I was involved in hiring decisions, I brought in more women than men.

If there's 'gender bias' in (engineering) hiring today, it's against males.

UNITED HEALTH makes good on its threat to pull out of ObamaCare.

I hope it's only a matter of time until health care dies and health insurance returns.

MUSLIM REFUGEE ROADBLOCK:

From my email.

STUDENTS ARE SMART. Well, some students: Mizzou closes dorms due to lack of admissions.

Mizzou should serve as a warning to other protesters: Your whining over trivial matters (actual racism is bad; microaggressions and safe spaces make you look like babies) damage your school's reputation and keep it from doing its job of educating you and preparing you for the real world.

And this should be a wake-up call to parents, who are paying a lot of money for ... not much.

NASA'S SPACE SHUTTLE ERA took flight 35 years ago today.

Some history here.

ENTER THE MINIMUM WAGE:

Heh.

SO I GUESS it’s open season on Democrat allies, right? Yes. Yes, it is.

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO learns why mandatory unisex bathrooms are a bad idea.

TECHNOLOGY: Did Claude Shannon Invent a Groundbreaking Personal Computer?

Interestingly, it was Shannon's work in information theory that led me to pursue a doctorate in information theory and error-correcting coding.

HEH: "Equal Pay Day" is in the middle of "Irritable Bowel Syndrome Awareness Month".

Fitting.

OH, MY: Is Justin Bieber's Hair Racist?

DON'T THEY GO HAND-IN-HAND? Is corruption thicker than socialism?

DEAR ATTORNEYS GENERAL, conspiring against free speech is a crime.

A MODEST PROPOSAL: Why not allow people to opt out of representation by their Senator or Representative?

You can pay extra to send your kids to an out-of-state public university. Shouldn’t you be able to pay extra for out-of-state congressional representation?

Read the whole thing.

THEY'RE RENT SEEKING: California Labor Union That Fought for $15 Minimum Wage Now Wants an Exemption.

OBAMA'S BIGGEST MISTAKE: "[H]ey, he’s got enough disastrous mistakes that reasonable people can differ as to which one was the worst."

MORE SCREAMING CAMPUS GARBAGE BABIES: I am Incoherent; Hear Me Roar! My cats make more sense; at least when they whine, I know they want dinner.

SCREAMING CAMPUS GARBAGE BABIES demand to be fed by mommy. They went (hungry).

THE ANSWER IS 'NO': Will ObamaCare Co-Ops exist in 2017? Not even if Hillary is elected.

ISN'T THE PURPOSE of socialism/communism to make everyone a government employee?

BERNIE WINS WYOMING; Hillary wins Wyoming's delegates.

Wyoming has four super delegates — party elites who are free to cast votes at the convention for whomever they want unbound from the will of their state’s voters. All four of Wyoming’s super delegates announced in January they intend to vote for Hillary Clinton. This means even though Sanders won the state by 12 points, Hillary actually has 11 delegates to 7 for Sanders.

Don't worry, kiddies. We know you voted wrong, and we will fix it for you....

Anecdotally, I'm noticing that that even Democrats (some of them, at least) are beginning to understand that there's such a thing as too much 'free stuff'.

AT LEAST she got through....

BLACK HISTORY PROFESSOR imagines a world without 'whiteness'.

It's called 'Africa'.

DONALD TRUMP - the id is released.

ONE HAS TO WONDER: Vegansexuality studies?

A PHRASE WORTH CONSIDERING: "reducing the American people to children." George Will on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, discussing the Democrats use of superdelegates in the presidential nominating process.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: If you don't rent to criminals, you must be racist.

THE NEW URBAN BLIGHT: rich, young, childless white people.

Linked from this Instapundit post which brought this comment:

Perhaps there is a trend brewing, pushing back against the Church of modern Urbanism, which actually seems to be nothing but the advancement of Socialism, wrapped up in a brand new shiny wrapped, for the consumption of shallow thinkers.

A thought I've had for many years.

IN TEXAS: quitting more skilled jobs to work for McDonalds:

Rapid, across the board increases in the minimum wage reduce incentive for job seekers to move into more skilled positions early on. Why go through a lengthy and sometimes expensive training or apprenticeship program to learn a growth skill when your neighbor who flunked out of high school is earning as much or more than you handing out shamrock shakes at the drive-through window?

Keep an eye on this story; it'll be playing nationwide in the not-too-distant future.

MINNESOTA LAWMAKER: Crude transgender reaction is strengthening resolve to pass bathroom privacy legislation.

The 'bottom' 99.97% are beginning to awaken....

THE TRAGIC DETERIORATION of Washington's 'great society' subway. Maintenance isn't sexy; just necessary.

When I lived in the D.C. metro area I used the Metro regularly, if not frequently. I would not have wanted to depend on it, though.

TOUGH QUESTIONS for PayPal CEO after he pulls out of NC over new transgender bathroom law. Note he's not pulling his operation out of North Carolina, just not expanding it.

Consistency is not a Progressive strong point; virtue signaling is.

HEH: a 'do-not-hire' list.

Name and shame....

THINK AGAIN, SISTER: Gina McCarthy promises EPA “won’t go down without a fight” if GOP wins in November.

MINIMUM WAGE FOLLIES: Good intentions, but a near total failure as an anti-poverty policy.

Proof: McDonalds responds to minimum wage hikes with McCafe coffee kiosks. Can Starbucks be far behind?

FINALLY — A College president finds a backbone.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES such cesspits of official poverty and environmental violence?

Maybe because they're Democrat-run cities?

SOON: When will the lights go out in California?

DON SURBER: Maybe I am wrong about Trump. But I don't think so.

MATH IS HARD: the New York Times was only off by a factor of 1.8*10^21 (about 2 billion trillion).

GO AHEAD - shoot!

I DIDN'T KNOW THAT: Climate change causes kittens.

An (almost complete) list of things caused by global warming climate change is here.

ONE BILLIONAIRE MOVES SOUTH — and New Jersey's budget falls apart.

So now the Democrat sponges are going to have to start paying their own way....

INTERESTING QUIZ: How thick is your bubble? I scored 50, which, I think, is more attributable to age than any other factor.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: My opponents keep “saying whatever they want [i.e., lying] about Washington policy debates” and this must stop [i.e., be criminalized].

Lies are for little people; for Sen. Fauxcahontas and her ruling entitled class, they are not lies, they are 'perceived truths'.

POTTY TALK: The Tyranny of the 0.03 Percent.

There's an excellent question in the comments, to wit: "Why are the rights of biological males and females to be comfy [in] the potty room of their biological gender taken away?"

RIPPETOE FOR PRESIDENT: "I don't want your help." Watch the whole video -- you'll understand.

SHE DIDN'T WANT THEM TO HEAR HER BEGGING: Clinton team blasts reporters with noise machine during Hillary's fundraising speech.

AMERICA: worth fighting for. So punch back. Twice as hard.

REMINDER: If you can hear the dog whistle, you must be the dog.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Feds are out-burgling the burglars.

The tagline from the GEICO commercials applies perfectly: "It's what they do."

A REMINDER for the voters who weren't paying attention in 2008 and 2012:

REMEMBER, I SAID IT FIRST: [There's] no gap between political correctness and insanity.

THE WHITE HOUSE wants your IRA. To read the full article, you'll have to google 'They Want Your IRA' and select the WSJ link.

Instapundit comments here. And Doug Powers has more here.

CAMPUS LUNACY: Dr. Walter E. Williams wonders about the consistency of the campus PC crybullies.

DEMOCRATS FIGHT to rein in Twitter:

If you keep losing on your issues, that's obviously a big problem. Which is presumably why the anti-political-speech crowd is foaming at the mouth.

Heh.

CAN'T HAVE SPACE TRAVEL WITHOUT RULES: The United Nations calls for regulations on space travel to be enacted within five years "in order to bolster a burgeoning space tourism and transportation sector."

Can you imagine what the New World would be like if the UN had existed in 1492?

HIS 'VIRTUAL REALITY' GOGGLES FAILED (AGAIN): Obama's nuke-free future dashed by world events.

MALLARD FILLMORE explains* Democrat 'superdelegates'.

*I've taken a little liberty by trimming the last panel of the cartoon. Also I think the word 'help' is a little weak; 'make' is a better choice.

GENERAL ELECTRIC responds to Bernie Sanders' BS:

GE has been in business for 124 years and we’ve never been a big hit with socialists. We create wealth and jobs, instead of just calling for them in speeches.

And:

It’s easy to make hollow campaign promises and take cheap shots in speeches and during editorial board sessions, but U.S. companies have to deliver for their employees, customers and shareholders every day. GE operates in the real world. We’re in the business of building real things and generating real growth for a nation that needs it now more than ever.

Ben & Jerry may make good ice cream, but GE makes progress. Goodbye, Bernie.

OBAMA: I fixed the economy and made it fairer.

Huh? Taxing productive companies providing goods and services to the American public out of business is fair? In what world?

GUN THAT RESEMBLES CELL PHONE sends liberals into hysteria. And Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D-Idiocy) caves:

"I don’t know how we can legislate thoroughly against human idiocy...."

I don't know why not. Legislatures, especially Democratic ones, pass legislation favoring human idiocy laws all the time.

OVER-REGULATION NATION: forcing a family to destroy their vegetable garden on their own land.

Progressives again. Their right to be unoffended takes precedence over your obligation to feed your family....

POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures is up. There are too many favorites to post this week, so I'll start with this one ...

... and you can go see the rest.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: 1984 is only 32 years late.

HEH: Semi-Retired Former Rock Star Turned Tool of the One Percent Ruling Elite Screws Working Class Fans to Send PC Virtue Signal to His Political Masters.

The better for North Carolina (and its bordering states); virtue trolls like Springsteen should be banned from civilization until they can learn to sit down, shut up, and respect their elders.

THE SCIENCE IS CISGENDERED: Gender-Neutral Cats Are the Civil Rights Struggle of Our Age.

I think I shall solve the gender 'problem' by referring to the virtuous gender people by their correct (pro)noun: i(dio)ts.

Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.

AMMO GRRRLL on guns, guns, and more guns.

NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION: "I am Freedom's safest place." You'll have to scroll down, but all 19 videos are available the watch.

JUST ANOTHER CASE of punishing the innocent for the sins of the guilty.

OBAMACARE'S PROBLEM: The 'almost poor' don't want it. Neither does anyone else.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES go interstellar.

TRUMP AND RYAN compete for control of the GOP. America - and the Republican Party - would be better off if the two factions would quit competing and start cooperating.

THE FALCON has landed. And its Dragon spacecraft is well on its way to the International Space Station. Oh, to be in my 30's again; I was born 40 years too soon....

The video is 45 minutes long; for those of you who are impatient, launch of the Falcon 9 is at 27:30 in the video, (sucessful!) landing on the barge is at 36:00.

Congratulations, Space-X.

TRUMP AND RYAN compete for control of the GOP. America - and the Republican Party - would be better off if the two factions would quit competing and start cooperating.

LOCKHEED MARTIN joins the hypersonic race.

A RAMIREZ CARTOON: Our 'virtual reality' President.

It would be funny if it wasn't true.

LOCKDOWN: Sheltering in place in the U.S. Capitol.

I [walked] away from the Capitol trying to imagine, as a national slogan for America, "They sheltered in place." I couldn't quite conjure that. I did not want to.

Shelter In Place. Not a pleasant thought, is it? Yet it's pretty much standard progressive policy: punish the innocent; never the guilty.

A 1908 MODEL T: What's the year, make, and model of your vehicular cloud?

And I intend to keep it that way.

"I WOULD MUCH RATHER BE DOING WORK:" How welfare hurts those it's supposed to help.

HEH: “[I]t takes a special kind of academic fathead to ruin Thin Mints. But we have people up to it.”

THOSE DOCTORS telling you to drink skim milk were probably wrong. More succinctly -- and accurately, any advice derived from a goverment-funded study is probably wrong.

CONGRATULATIONS ARE ON ORDER: Life Fellow G. David Forney Jr. will receive the 2016 IEEE Medal of Honor “for pioneering contributions to the theory of error-correcting codes and the development of reliable high-speed data communications.”

A well-deserved (and overdue) honor. What's interesting to me is that Forney's doctoral dissertation Concatenated Codes (1966) was a precursor to my own dissertation, Concatenated Convolutional Codes (1978), where I investigated the same error-correcting structures applied to convolutional (trellis) codes.

MELANIA TRUMP for First Lady: "She is beautiful, intelligent, speaks five languages, and will represent the nation well. Best of all, she won't put 20 friends on the White House payroll."

SANDERS TO CHARITIES: Drop dead.

After all, who needs charities when you have socialism?

UPDATE: more here.

WHO'S PULLING DONALD TRUMP'S STRINGS? The answer is here.

DILBERT: Millennial Madness.

THE LEFT lets the veil drop. It's about control, not compassion.

A GRAVE INJUSTICE: New Jersey bans Catholic Church from selling grave markers on its own cemetaries.

No union for churches....

THE NEW DARK AGES ON CAMPUS: How protestors, professors, and administrators are consciously working to destroy free thought and free expression at America’s universities.

Linked from this Instapundit post.

HOW FAST THE FALL: How the world’s first Syrian astronaut became a refugee.

MAKE IT COST REAL MONEY: How to improve Twitter and destroy the curse of left-wing virtue signaling.

THE PLEASURES OF FLYING: coffins have more legroom.

GLENN REYNOLDS (INSTAPUNDIT): Clinton acolytes can't seem to grasp that Beltway-insider status doesn't exempt from prosecution.

DID YOU KNOW?

On March 29th, 130 years ago, John Pemberton of Atlanta brewed the first batch of Coca-Cola. The drink was the culmination of 20 years of research he had done in order to kick the addiction to morphine which he had acquired after being wounded in the Civil War. Its medicinal value was miniscule, and Pemberton tragically sold the rights to his invention to his business partners before dying in poverty two years later, still an addict.

Taken from the Washington Examiner's morning newsletter last week.

AVIATION: NASA says it will build a quieter supersonic passenger jet.

THE FIRST RULE of the GOP convention is that there are no rules. But if the 'no Trump ever' faction of the Republican establishment handpicks a nominee, it will mean the end of the Republican party.

Not that that is necessarily a bad thing.

NEW YORK TIMES: Don't Privatize Air Traffic Control. Here's the nut graf:

The bill could also disrupt the F.A.A.’s work to increase the nation’s flight capacity and reduce delays.... But the agency has taken longer and spent more than it expected. Mr. Shuster and his colleagues have pointed to this as a rationale for privatization, but they conveniently ignore the problems private companies often have with such large technical projects.

Hmm. I seem to recall a recent 'large technical project' the federal government took on -- called ObamaCare. How'd that work out?

TECHNOLOGY: Metallic mesh becomes invisible to antenna signals. It's not an 'invisibility cloak' -- yet.

JUST THINK, I was granted a PhD for learning this (among other things). Be sure to read the comments; they're hilarious.

PIERS MORGAN: Listen to Trump. They must not have Kool-Aid in Britain...

OBAMACARE UPDATE: Fewer insurers, higher costs. Anyone surprised?

FLINT, MICHIGAN: Democrat candidates flail Republican Governor for crisis of Democrats' own making.

Their hypocrisy has no limits.

HEH: Twitter taught Microsoft’s AI chatbot to be a racist asshole in less than a day.

Virtue signalling....

SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP: One college president has advice for our 'special snowflakes (with emphasis on 'flakes'.

SPACE TAKES OFF: Venture capital groups invested $1.8 billion in commercial space startups in 2015, more than in the last 15 years combined.

Finally.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT POLITICS:

If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates. --Jay Leno

The problem with political jokes is they get elected. --Henry Cate, VII

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. --Aesop

If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these State of the Union speeches, there wouldn't be any inducement to go to heaven. --Will Rogers

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. Nikita Khrushchev

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it. --Clarence Darrow

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. --John Quinton

Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you. --Author unknown

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other. --Oscar Ameringer

I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them. --Adlai Stevenson, 1952

A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country. --Tex Guinan

I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians. --Charles de Gaulle

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks. --Doug Larson

There ought to be one day--just one--when there is open season on Congressmen.
--Will Rogers

From my email.

SHOCKING NEWS: The more cannabis you smoke, the more likely you are to be a loser.

Clearly explains Democrats....

THE CHALKENING:



Obviously the government needs to institute 'assault chalk' control.

Seen first at Instapundit. Thanks!

DON'T LET anyone tell you Hillary Clinton accomplished nothing while in the Senate. In my book, 'accomplishing nothing' is laudatory given the mess(es) our Congress has gotten us into.

CONDEMMED for calling a spade a goddamned shovel spade. The video is here.

YES. NEXT QUESTION. Do self-driving cars have a dirty future?

AL SHARPTON might 'get out of here' if Trump wins. Why is it that all those liberals threatening to leave if [...whatever...] always threaten to go to Canada and never Mexico? Could it be that there is a border with Mexico, and not one with Canada?

CAN'T WE ALL GET ALONG? In a Republican debate, Kasich calls for 'more tolerance for one another'. It sounded good as a debate talking point, but it's just another case of liberal bullies punishing the innocent for the sins of the guilty.

We can no longer tolerate bullies; we must fight back.

MOMENTUM: Space-X wins 5 new space station cargo missions in NASA contract. Commercial space is alive and well.

ANOTHER DAY, another liberal university professor clutching her pearls and going nearly spasmodic over guns.

In North Dakota, of all places.

QUOTATIONS from Chairman Barry. Our Narcissist-in-Chief is mad at the media for giving another narcissist too much attention....

U.S. GOVERNMENT moves to close the gender wage gap. So men who identify as women earn less than women who identify as men? Oh, never mind; it's the oft-discredited 78% canard again....

I used to think better of IEEE.

NEWS FROM THE MASSACHUSETTS PRIMARY: Why this Reagan conservative voted for Bernie.

My question for the Trump-haters is this: Could he possibly be worse for America than the current occupant of the White House? Or either of the losers who hope to succeed him?

WHITE HOUSE slashed NYC terror funding to punish Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY): 'Nice little city you've got there, Senator. Be a pity if it got blown up....'

SELF-DRIVING CARS: An AI (artificial intelligence) can legally be defined as a car's driver. So who gets sued when the AI causes an accident?

AND YOU THOUGHT you might have an estate to leave your family....

CIS-LUNAR SPACE: Plans being devised for human outpost near the Moon.

[Note to progressives: the term 'cis' does not exclusively belong to you.]

CLIMATE ACTIVISM: the great free speech issue of or time.

What is outrageous ... is not the debate – no matter however flimsy, dishonest and self-interested the government-funded alarmists may be – but rather the Democrats’ attempt to shut the debate off by trying to imprison those who won’t toe their line. This is the most blatant violation of the First Amendment that we have seen in a very long time.

This is why I like Donald Trump's take-no-prisioners, punch-back-twice-as-hard attitude; if the FBI can be called to investigate climate skeptics, then it should also be called to investigate the climate activists as well.

CAREER POLITICIANS (and other political vermin) created Donald Trump. In a sense, Bernie (BS) Sanders is correct about the 'one-percenters' -- it's just that the one-percenters aren't the millionaires and billionaires; they're the inside-the-beltway political class.

THE OBAMA EXPERIENCE, shout loudly and carry a small stick, doesn't work.

BERNIE SANDERS is selling atavisms.

TRIUMPH THE INSULT DOG ends campus political correctness as we know it.

SOME QUESTIONS for the climatistas.

BUT FIRST, take note of the caveats: Why I would buy a smart gun.

He can say that because he knows none are available, and none are likely to be available any time in the near future.

LIBERAL 'COURAGE': Resignation of EPA official who stayed silent on Flint was 'courageous'.

Courageous is not a term I would have chosen....

HACKING APPLE: FBI offers to help law agencies access phones.

Apple is hoist with their own petard. Heh.

POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures is up. The cartoons were so good this week that it is hard to limit my favorites to just two:

Go and see the rest.

INSTAPUNDIT: "[T]he 'Blue Model' may be rotting, but it offers more opportunities for graft and self-importance than the traditional Anglosphere approach. Which explains both the rot, and the rot’s popularity among the rotten sectors of American politics."

From the comments: "Hot air talks. Money walks. Surprise."

THESE DEMANDS make more sense than those of the usual crybully snowflakes.

Good job, Stanford.

CRYBULLIES BEWARE: The chalkening.