TRUMP GIVES $1M FOR HURRICANE RELIEF, but it's still not enough to satisfy his critics.

Not to mention that he donates his entire salary to charity.

Question: How much has former President Obama donated?

VIRTUE SIGNALING FROM VOX: $330,000 in financial aid bought me a slot in the American meritocracy. Now I see its flaws.

My question: now that he has all that virtue, does he intend to pay any of it back?

Linked from Instapundit.

CAJUN NAVY assisted by monster truck.

SCORE ANOTHER FOR MELANIA: Liberal twit(ter)s snicker over her wearing high heels to board Air Force One to Texas.

She got off wearing sneakers....

FINALLY IT'S SAFE TO GO OUT TO EAT: Applebees gives up on appealing to millenials.

I KNOW, I KNOW: Hurricane Harvey devastated Rockport and Houston is still flooding. But can we at least dial back the coverage to 23/7?

TOXIC MASCULINITY AND WHITE PRIVILEGE: it's not for Pajama Boy.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES, statuesque edition. Here's my favorite:

There are many more - go see them.

THIS IS ESPN: Radio host arrested after wandering, drunk and naked, into a stranger's home.

But it's okay; he's a Social Justice Warrior....

SEEN ON THE INSTRUCTION CARD: "Don't try to replace the chainsaw chain with the motor running."

Or under a helicopter full of angry porcupines....

Aunt Nanny run amuck.

WHERE ARE those layers and layers of fact-checkers when you need them?

YES. Yes, you are:

From PowerLine's Week in Pictures last week. Many more here.

RANDOM THOUGHT: Future self-driving vehicles must be able to identify Darwin Award candidates - and kill them.

That's not a silly statement - any 'smart car' must be able to sacrifice itself to save its passengers, but do you really want your car to sacrifice you to save a potential Darwin awardee?

THE ‘PEPPER BALLS’ GUY has been arrested.

Best comment: "He fell out of the 'stupid tree' and hit every branch on the way down."

You almost have to admire his stupidity. He goes to the emergency room, oblivious to the fact that his injury will almost certainly be reported to the police, then posts about his 'adventure' on social media. Now he's about to find out that being a progressive is not necessarily a 'get out of jail free' card.

As Bugs Bunny used to say, "What a maroon."

THE NEW YORK TIMES OFFERS MORE PROOF that Millennials are still children in need of adult supervision.

Too bad they chose the wrong adult(s).

AMMO GRRRLL WRITES on the world after the great Statue Eradication Project of 2017.

WASHINGTON POST: "Democracy Dies In Darkness" is not a warning, it's a goal.

Credit Instapundit for the link.

COMMENT OF THE DAY: "Let's stop talking about 'income inequality' and start calling it INCOME DIVERSITY! The left LOVES diversity."

Taken from the comment section of this post.

RANDOM THOUGHT: When did the governing class morph into the ruling class?

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Are there any adults in the room? The answer applies to Republicans and Democrats alike.

If you want to see an adult, look for the Tea Party flag - or MAGA hat.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: gender ideology.

I suggest that the letter salad 'LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP' be replaced by a much shorter one: NUTS.

If I HAD THREE WISHES, the first two would be for the 'woke' boneheads to go back to sleep and for James Damore to become a billionaire.

The third wish I'll save for later use....

UPDATE: I was considering using the third wish for the destruction of ESPN, but on further consideration, they seem to be doing quite nicely by themselves.

SAFETY CONCERNS: Every one of the warnings is in my Gator UTV operator's manual.

SEEN ON THE HIGHWAY: "No Cash. Filled with freshly-baked donuts."

On a Krispy Kreme delivery truck.

FROM DAY BY DAY: Why does the Left pull down statues?

RANDOM THOUGHT: Someone ought to reprogram the Left's virtual reality goggles.

ALL PURPOSE PROGRESSIVE EXCUSE FOR EVERYTHING: Climate change made me do it.

SEEN ON THE CHURCH MESSAGE BOARD: "We're not Dairy Queen, but we have great Sundays."

DILBERT CARTOON ON CLIMATE CHANGE prompts rebuttal from Yale - proving the Dilbert cartoon right.

ISN'T THAT ALSO HATE SPEECH? Confederate statue toppled in North Carolina during protest.

If not 'hate speech', it's certainly vandalism.

MORE CLIMATE 'SCIENCE': The Gore effect is real.

And again, "Heh".

'SCIENCE': Global warming to cause more solar eclipses.

Update: I forgot the "Heh".

ROGER L. SIMON: common sense on Charlottesville.

HEH: "Nobody tell the DNC-MSM that Ron Burgundy and Ted Baxter aren’t how-to guides for brilliant journalisming."

REAL NEWS: Here come the judges.

PAUL GREENBERG on words, words, words.

THEY NEVER GIVE UP: Activists confess to sabotaging, delaying the Dakota Access pipeline. And they will continue until they are arrested, tried, convicted, jailed - and forced to repay the costs of their vandalism.

"IF I RAN GOOGLE, I would say that any female employees who boycotted work for a day because they felt threatened by Damore’s memo are deficient in logic and should stay away permanently."

Heh.

IT’S BETTER TO BE HATED BY LIBERALS than have their “help.”

DON SURBER: Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull gave Donald Trump good advice.

[FORMER] MUST-SEE TELEVISION: White House adviser Stephen Miller eviscerates a shell-shocked George Stephanopoulos.

It is interesting - and telling - that ABC News removed the video from YouTube citing a 'copyright claim'.

BILL WHITTLE: A warning for social justice warriors.



There are real warriors out here - you can't compete.

QUESTION: Is college education worth it? In my estimation (and I think, Walter Williams'), the answer is no (outside the hard sciences).

ETHICS HIPSTERS: the new Puritans.

TAMMY BRUCE: The smug bigotry of Trump-haters.

'Smug' is the operative word. Other words that come to mind include 'arrogant', 'hypocritical', 'condescending', 'vain', 'self-righteous', ' conceited', 'egotistic', 'patronizing', ....

YOUR DOG'S CARBON PAWPRINT is really big.

So spiders are less of an environmental menace?

BILL MAHER: I believe Trump is ‘capable’ of political assassinations, just like Putin.

Would he care to comment on the Clinton machine's body count?

FROM MY EMAIL: Who died before they collected Social Security?

Here's an anti-Social Security email making the rounds that's a first (to my knowledge) that gets two essential elements right: (1) Social Security is essentially a Ponzi scheme; and (2) privatization is the better deal. Here's the email.

The only thing wrong with the Government's calculation of available social security is they forgot to figure in the people who died before they ever collected a social security check.

Where did that money go?

Remember, not only did you and I contribute to Social Security but your employer did, too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500.

Read that again.

Did you see where the Government paid in one single penny? We are talking about the money you and your employer put in a Government bank to insure you and me that we would have a retirement check from the money we put in, not the Government. Now they are calling the money we put in an entitlement when we reach the age to take it back.

If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the Government pays on the money that it borrows). After 49 years of working you'd have $892,919.98. If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit. If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.

The folks in Washington have pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did.

Entitlement my foot; I paid cash for my social security insurance! Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!

Remember the benefits for members of Congress?
+ free healthcare,
+ outrageous retirement packages,
+ 67 paid holidays,
+ three weeks paid vacation,
+ unlimited paid sick days.

Now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement payments entitlements?

They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it's time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place? It was supposed to be in a locked box, not part of the general fund.

Again: where is the money that those who died before they reached retirement (and their employers share) put in?

Sad isn't it?

The author does have several errors of understanding the Social Security system, the first of which is the "What happened to those who died?" question, which is accounted for through the withholding rate. The larger error is the "it's my money" assumption, which is why Social Security can be fairly described as a Ponzi scheme. The money you (and your employer) pay into the system is not saved for your benefit; it's used to pay benefits to those who have already retired. Think of it this way: you pay for your parents, your children pay for you, their children pay for them, and so on.

Only to the extent that receipts outweigh the outlays is there any savings, and those savings, invested in U.S. Treasury bonds and repaid with taxpayer funds, are not held for any individual benefit.

Congressional 'benefits' are irrelevant to Social Security; they are only another indicator of how government is for the governors, not the governed.

The paragraph on investing (italicized above) is accurate and succinctly gives the rationale for privatizing. For a much more detailed explanation of privatization, here's an old post of mine.

IS AMERICA on the verge of nervous breakdown or civil war?

Nervous breakdown; the progressive Left is fully capable of nervous breakdown and totally incapable of civil war.

'REALITY' WORLD: College professor wears combat gear to protest Texas' campus carry law.

His 'reality' is unanchored; he's actually safer with CC permit holders in his classroom.

KEITH ELLISON: The Republican party is the party of racism.

Mr. Ellison, if you want to see real racism, look in the mirror....

SIGN IN FRONT OF OUR LOCAL CHURCH: "We are soular-powered by the son." I have no idea who the pastor is, but he (or she) has a wicked sense of humor.

AMMO GRRRLL Competitive victimhood 101.

BEWARE the Trump chicken.

HEH: I identify as a female vegan.

SJW's, remember that sword is double-edged....

CALIFORNIA GOV. JERRY BROWN: the Democrat Party's strategy has been a miserable failure.

ANOTHER DAY IN THE ANNALS OF STUPID: Cheese is sexist.

Um, PETA, if cheese is sexist, isn't milk also sexist?

THE NEW YORK TIMES' CHARLES BLOW(HARD) looks in the mirror and sees himself.

NOT FAR ENOUGH: The decline and fall of an academic nitwit. But perhaps the start of bigger falls....

DUNKIRK: Healing sick minds. Some minds are simply too sick to heal.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Rep. Maxine Waters 'doesn't know what she's talking about'.

If she wants to see a real racist, she should look in the mirror.

COSMOPOLITAN: The Left's new C-word.

FROM 'CONTAIN THE SWAMP' to 'Drain the Swamp'.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Are the media capable of covering President Trump fairly?

MICHELLE MALKIN: That was the week that was.

REMEMBER THAT DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD THINGY? Thanks, Obama! Trump Is Expanding Your Effort to Imprison Leakers!

DEREK HUNTER: We're witnessing a slowrolling coup.

One that is destined to fail.

KEEP DELETING, MORONS: since you can't apologize.

When scrolling through the tweets, it's interesting to note is that the sewer-living, potty-mouth guttersnipes appear to all be of the progressive Left. You would think those virtue-signaling 'citizens' (I'm being generous assuming they're of human origin) would have a slightly larger vocabulary.

AND I'M PLOTTING a "shadow campaign" against anti-Trump Republicans: Anti-Trump Republicans Plotting “Shadow Campaign” for 2020.

My strategy is that of Ronald Reagan: "I win, you lose."

NONSEQUITUR: Making government hackproof. With the added benefit of increased efficiency.

WE SHOULD BE SO LUCKY: Democrat activist vows Maxine Waters will be next House speaker.

TRUMP vs. the permanent coastal privilege party.

From Instapundit: "America has the worst political class in its history."

SO MUCH FOR PURDUE'S COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING: College head wants to ‘revise’ engineering curricula to ‘de-center Western civilization’.

The results won't be pretty, as I've already witnessed what 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism' have done to the workplace.

CIVIL WAR ON THE LEFT: googly bits fall off.

I saw this happening in the company I worked for in the last few years before I (was) retired. It's the most significant of the very few reasons I'm grateful for retirement.

UPDATE: more here.

SO KIDS will be left with reduced Social Security payments?

Not bloody likely.

WHY I AM immediately going to Chick-Fil-A for a sandwich.

JIM ACOSTA, racist apologist for white privilege.

BUT ARE THEY WORSE THAN AL GORE'S HOUSE? Fido and Fluffy are ruining the environment.

CHELSEA CLINTON wants films to be rated on whether or not they defy gender stereotypes. It's actually something I might favor as it would save me time (and money) in choosing which films to not watch. Something like reading Washington Post endorsements to determine who to not vote for.

ANDREW KLAVAN: Jim Acosta is a knucklehead. And he works for a network of knuckleheads.

I love this Klavan comment: "CNN needs a new slogan: 'We report. We decide. We report what we decide.'"

'MANSPREADING': It's science. As anyone with enough brain cells to rub between thumb and forefinger would know.

DAY BY DAY: The master, not the apprentice.

MIKE ADAMS: I am resigning from UNC-Wilmington ... sometime before August 2050.

I'm sure the proressive faculty and staff are thrilled....

EMPLOYING PEOPLE IN CALIFORNIA really is harder.

SHOE on MSM news shows. I found this comment particularly amusing

"If you could knit wits, there’s not enough in Congress to make a pair of sox."

as it applies equally well to MSM journalists.

ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF SESSIONS: “We are taking a stand. This culture of leaks must stop.” It will when it includes a perp walk and immediate, vigorous prosecution.

FROM POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures, my favorites:

Go see the rest.

TO THE PROGRESSIVES' DISMAY, Chick-Fil-A generates most revenue per restaurant in the U.S.

SARAH HOYT is angry with Jim Acosta. You’ll like her when she’s angry.

Linked from Instapundit.

PAUL KRUGMAN: proof that the Nobel Prize needs ‘comedy’ category.

REAL SCIENCE: Is there a giant planet lurking somewhere beyond Pluto?

STUART ROTHENBERG FROM HIS OPAQUE PROGRESSIVE BUBBLE: "Lots of people in West Virginia can't support themselves or speak English."

FLASHBACK: "Trump’s path to an electoral college victory isn’t narrow. It’s nonexistent."

It's not easy to be so consistently wrong.

BUT, BUT, ACOSTA HAS HIS OWN TRUTH: Just because it doesn't comport with the facts is irrelevant.

TRUE STATEMENT: “This is California. We’re not the United States.”

So how can we help you leave? Officially?

"I'VE GOT YOUR BACK": The reason why America's cops cheered President Trump's Brentwood speech.

MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE MOST OF THE COUNTRY VOTED FOR TRUMP? The Boston Globe breathtakingly points out that "the path of viewing spots for this month's solar eclipse cuts overwhelmingly through places tha voted for Trump."

IMPRIMIS: The Left's War on Free Speech.

AMMO GRRRLL seeks to make the world safe for punching down.

'SCIENCE': MSN belabors the obvious for anyone who passed high-school physics. Assuming, of course, that there are high schools that still teach real physics.

RI-I-IGHT: Bernie explains how single-payer gets cheaper the more expensive it gets.

“HOW MANY IQ POINTS DO YOU LOSE from Trump Derangement Syndrome or similar conditions of blind political rage?”

First you have to have some IQ points to lose....

CNN'S JIM ACOSTA gets his head handed to him on a silver platter.

And it was well-deserved. In the future, whenever an on-camera press conference is called, he shouldn't be allowed to ask a question grandstand.

UPDATE from the head on the silver platter: "Let’s face it, Stephen Miller couldn’t take the kind of heat I was throwing yesterday." Acosta's bubble(head) is impermeable.

THE BIG PROBLEM with self-driving cars is people.

OH MY GOD! Look at that carbon footprint.

OBAMACARE SURGERY: After failure from the GOP, Democrats scramble for fix.

Let them propose legislation, and then let Republicans help them exactly the way they helped Republicans.

THE TECH JERK: when callow ideas become code.

Heh.

JEFF JACOBY: Research isn't tainted just because industry picks up the tab.

It's more likely to be tainted when the government picks up the tab (N.B. climate change).

THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE declares independence. Only as long as it keeps being funded, and President Trump and Congress may have a say about that....

WHAT CONGRESS SHOULD KNOW about my cat Smokey.

I have long said I'd rather be treated by my vet than by my doctor.

KEEP IT UP, GENTRY LIBERALS: this is how I get more Trump.

WE CALL THEM 'PROGRESSIVES': Boobs are back in a big way.

Yes, I know: my lede didn't exactly match the post, but it was too hard to resist.

YOU WONDERED why there are so many medical commercials on television.

ON 'GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS': Liberals might want to learn a little history before they try to remake it.

The Katherine Stewart post referred to I posted on here.

A PARAGRAPH that explains Why Trump.

And a smaller State Department is not a bad deal, either.

FROM INSTAPUNDIT: At Amazon, the XR5 Tactical Assault Rock.

It should be made of foam, so social justice warriors can throw it....

POWERLINE on being a white snowflake on a university(?!) campus.

WHY I STILL LIKE [MOST OF] TEXAS: Woman shoots home intruder.

If the Tucker Carlson video pops up at the top, watch it.

HMM: News the media buries.

STOCKS SHATTER RECORDS, but don't give Trump credit. From the 'fake news' media (AP):

The stock market was also setting records under Trump’s predecessor. The Dow Jones industrial average surged nearly 150 percent over Barack Obama’s eight-year presidency. Trump has been in office for a little more than half a year, and the Dow has climbed 11 percent since his January inauguration.

Okey doke. So the DJIA climbed 150% during Obama's 8 years versus Trump's 11% climb in 6 months. But if that 11% rate of increase were to continue for two Trump terms, the DJIA will climb 531% (to 116,800) by 2025. How 'bout them apples, Edgar?

I know, I know - math is hard for journalists and social justice warriors (and again, I know I'm repeating myself).

I would also point out that history is also hard for those folks, for if the AP had looked back (as I did) they would find that the DJIA jumped 13% during the first 6 months of the Obama administration. Had that rate continued for Obama's two terms, Trump would have inherited a Dow Jones Industrial Average of 57,100.

The 'fake news' media would've had a better case if they were conversant with math and history. But that's too much to ask.

AUSTIN BAY: America's options for North Korea.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, by dining at Cracker Barrel I won't have to put up with this maroon.

HAS SHE EVER ASKED A 'GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS' CRITIC? What the ‘government schools’ critics really mean.

Of course not. She's an edjumacated progressive, so she knows what we really mean.

A rebuttal is here.

Linked from this Instapundit post.

ANOTHER BURDEN for Willie and Joe.

THERE'S RUSSIA, AND IRAN, AND NORTH KOREA. And Chuck Schumer is worried about sandwich wraps.

The Nanny State at its best....

ROGUES' GALLERY: These are the Republicans most responsible for ObamaCare.

After Republicans failed to pass even a stripped down "skinny" Obamacare repeal bill to keep the legislative process alive, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declared, in the wee hours of Friday morning, "it's time to move on." For now, it means that Republicans' seven-year promise to repeal and replace Obamacare has gone up in smoke. Though Obamacare was passed exclusively with Democratic support and amid fierce opposition from the GOP, there were Republicans along the way who either paved the way for its adoption, or hindered efforts to undo it. Their actions were a mix of unseriousness about policy, political cowardice, deception, ideological incoherence, and outright embrace of big government liberalism. Here is the rogues' gallery of Republicans who are most responsible for Obamacare.

Some are surprising; read about them at the link.

BECAUSE THEY'RE DEMOCRATS? Why [some] Americans get conned again and again.

HMM: Kellyanne Conway to be the next White House communications director?

TALK ABOUT CONFUSION: Princeton students can identify as both a ‘man’ and a ‘woman’ simultaneously.

MICHAEL MOORE: "I refuse to live in a country where Donald Trump is president, and I’m not leaving."

So he's advocating his own suicide? Or Trump's murder?

THE SIEGE of the New York Times has begun. Key graf:

If journalists want to stop people from calling them Fake News, then journalists had better take measures to stop the production of Fake News.

Or juries will.

$100 million sounds about right to me.

NO SWAMP CREATURE is deadlier than a Washington lawyer.