A ‘DISCUSSION-FREE’ AMERICA:

Picture an America where taxpayer dollars are used, without restraint, to approve official sentiment and impoverish the opposition. No one can teach high school if they have ever contributed to the NRA. No one can bid on highway construction if they have publicly opposed Section 8 housing. No lawyer can serve as legal counsel to the water district if they are a professing Christian. No county PSA money can be spent on billboards owned by a climate-change “denier.”

Scary. Read it all.

SORRY, CONGRESS. Facebook can’t fix stupid.

No, but it can enhance it.

WE WERE ALWAYS EXTRA GENEROUS WHEN WE SAW THEM COMING: “Kids from poorer neighborhoods keep coming to trick-or-treat in mine. Do I have to give them candy?”

And extra kind....

LEGALLY ARMED IN DETROIT: Black female and Detroit police chief make the case for concealed carry.

COMEDIAN DAVE CHAPPELLE defends freedom of speech from 'cancel culture'.

The First Amendment is first for a reason. Second Amendment is just in
case the First one doesn't work out.

Which is why the 'cancel culture' is so anti-gun.

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES passes the Adam Schiff Empowerment Act.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The California nightmare.

Our resolute ancestors took a century to turn a wilderness into California. Our irresolute generation in just a decade or two has been turning California into a wilderness.

Truer words cannot be written. We left in January 2000. To another progressing nightmare, but that's another story....

IS CALIFORNIA the new Puerto Rico?

Maybe President Trump could engineer a trade deal - California for Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico would certainly be less expensive, and real America would get 52 less (socialist) Representatives....

MOCKERY at its finest.

HE HAS A MIND? Inside the mind of one of Fox News' most frequent liberal guests.

I hit the 'mute' button on my remote every time I see his face. I've already worn out one remote.

"WOMEN HAD A GOOD RUN. It's over."

THE MOCKERY CONTINUES ... Trump awards Medal Of Bravery to Chewbacca for heroic deeds during Battle Of Yavin.

From the Babylon Bee, America’s paper of record.

YES, IT'S A DAN RATHER - fake but accurate.

From my email.

NOT MY STARS & STRIPES: Pelosi drapes impeachment push in Stars & Stripes.

DON'T LISTEN TO DEMOCRATS. Read the House resolution formalizing the Trump impeachment inquiry.

See for yourself how the deck has been stacked.

IMPEACH TRUMP! For willfully defeating a Democrat in 2016.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Who needs Alaska?

CALIFORNIA POWER OUTAGES — A look into the future.

For decades California 'environmentalists' (quotes added because they are environmentalists by self-proclamation only) have demanded that their forests remain 'natural'. To protect all its little forest critters. No clearing of undergrowth. No removal of dead trees. No fire breaks. No sustainable forest maintenance.

For decades, California progressives have imported electricity from (and exported pollution to) other states by decommissioning their nuclear power plants and refusing to build local generation capability near the cities and towns consuming that power.

Instead they built high voltage transmission lines through unmanaged forests to move gigawatts of power from far away through tinder dry forested lands to keep those ugly power generation plants out of sight, out of mind. So now they have wildfires raging throughout that state destroying towns, homes, humans, habitat, and all those furry forest critters they were so determined to protect....

I have exactly zero sympathy for the state. The wildfires and 'de-energization' (i.e., blackouts) are of their own making and California can damned well pay for its recovery itself.

PROOF THAT JOURNALISTS AND LIBERALS are humorless scolds. Humorless hateful scolds. Here's the picture.

And yes, dummies, it's a photoshop. A great photoshop of a well-deserving hero. If you're a Twitter user (I'm not), get online and mock them. Mercilessly.

Much more here. And I heartily endorse every word.

THE CLOWNS ARE BACK IN CENTER RING: Democrats find no GOP defectors for Trump impeachment vote.

I'll be watching to see if there are any non-insane Democrats.

HALLOWEEN – The "cancel culture’s" annual hissy fit.

ELIZABETH WARREN’S ‘MEDICARE FOR ALL’ CLAIMS are as credible as her Native American heritage.

THE WASHINGTON POST NEEDS A NEW MASTHEAD: "Democracy Dies in Derangement".

Seen on the internet as a lede for this post.

SARAH HOYT ASKS: "Is the left so far gone they don’t realize she’s [Hillary] gone insane?"

Well ... yes.

COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A BETTER CLASS OF PEOPLE: La Verne may be sixth law school to close since 2017.

OOPS! Explosion in Antarctic sea ice may signal new ice age. I'm so old I remember being warned of imminent global cooling back in the 70's - which morphed into global warming which morphed into climate change, and we're now back to global cooling.

But as the Doomsayers like to say, "Never let a fake crisis go to waste".

BUREAUCRATIC RULE: By what right?

The oft-repeated statement that America suffers from meritocracy is the opposite of the truth. Pretense of excellence, not excellence itself, is the ground on which the U.S. ruling class bases its claim to legitimacy.

Elite in their own minds....

“I’LL AGREE TO LET YOU OUTLAW HATE SPEECH if you agree to let me define hate speech.”

Seems fair to me.

BERNIE SANDERS: ‘I don’t think I have to’ explain how to pay for socialized medicine.

No worries; he has a money tree. It's called your wallet (but you won't need it after he's elected).

SCHIFF WRECKED: Chairman Adam Schiff is to intelligence as Maxwell Smart was to smartness.

THERE ARE "ENVIRONMENTALISTS" and there are environmentalists.

Environmentalists have guns.

ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR is probably laughing at this request from
Sen. Dianne Feinstein [D-CA].

Check out the two Twitter links at the bottom for additional mockery.

MORE PROOF (as if any is needed) that Liberals are hypocrites.

“WELL DONE, @NYGOVCUOMO. Who are you going to tax when they’re all gone?”

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS when you're incapable of rational thought.


Maybe if he spent some energy growing brain cells instead of hair....

UNDER OBAMA there came to be a cancer in the Pentagon.

Like the author, I'm a wee bit skeptical, but ... I've worked in the defense industry almost my entire professional life, including a final tour at the Pentagon, and I've seen enough to make the allegations troubling.

SELL GIVE HIM SOME MORE ROPE: Sen. Chuck Schumer [D-NY] wants to repeal private health insurance.

There are plenty of lamp posts out there for him to hang himself.

THIS IS YOUR 'TOLERANT' LEFT: Second aide to Sen. Maggie Hassan [D-NH] sentenced in plot to post Kavanaugh backers’ personal information.

MALE PRIVILEGE returns to Hollywood (Hollowood?).

At least it's not just that icky white male privilege....

KURT SCHLICHTER: The future belongs to those who can count.

Democrats can't.

CALIFORNIA BLACKOUTS are a self-inflicted mess.

Exactly right. I lived there for 5 years and got a first-hand look at their environmental insanity.

NOT DEMOCRATS: Who is actually tolerant?

GEN. MICHAEL FLYNN'S prosecution is looking weaker and weaker....

POWERLINE'S mid-week "Hero Dog" edition of its normal Week in Pictures. This one can't be beat:

Now go see the rest.

AFTER 780 DAYS IN SPACE: X-37B spaceplane finally lands.

My guess is that we're seeing the first reusable spy satellites....

CNN INVESTIGATES: Hero dog sniffed butts.

Yes, it's the Babylon Bee. But remember - it's America's new paper of record.

THERE IS NOTHING RIGHT about a parent forcing a child into a different gender. More here.

Day by Day expresses my thoughts exactly. Though I would exempt the dogs....

ROGER KIMBALL thinks Elizabeth Warren will win (the Democrat nomination) - and lose (the election).

[HOPEFULLY] THE KISS OF DEATH: George Soros bets on Warren, calls her the ‘most qualified to be President.’

SURPRISED? "What is good news for the country is bad news for the media and their political allies."

"DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS": Washington Post to run all headlines by in-house ISIS marketing representative.

Yes, it's the Babylon Bee but I won't be surprised to find out it's true....

OUR BANKRUPT NOMENKLATURA:

Donald Trump is now in the midst of another coup frenzy that has the Left accusing him of being crazy. But he already took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test. It was a simple cognitive exam and he aced it, as would most people. The Left, remember, had called in a Yale psychiatrist to testify that Trump was demented, during the lulls between the first impeachment, the serial “Russian collusion” hoaxes, the emoluments clause psychodrama and Robert Mueller’s “walls-are-closing-in,” “turning-point,” and “bombshell” investigation.

Perhaps the wrong public figures took the test.

It's Victor Davis Hanson, so read it all.

DR. DREW: "People who don't recognize America's homelessness crisis as a mental health problem and get in the way of providing proper treatment are murderers."

The light is beginning to dawn. Well said, Dr. Pinsky.

GLENN REYNOLDS: Should Trump get a third term if he's impeached and acquitted?

[A] sports analogy:

“In the National Football League, teams can challenge a call on the field — but there’s a risk. If instant replay doesn’t merit overturning the call, the challenging team loses one of its three timeouts. That discourages frivolous challenges and keeps the game flowing, while also providing a way to reverse egregious errors.”

Hence, a third term for the president:

“That would allow him to make up for the time lost advancing the agenda that voters elected him to enact. It would preserve impeachment for genuine offenses but discourage its use for disputed ones and for mere politics. Absent such an amendment, and in an era when government is divided more often than not, impeachment seems likely to become an increasingly common means of opposition.”

Short answer to the question: Yes.

READY, SET, BREXIT: Boris Johnson may get his election after all.

If so, I suspect he'll win. The political environment on both sides of the Atlantic is so charged I doubt voters are talking honestly to the pollsters.

TRUMP'S SUPERPOWER: causing his enemies to beclown themselves.

ABU BAKR AL-BAGHDADI: the pure evil within an 'austere religious scholar'.

Michael Ramirez comments, though I would observe that even rats deserve better treatment than Al-Baghdadi.

WHITE SCHIFF MAN SPEAK WITH FORKED TONGUE:

Heh.

OF COURSE IT WASN'T CALIFORNIA'S INSANE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES: Gov. Gavin Newsom blames climate change and corporate greed for California's wildfires.

THE WASHINGTON POST: proof positive that democracy does indeed 'die in darkness'.

JAMIE LEE CURTIS rips Trump after he compared al-Baghdadi to a dog. On this rare occasion, I agree with her: Trump should apologize to dogs...

CALEXIT: What made me leave California for Texas. No regrets (except maybe in Texas).

"DE-ENERGIZATION AREAS": Update your Newspeak dictionary.

Reminder: Soylent Green.

SUSAN RICE TAKES ON LINDSEY GRAHAM - and loses bigly.

U.S. STRIKES kill ISIS spokesperson* one day after Baghdadi’s death in Syria raid.

The real news is in the asterisk....

DON SURBER EXPLAINS why the Babylon Bee is the most important conservative web site.

As well as America's new paper of record....

NATIONAL HEALTH CARE is a crime against humanity:

[I]n Quebec where I lived for many years, health care consumes 45 percent of all provincial program spending, which did not prevent government tacking on an extra $200 annually as a “solidarity tax.” In Ontario I paid exorbitantly for non-prescribed drugs, including a whopping mandatory payment every June. In British Columbia where I now make my home, every person pays an extra $37.50 monthly, which for my wife and me amounts to $900 per year over and above extortionate ancillary expenses and a massive tax gouge.

Read it all.

HE'S RIGHT: Trump says he didn’t notify Congress of Baghdadi raid out of fear of leaks.

CRIMINALS ARE USUALLY UPSET WHEN THE COPS COME FOR THEM: Representatives Adam Schiff [D-CA] and Jerrold Nadler [D-NY] condemn turning Durham Russia probe into criminal investigation.

ROGER KIMBALL: "I am not the only one to notice that Schiff and Nadler are more and more playing to suburban dinner theaters with tiny audiences while the names William Barr, John Durham, and Michael Horowitz are front-page news wherever there is news."

Read it all.

OR LEAVENWORTH: Comey will move to New Zealand if Trump’s re-elected.

Preferably Leavenworth, but we should be so lucky.

DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU: You can't mock the Washington Post enough.

WHILE DEMOCRATS are busy trashing [their own] ObamaCare, President Trump is busy fixing it. Without, unfortunately, much Republican support.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW about America's delusional 'elite'.

HOIST WITH THEIR OWN PETARD: King county council member proposes moving its courthouse out of Seattle.

The reasons? Crime and drugs.

SOME SIGNS that America is finally facinG the urban mental illness crisis.

It's a start (maybe), but only a start.

DON'T FORGET JAMES CLAPPER: The case for indicting John Brennan.

And James Comey....

WHAT AUTOMOBILE WAS MOST POPULAR when you were born?

For me, it was the Willys MB/CJ-2A 'Jeep'.

WHY NOT? Every candidate should be entitled to run for two full terms as President of the United States.

Teach the arrogant airheads of the Left a lesson they'll remember ... (maybe).

RANDOM THOUGHT: Would there still be racism if we all identified as Black?

SMART MOVE, MR. PRESIDENT: Trump says Schiff was the reason he kept Democrats in the dark on al-Baghdadi raid.

SO THE DOG FINALLY CAUGHT THE WHEEL ... now what to do with the attached train?

DAY BY DAY: Crazy Hates.

KURT SCHLICHTER: The odd conservative love affair with Tulsi Gabbard. I couldn't vote for her, but I could see myself living in a country in which she was President.

The others, not so much....

REMEMBER EISENHOWER'S MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX? It was a piker compared to today's welfare-industrial complex.

The 'service charge' of government social welfare bureaucracies take up a lot of the money - roughly 80-85%. Maybe it is time to take up President Nixon's "negative income tax"; it might not help the poor but at the least it would put a large number of social justice warriors out of business.

THIS IS CNN:

"I can honestly say I had experienced the smarmiest, most self-congratulatory, dishonest, and squirm-inducing discussion I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing in person. It was like watching Bill Clinton and Stormy Daniels discuss their unyielding dedication to chastity.”

Click through to read the whole article.

LOOSE ENDS: Coal and Karl.

DEAD END: Inside the two-hour Delta Force raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

THE TRUTH BEHIND 'INTERSECTIONALITY': Motorcyclist who identifies as bicyclist sets cycling world record.

POWERLINE: Polar bears aren't as vicious as climate change activists.

GRADING, GOOD GRAMMAR are examples of white supremacy.

So ... precision of thought as expressed in good grammar (both in speaking and writing) is white supremacy?

I guess I can understand why a 'woke'idiot professor would want his students to be illiterate....

MUCH MORE here and here thanks to Instapundit.

AMERICAN THINKER: Democrats are caught between shale rock and a hard place.

KILLIN' CALIPH mourned by the Washington Post. Brit Hume is absolutely right about it being "unembarrass-able". Click on the Twitter link and scroll down.

The mockery continues....

THE FARCE IS STRONG IN THIS ONE: Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey compared President Trump to fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini because of the administration's directive to federal agencies to cancel subscriptions to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Note that the directive applies to agencies (thereby reducing taxpayer costs), not individuals

THE FEDERALIST: All the Russia collusion clues are beginning to point back to John Brennan.

A better target cannot be found....

FOX NEWS ON THE MICHAEL FLYNN PERSECUTION PROSECUTION: FBI agents manipulated Flynn file as James Clapper (then DNI) urged 'kill shot'. In addition to criminal charges, there should be a very big civil lawsuit hiding in this news.

More here.

FALLING LEAVES, EPISODE VII: I start with my usual pond view, taken from the usual place on the carport deck. From this vantage point the foliage looks fairly full (it isn't) and brown (the yellows of earlier in the weeek disappeared).

But be not disappointed; the next three photos taken from down the road show some spectacular (for the north Georgia mountains) reds.

From just down the road from our house. That's our neighbor's house just barely visible at the far right.

A close up of the tree. By next week it will probably be brown - or bare.

Now, looking back toward our house from further down the road.

And finally, this spectacular view of the pond taken early this morning.

As is usual, last week's pictures are here.

THE UNSPEAKABLE in pursuit of the brass ring. Pretty much my thoughts, just much better written.

Do read the comments.

CLIMATE STALINISM: Today’s radical green movement demands submission to an elite governing class.

Note that the governing elite and its 'experts' never have to suffer from the fruits of their so-called expertise.

COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A NICER GUY: Al-Baghdadi dead.

IF YOU THINK 1+1 ALWAYS EQUALS 2, you're guilty of math privilege.

If it weren't for math privilege, Democrats would be able to fund all their insane socialist wet dreams. And become Venezuela....

SSSH!: NCAA names man as female athlete of the week.

ADAM SCHIFF: Behold the [impeachment] lord.

More here.

THE GOP HAS A CHOICE: Fight the anti-Trump coup effort of surrender government to the Democrats.

It's not a choice; fight like hell is the only option.

OOPS! Global warming is cooling.

A PARLIAMENTARY DICTATORSHIP: Great Britain's governing class fights back against its voting class.

POWERLINE: Administrative bloat and the attack on campus free speech.

I still blame the faculty of Victimology Studies for starting it.

IS IT TIME for a Schitt Schiff intervention? Not really. Let him keep digging, then when the hole is deep enough, toss all the dirt he's unearthed back in.

And move the latrine....

SO SHE'S GOING TO PAY OFF MY MORTGAGE? Ilhan Omar vows to enact law to ‘guarantee a home for everyone.’

MICHAEL RAMIREZ has the SMOD (sweet meteor of death) approaching on his radar.

BETO: There will be criminal consequences for people who don't turn in firearms.

Has he thought about the 'consequences' of being an idiot in public? Like tar & feathers?

UPDATE: Law enforcement says "Nope."

TAKING A SHORT HUMOR BREAK, Ammo Grrrll has a few travel tips.

DON SURBER: New York Times sides with terrorists.

WHO WILL FALL FIRST: Trump or the ‘Praetorian Guard’?

Smart money is on the Praetorian Guard.

PROGRESSIVISM: From 'woke' to broke.

LOOKING FOR SOMETHING MANLY TO DO? Go hunting.

Or you could take GQ advice on 'new masculinity'.

I prefer hunting.

DEMOCRATS ARE GOING TO HAVE TO PLANT MORE MONEY TREES: Elizabeth Warren's health care problem.

RELATED: a partial solution. Except that it would devastate their voter base....

COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A BETTER COUNTRY: The Ayatollah’s regime edges to the brink as Iran’s economy collapses.

BECAUSE THEY CAN: Why do environmentalists seem determined to torment?

UPDATE FROM Instapundit: "Because suffering isn’t a side effect, it’s a goal."

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ gets into heated debate with Siri at Congressional hearings.

And lost. I have high hopes for artificial intelligence but beating up on Ocasio-Cortez is such a low bar....

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Why do they hate Trump so?

If an outsider Manhattan wheeler-dealer without military or political experience can at last call an appeased China to account, can avoid a Libyan fiasco, can acknowledge that America is tired of a 18-year slog in Afghanistan when others would not, or believes ISIS thrived as a result of prior arcane restrictive U.S. rules of engagement—and he is proven largely right—then what does that say about the credentialed experts who dreamed up the bipartisan conventional wisdom that with a few more concessions China would eventually become Palo Alto or that Libya would bloom at the heart of the Arab Spring?

The Left detests Trump for a lot of reasons besides winning the 2016 election and aborting the progressive project. But mostly they hate his guts because he is trying and often succeeding to restore a conservative America at a time when his opponents thought that the mere idea was not just impossible but unhinged.

He believes in the American dream and is unwilling to let the (increasingly unhinged) governing class take it away.

That's why I'll crawl over acres of broken glass to vote for him in 2020.

HEH: Throw the bums out.

SEATTLE: Let's penalize the elderly, middle-class, and poor families to save the world from climate change.

But not the rich. Or 'woke'....

MORNING GREATNESS: Durham’s walls are closing in.

MINNESOTA [NOT SO] NICE: Trump-supporting women called ‘terrorists’ and thrown out of Minneapolis cafe.

Minnesota is one of the few states I've never visited. I think that'll continue to be true.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA SOURCE (best left unnamed) attempts to school Republicans on the evils of President Trump.

INSTAPUNDIT posts a clear, concise summary.

MENSTRUAL EQUITY: Female symbol removed from sanitary napkin packaging.

Because there are 'men' in menstrual?

HEH: Babylon Bee explains.

DUMBOCRATS DEMOCRATS STRIKE OUT AGAIN: "If the economy is so good, why are all the unions going on strike?"

I saw the above (Democrat) quote somewhere on the internet the other day, and I have to wonder why the question was asked when the answer is so obvious. Let me answer with another question: "Why do the unions never go on strike when the economy is in recession?"

NEVER TAKE THE HIGH ROAD WHEN THE LOW ROAD IS AVAILABLE: Forgiveness is a word Democrats do not understand.

INSTAPUNDIT: "I’m not saying that all 'social justice' advocates are corrupt frauds, but that’s the way to bet."

If I had a dollar for every 'social justice' hypocrite, I'd be a multimillionaire....

JUSTIN TRUDEAU - an obviously illegitimate premier according to St. Hillary.

DIPLOMAD 2.0: The Left loves humanity, but hates people.

The Left is for the people except for when the people are not for the Left. The Left in the West has become the party and movement of the bureaucratic diktat; the "elites" who run the public and corporate bureaucracies, the entertainment and "news " industrial complexes, and the "education" machines have become, in the words of the great Thomas Sowell, "the anointed ones" possessed of a "revealed truth" which entitles them to lead the rest of us deplorable hillbillies out of the darkness and into the progressive sunlight -- whether we want it or not!

Read the whole post.

ANIMUS HOUSE: Day by Day describes the mainstream media (and Congress, for that matter) perfectly.

EXTINCTION REBELLION isn’t about the climate. It’s about heteronormativity.

Actually it's about batshit crazy....

ENDNOTE: Unless you're a glutton for punishment, don't bother with the 'read the whole article' link.

BERNIE SANDERS MUST BE JEALOUS: Elizabeth Warren reveals plan to pay for Medicare For All.

Yes, it's from America's new paper of record.

THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW mandating no more than one 30-second 'infomercial' per hour per vendor during the Medi[s]Care open enrollment period. Seeing two or more during every commercial break is wearing out the mute button on my TV remote.

IF ONLY SOMEONE COULD HAVE PREDICTED: Target employees won the 'Fight For $15' but had their hours cut and lost other benefits, such as health insurance.

It's those pesky unintended consequences again.

NOT IN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY:

From Mallard Fillmore.

THE DEEP STATE: Who the hell do they think they are?

[NOT A] SHOCKER: Alexa, Google apps letting hackers spy on you.

Which explains why I don't want the damned things within a country mile of my house.

TRUE STATEMENT: Politics now nation's fastest growing religion.

Future news from America's new paper of record.

"THE 'INTELLECTUAL MAINSTREAM' of our political/media/academic class is currently batshit crazy."

Well, yes.

WELL, CALIFORNIA DOES WANT TO LEAVE THE U.S.: A California fault line has started ‘creeping’, and we don’t know what to expect.

TRUMP WILL WIN in 2020 because of impeachment.

STAY STRONG:

From the American Spectator.

FROM AMERICA'S NEW PAPER OF RECORD: Asylum orderlies return Hillary Clinton to padded cell disguised as Oval Office.

FALLING LEAVES, EPISODE VI: As usual I start with the pond view taken from somewhere around the house. This one was taken from the terrace outside my 'office' window (but I'd have to stand to see the pond; the slope is pretty steep from the house).

The next three are from an early morning walk around the neighborhood. Here's the road leading to the subdivision entrance:

And the little pond where the road crosses the dam:

And finally the large pond itself as I circle back along our walking trail toward the house. It's colder - and wetter - than has been typical, so maybe that's why we're finally seeing some color as the leaves continue to fall.

Last week's pictures are here.

AMMO GRRRLL on wheelbarrows full of cash.

MORE PROOF the the Democrats are going to lose bigly in 2020.

GUESS: Who’s going to pay for Elizabeth Warren’s $43 trillion agenda?

FROM POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures, this is my clear favorite:

My Christmas shopping lis is complete....

Now go see the rest; they're just as good.

THE BABYLON BEE ANTICIPATES THE NEWS: California mandates all American flags have stars of anti-LGBTQ States removed.

America's new paper of record. Again.

DENNIS PRAGER: An open letter to Sergey Brin.

STAR PARKER: Will the Supreme Court decide for education freedom?

TRANSGENDERISM: thinking makes it so.

The 'woke' are only weakly connected to reality. And if it weren't for breakfast, lunch, and dinner even that tenuous connection would disappear completely....

ELITE UNIVERSITIES have failed to produce elites.

What they have produced is a surfeit of narcissistic morons who believe they're elite.

THE GREEN NUDE EEL: Can you afford it?

ANN COULTER: Please, please more Democrat debates!

ISSUES & INSIGHTS: Scientists gone mad.

As a point of clarification: on the progressive Left there are no scientists, only pseudoscientists.

SAN FRANCISCO expands its travel ban to pro-life states. Personally, I suspect that there are 49 (maybe 50) states that have de facto travel bans to San Francisco.

FACT CHECK: Tom Steyer says 90% haven't had a raise for 40 years.

Hmm. I just went down to the basement and checked my 1978 tax return. Even in retirement (where my 'salary' is much lower), I'm making about 35% more than I did in 1978 - after adjusting for 40 years of inflation.

To be fair to Tom, however, I suppose it's much more difficult for a billionaire to get a raise....

ONLY SEVEN? The seven most ridiculous economic mistakes from the Democrat debate.

More proof - if any is needed - that Democrats are economically illiterate.

On second thought, strike 'economically'.

DON'T GIVE UP: How small cities and towns can right their ship.

Read the comments. Note that the naysayers are almost uniformly of the righteous "How dare they attempt to make a profit by doing good? Don't they know that only Government (or its authorized agents) are allowed to do good?"

RANDOM THOUGHT: The global elite have convinced themselves that they were born to rule forever. The rest of us - not so much. Now they're having a pearl-clutching hissy - how dare we choose not to accept their superior wisdom!

IMPRIMIS: Clarence Thomas and the lost Constitution.

Without free men, there is no freedom.

IT’S COLUMBUS DAY, not Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Read and enjoy the sounds of the 'woke' wailing, sobbing, and gnashing their teeth - the sounds of hypocrisy.

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR: Impeachment is about putting down the peasants’ revolt.

Trump’s supporters aren’t as dumb as their “betters” clearly believe them to be. They know the Washington establishment is out to get the president in order to disfranchise the 63 million “deplorables” who voted him into office for the purpose of effecting genuine change in the way things are done inside the Beltway. Trump’s supporters know the Democrats hate him because, despite the incessant harassment to which he and his administration have been subjected, he has fulfilled most of his campaign promises. They know Trump’s impeachment is really an attempt to suppress what Beltway insiders regard as a peasants’ revolt against the proper order of things.

Yes.

ELECTRIC-CAR OWNERS shocked by California blackouts.

Weeks can be a long wait if you’re looking at a Model 3 in your garage with a drained battery, no electrical power to charge it, and the closest grocery store with power 80 miles away. But such is life in the Golden State, where forests and chaparral are all on hair triggers ready to ignite with slightest transformer malfunction or transmission line break.

So if you're a Californian who bought an electric car to save the environment, now you can't drive it because of the risk to the environment.

Heh. In the dark with no way to go....

STATES ARE CUTTING UNIVERSITY BUDGETS. Taxpayers aren’t interested in funding campus kooks.

About time.

THE DIPLOMAD 2.0: Politics of, by, and for the Seriously Disturbed.

ELIZABETH WARREN is a threat to the Constitution.

National Review's [14 Oct] dead-tree edition has an excellent series of articles ("She's got a wretched plan for that") on Warren's plans for payday loans, wealth taxes, child care, fracking ban, student-debt cancellation, corporate regulation, etc.

I can only hope they'll post the articles online soon.

CALIFORNIA RETURNS TO SOCIALISM: PG&E cuts power to millions to save California from wildfires.

Random thought - on the other hand, all those forest wildfires are efficiently clearing the land for the solar panels needed to fuel their Teslas.

Having your cake and eating it too isn't as good when the cake is fruitcake...

FROM POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures, here's my favorite this week:

Now go see the rest.

WE CALL THEM DEMOCRATS: A startling number of Americans think they have an undiagnosed anxiety disorder.

IMPEACHMENT: the anonymous 'whistleblower' emerges.

Heh.

For those of you who are interested, the White House's letter can be found here.

SHOE:

But they already do; on the front page - above the fold.

HILLARY ENTERS 2020 RACE after entire Democrat field have surprise heart attacks.

Or accidents....

FALLING LEAVES, EPISODE V: Here are today's pictures. First, the pond view, taken from the lot adjacent to our home. It has a pretty good view of the pond, especially since that 'retaining wall' is the remains of a large pine that fell (and cleared out a lot of underbrush) last month. Leaves are sparce, but mostly green as the prior week's winds pretty well cleared al the dead leaves from the foliage.

This second photo is from alongside the steep slope south of the house. The slope is densely treed and somewhat protedted from the winds, so it is one of the few areas where there is some color.

The last of today's photos is looking south from our road, across the highway and looking at the hills beyond. As with the rest of the photos in today's series, it's mostly still green, the dead leaves having been blown down in the winds.

Last week's photos are here.

BREAKING: Hillary Clinton announces she will seek reelection as President of the United States.

Yes, the Babylon Bee is ahead of the news cycle again....

OH, MY. EVEN MAR-A-LAGO isn't safe from Leftist idiots.

HEH: The Supreme Court is refusing to let New York city back away from its gun control stupidity.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Our national nightmare is far from over.

LIFE ON PLANET THUNBERG: CO2 is not a problem; environmental extremism is.

OVERDUE: A deep cleaning of the deep state is coming.

WE WUZ JUST FOLLOWIN' ORDERS: Did former DNI James Clapper implicate Barack Obama in Trump spying scandal?

Well ... yes. Yes, he did.

INSTAPUNDIT has an amusing post about the progressive Left's cancel culture. It is getting so confused it shouldn't be much longer before the progressive Left self-cancels.

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR: A moral 'Tale of Two Cities'. One city is in a state with a real Governor; the other is in a state with a real idiot acting as Governor. Guess which is which.

FAILURE TO BE ANNOUNCED THURSDAY: City of Minneapolis tries to derail Trump rally.

HILLARY CLINTON announces she will seek reelection as President of the United States.

Yes, it's the Babylon Bee. You can tell by the word 'reelection'.

HEH: Hillary Clinton picks up first 2020 endorsement.

SCIENCE WORDS BAD: Don't use 'science words' to lecture about the dangers of climate change.

Be sure to watch the 'blood protest' video; then click through the twitter link below for a musical version.

AMERICAN GREATNESS: The war on common sense.

Common sense does not exist in the alternate universe inhabited by progressives.

THEY'RE BARKING-AT-THE-MOON INSANE: Impeach Pence first; let Trump name a new VP; then impeach Trump.

Don't get overly concerned, it's just MSNBC.

THANK YOU, DEMOCRATS: Gun sales go up again.

IMPEACHMENT is about putting down the peasants' revolt.

Impeachment is, in other words, an attempt to restore the old order that the voters overturned in 2016. It seeks to annul that election and return us to the nascent totalitarianism of the Obama era, an incipient autocracy the Democrats expected to be nurtured during the presidency of Hillary Clinton. Thus, when the hoi polloi got above themselves and put Donald Trump in the White House, his removal from office became the primary objective of Washington’s self-appointed Optimates. They began planning Trump’s impeachment before he was inaugurated because he is the leader of the insurrection, and they know full well that it can’t be put down until he is gone.

Read it all.

DON'T GIVE CALIFORNIA IDEAS: New law requires you to listen to Greta Thunberg lecture before purchasing gasoline.

On the other hand, maybe Californians deserve Greta....

SCOLDILOCKS - THE STORY OF GRETA THUNBERG: A pair of Scandinavian leftists pimp out their Asperger’s-suffering daughter to push global warming.

THEY'RE CRAZY? There's a reason Democrats are screaming about conspiracies.

SHE'S BAAACK: Is Hillary positioning herself to jump in if Biden falters?

Before you scoff, think about the current state of the race: Biden, an aging "moderate" with increasingly radical positions, is dropping as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a Bernie Sanders-style big government radical who riles up the liberal base, rises in the polls and in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Wall Street donors who back Democrats have warned the Democratic Party that they won't write checks if Warren is the nominee — in fact, they'll consider backing Trump.

Please God, yes.

Heh.

WHEN YOU HAVE NO LAW, YOU HAVE NO CRIME: The recent decline in misdemeanor arrests has puzzled experts.

'Experts' always seem to be puzzled by the blatantly obvious.

WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED? California tax hike caused 'significant' out-migration of top-bracket millionaire residents.

That's what happens when you shit in your own nest. Those who can leave, do leave.

RANDOM THOUGHT: A 'woke' society is a broke society.

FROM MICHAEL RAMIREZ:

Thanks for reminding us.

WE'VE GOT PLENTY OF SCORPIONS WE'D BE WILLING TO DONATE: Scorpion venom could lead to new antibiotics.

UM. OKAY, I GUESS: Hillary Clinton compares decision to not divorce Bill to parenting a transgender child.

I wonder if Bill is rethinking his decision not to divorce Hillary....

FALLING LEAVES, EPISODE IV: As usual, a day late and a dollar short; for the purpose of this post, today is yesterday.

Here's the first of three: my usual pond view. If it looks a bit different from last week, it's because it's summer again - hot, dry, and for a few days, windy. All the browns, reds, and yellows got shook loose in the winds and the trees are (at least temporarily) green again.

The pond is a bit more visible, mostly because all the low plants and grasses have died off.

The next two pictures are new to my collection. Both were taken where our 'road' crosses the dam across the subdivision's small pond, shown here. The leaves on the pond surface are leftovers; when the wind was at its peak, the pond looked more like a flat meadow covered with leaves.

This last picture as also from the dam, looking down the creek (overflow from the small pond, actually) as it flows to the larger pond pictured above. The creek and large pond aren't visible, and the flat area covered with leaves is a 'wetland' as the creek overflows during heavy rains.

It's usually quite green, but the foliage has mostly already died off and is now covered by the heavy leaf fall from last week's winds.

Last week's pictures are here.

SOCIALISM: If you build it, they will leave.

NEARLY HALF OF THE U.S.’S HOMELESS live in one state: California.

I'd suggest a deal: if California will accept the remaining homeless from the other 49 states, we will continue to sell California electricity when the sun doesn't shine on their 'solar-powered' cities. There should be plenty of room in Venice Beach.

UPDATE: More power to the other 49 states....

Heh.

POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures is online. Here's my favorite this week:

Now go see the rest.

THESE AREN’T NORMAL TIMES. This country won’t be saved by a “normal” President.

GUN LAW: the hard road not (yet) taken.

AMMO GRRRLL: We can't give up!

We can’t give up because we owe it not just to our children and grandchildren to fight, but to the ones who came before who pledged their lives and treasure in order to bequeath us the miracle of opportunity and liberty we have inherited.

Now read the rest.

BERNIE SANDERS should be grateful we don't have 'Medicare for All'.

The cartoon is here.

AFTER CALLING LOBBYING ‘LEGALIZED BRIBERY’ Elizabeth Warren hires a lobbyist.

It's only legalized bribery if Republicans do it....

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Unusual times call for unconventional leadership.

California’s for-hire backfire.

But don't worry, Democrats have a solution: everyone works for the government.

DEMOCRATS WORRY: If impeachment fails, they’ll have to nominate an electable candidate.

"The real danger here," said Nancy Pelosi in a meeting of top Democrats, "is that the normal way of getting rid of a president---impeachment---fails. Then, we'd have to try to find someone who isn't a smug, smarmy doofus and get the public to like them."

That's why impeachment is so urgent; only smug, smarmy doofuses [doofi? - Ed.] are running.

SHOE comments on Election 2020.

THIS WEEK IN CRAZY. And stupid.

DON'T WRAP YOUR FISH IN THE NEW YORK TIMES. It will contaminate the fish.