They're all psycho, inflicted by Trump Derangement Syndrome.
At Legal Insurrection, "Unable to Defeat Trump at the Polls, Dems Enlist Yale Psych Prof to Diagnose Him Mentally Unfit," and "WATCH: Sarah Sanders Slays Media on Trump Mental Health and Bannon Feud."
Rep. James Raskin at the first video below looks like he stuck his fingers in a light socket. These people are f--king twisted.
Sunday, January 7, 2018
Saturday, January 6, 2018
California Mounts Resistance to Trump Administration's New Oil Drilling Proposal
California's the center of "The Resistance" against the Trump administration, and more pathetic examples are coming fast and furious since the new year came around.
Another reason to get out of this state as fast as you can (and unfortunately, I can't right now; not until I retire, if then, depending on what my wife wants to do; hopefully we'll bail out for more conservative/libertarian pastures).
In any case, at LAT, "California has many weapons in its arsenal to block new offshore oil drilling":
Another reason to get out of this state as fast as you can (and unfortunately, I can't right now; not until I retire, if then, depending on what my wife wants to do; hopefully we'll bail out for more conservative/libertarian pastures).
In any case, at LAT, "California has many weapons in its arsenal to block new offshore oil drilling":
California has many tools in its arsenal to block new offshore oil drilling https://t.co/y2Mo6Pmc0R pic.twitter.com/W4iXwAzFdn— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 6, 2018
There are two things working against the Trump administration's proposal to open up California coastal waters to new oil and gas drilling: state regulators and simple economics.More.
California has powerful legal tools to head off new offshore development, and the price of oil offers little incentive to the energy industry to pursue expensive drilling projects next to a hostile state.
"I don't think there's any reasonable chance that there will be any leasing or drilling along the coast," said Ralph Faust, former general counsel for the California Coastal Commission. "This just seems like grandstanding" by the Trump administration.
The Interior Department on Thursday released plans to open vast areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to new oil and gas exploration and drilling through a five-year leasing program that would begin in 2019.
But there are myriad obstacles opponents can throw in front of the proposal, not to mention questions about whether the oil industry has much of an interest in California's offshore reserves at a time when domestic oil production is at its highest level in decades.
Under the plan, the federal government would offer 47 leases in U.S. waters on the outer continental shelf, including two each off the Northern, Central and Southern California coasts and one off Washington and Oregon.
The governors of all three states issued a joint statement Thursday saying they would do whatever it takes to block new leasing off their shores, which include some of the nation's most pristine coastlines.
The first hurdle for the Trump plan is a period of public comment and an extensive environmental review under federal law, which opponents can use to challenge the proposal as ecologically harmful.
In California, the state coastal commission also has the authority to review activities in federal waters to ensure they are consistent with the state's coastal management plans.
"The commission has extremely broad and very powerful authority to say 'no' to federal actions that would harm the coast of California and harm coastal waters," said Steve Mashuda, an attorney at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization.
The commission is ready to use it.
"Nothing galvanizes bi-partisan resistance in California like the threat of more offshore oil drilling," coastal commission Chairwoman Dayna Bochco said in a statement. "We've fought similar efforts before, and we will fight them again."
While the U.S. Secretary of Commerce could override a commission finding that new oil drilling violated the state's management plan, federal courts have tended to side with states in such contests...
Olympia Valance on the Beach
At the Daily Express, "Neighbours bombshell Olympia Valance goes TOPLESS as she flashes eye-popping assets on the beach in Mykonos."
Also, at Taxi Driver, "Olympia Valance Topless on the Beach."
Also, at Taxi Driver, "Olympia Valance Topless on the Beach."
World Leaders on Twitter
So, @Jack made the right decision for once.
At Fox News, "Twitter won't block world leaders or delete their messages."
At Fox News, "Twitter won't block world leaders or delete their messages."
Twitter won't block world leaders or delete their messages https://t.co/A3gqwcnNHY
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 6, 2018
There’s been a lot of discussion about political figures and world leaders on Twitter, and we want to share our stance: https://t.co/Ns0cuKpwd5
— jack (@jack) January 5, 2018
Friday, January 5, 2018
Bomb Cyclone
The weather's been perfectly fine on the Left Coast. Indeed, now radical leftists are start to scream "drought" all over the place once again. (And that's after last year's record rainfall.)
On the "bomb cyclone," see the Arizona Republic, "Violent 'bomb cyclone' sends high tide to near record levels in downtown Boston; motorists stranded."
And at CBS This Morning:
On the "bomb cyclone," see the Arizona Republic, "Violent 'bomb cyclone' sends high tide to near record levels in downtown Boston; motorists stranded."
And at CBS This Morning:
The Democrats' 'Russian Descent'
This is good, from Kim Strassel, at WSJ, "Tactics in the Trump probe are starting to look a lot like McCarthyism":
Democrats have spent weeks making the case that the Russia-Trump probes need to continue, piling on demands for more witnesses and documents. So desperate is the left to keep this Trump cudgel to hand that Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats have moved toward neo- McCarthyism.Hat Tip: RCP.
If that sounds hyperbolic, consider an email recently disclosed by the Young Turks Network, a progressive YouTube news channel. It’s dated Dec. 19, 2017, and its author is April Doss, senior counsel for the committee’s Democrats, including Vice Chairman Mark Warner.
Ms. Doss was writing to Robert Barnes, an attorney for Charles C. Johnson, the controversial and unpleasant alt-right blogger. Mr. Johnson’s interactions with Julian Assange inspired some in the media to speculate last year that Mr. Johnson had served as a back channel between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks. There’s still no proof, but in July the Intelligence Committee sent a letter requesting Mr. Johnson submit to them any documents, emails, texts or the like related to “any communications with Russian persons” in a variety of 2016 circumstances, including those related to “the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign.”
Mr. Barnes seems to have wanted clarification from Ms. Doss about the definition of “Russian persons.” And this would make sense, since it’s a loose term. Russians in Russia? Russians in America? Russians with business in the country? Russians who lobby the U.S. and might be affected by the election—though not in contact with campaigns?
Ms. Doss’s response was more sweeping than any of these: “The provision we discussed narrowing was clarifying that the phrase ‘Russian persons’ in [the committee letter] may be read to refer to persons that Mr. Johnson knows or has reason to believe are of Russian nationality or descent” (emphasis added).
If this stands, Democrats will have gone far beyond criminalizing routine government contacts with Russians, which is disturbing enough. Trump transition and administration officials have been smeared and subjected to exhaustive investigation merely for doing their job, which includes interacting with Russian officials or diplomats. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has spent the past year having to justify why, as a U.S. senator, he shook hands with the Russian ambassador. The running joke in today’s Washington is that one risks a subpoena merely for ordering a salad with Russian dressing.
But the definition in the Doss letter potentially takes all this much further. It could be that Ms. Doss was simply trying to prevent a recalcitrant witness from evading legitimate requests. But it could mean you are now officially under suspicion by the U.S. government—subject to requisitioning your emails and texts or getting your own subpoena—if your parents or even great-great-grandparents were Russkis. By some estimates, the Russian-American community is more than three million strong, and quite a few of them are Mr. Warner’s congressional colleagues, including Bernie Sanders.
This comes from a Democratic Party that supposedly rejects group-based discrimination. Substitute the words “Arab or Arab background” into a hypothetical Republican version of the letter, and the left would melt down—not without reason.
The Doss letter suggests this is of a piece with the Democrats’ manic effort to keep the Trump-Russia investigations going, no matter what. As Republican congressional leaders have hinted that their probes may be wrapping up, the left’s demands and tactics have become ever more desperate. The Washington Post this past weekend ran a piece straight out of House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff’s talking points, regurgitating complaints that Chairman Devin Nunes has run an incomplete probe. The accusation inspired House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy to quip that Mr. Schiff’s desired witness list is “pretty much every character in any Dostoevsky or Tolstoy novel.”
The House Intelligence committee has collected nearly 300,000 documents, conducted 67 transcribed witness interviews, and issued 18 subpoenas. It’s held 11 hearings, taken 164 hours of testimony, and reviewed 5,251 pages of that testimony. It’s spent 346 days investigating Russian meddling. The country deserves the committee’s final recommendations as to how to avoid further Russian interference, especially given we are again in an election year...
Laura Ingraham: President Trump Outsmarts the Establishment 'Intellectual Elite' (VIDEO)
Here's Ms. Laura with "The Angle," from last night:
Farms Facing Shrinking Immigrant Labor Pool
First thing I thought when I started reading this piece, is, "No, American workers worked Central Valley fields in the 1930s and '40s, workers escaping the devastation of Dust Bowl America (the Okies).
The piece does mention them, as a sop to history.
I just know that if wages were high enough, Americans would take these jobs. I would have picked cantaloupes in the 1980s if owners were paying me $12.00 an hour. The Times had a piece last year where growers near Sacramento were paying $15.00 and up (with some growers expecting to pay wages from $18.00 to $20.00 an hour).
It's simple economics. There's no shame in working an honest job. The fact that dark-skinned people have done it for so long doesn't mean that hard-working U.S. citizens won't work the fields. Immigrant labor drags down wages. Growers like it that way, giving the shiv to regular citizens.
At LAT, "Born in the U.S.A. and working in the fields — what gives?":
The piece does mention them, as a sop to history.
I just know that if wages were high enough, Americans would take these jobs. I would have picked cantaloupes in the 1980s if owners were paying me $12.00 an hour. The Times had a piece last year where growers near Sacramento were paying $15.00 and up (with some growers expecting to pay wages from $18.00 to $20.00 an hour).
It's simple economics. There's no shame in working an honest job. The fact that dark-skinned people have done it for so long doesn't mean that hard-working U.S. citizens won't work the fields. Immigrant labor drags down wages. Growers like it that way, giving the shiv to regular citizens.
At LAT, "Born in the U.S.A. and working in the fields — what gives?":
Farm labor from Mexico has been on the decline in California, and farmers are having trouble finding U.S.-born workers to make up the difference https://t.co/B8lcJDmfG3
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 5, 2018
Nicholas Andrew Flores swatted at the flies orbiting his sweat-drenched face as he picked alongside a crew of immigrants through a cantaloupe field in California's Central Valley.
The 21-year-old didn't speak Spanish, but he understood the essential words the foreman barked out: Puro amarillo. And rapido, rapido! Quickly, Flores picked only yellow melons and flung them onto a moving platform.
It was hard and repetitive work, and there were days under the searing sun that Flores regretted not going to a four-year college. But he liked that to get the job he just had to "show up." And at $12 an hour, it paid better than slinging fast food.
For Joe Del Bosque of Del Bosque Farms in the San Joaquin Valley, American-born pickers like Flores, though rare, are always welcome.
For generations, rural Mexico has been the primary source of hired farm labor in the U.S. According to a federal survey, nine out of 10 agricultural workers in places like California are foreign-born, and more than half are in the U.S. illegally.
But farm labor from Mexico has been on the decline in California. And under the Trump administration, many in the agricultural industry worry that deportations — and the fear of them — could further cut the supply of workers.
But try as they have to entice workers with better salaries and benefits, companies have found it impossible to attract enough U.S.-born workers to make up for a shortage from south of the border.
Del Bosque said he'll hire anyone who shows up ready to work. But that rarely means someone born in the U.S.
"Americans will say, 'You can't pay me enough to do this kind of work,'" Del Bosque said. "They won't do it. They'll look for something easier."
For some immigrants working the fields, people like Flores are a puzzle — their sweating next to them represents a kind of squandering of an American birthright.
"It's hard to be here under the sun. It's a waste of time and their talents in the fields," said Norma Felix, 58, a Mexican picker for almost three decades. "They don't take advantage of their privilege and benefit of being born here. They could easily work in an office."
Most don't last long, she said.
"There is always one or two who show up every season," Felix said. "They show up for three or four days and turn around and leave."
Agriculture's reliance on immigrant labor, especially in the American West, goes back to the late 1800s, after the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, said J. Edward Taylor, a UC Davis rural economist.
"The domestic farm workforce was simply not big enough to support the growth of labor-intensive fruit and vegetable crops," he said...
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Laura Ingraham: Trump/Bannon Feud Has Set Off a 'Pavlovian Feeding-Frenzy in the Media' (VIDEO)
I should watch her show. As noted many times now, I quit watching television news. But I do itch for some partisan news reporting, conservative news reporting, and there are few better plugged into the populist beat than Ms. Laura.
Maybe I'll watch tonight. She's good.
From last night, at Ingraham Angle on Fox:
BONUS: At NYT, via Memeorandum, "Trump Demands That Publisher Halt Release of Critical Book." (That's a huge thread on Trump/Bannon at Memeorandum.)
Maybe I'll watch tonight. She's good.
From last night, at Ingraham Angle on Fox:
BONUS: At NYT, via Memeorandum, "Trump Demands That Publisher Halt Release of Critical Book." (That's a huge thread on Trump/Bannon at Memeorandum.)
Maitland Ward on Twitter
She's got one shot right here that's virtually pornographic.
And there's more:
And there's more:
All bundled up and keeping warm #winteriscoming ☃️ pic.twitter.com/uh8LPxpuAm
— Maitland Ward Baxter (@MaitlandWard) December 6, 2017
Snapchat took it down... pic.twitter.com/XsV0ChkJko
— Maitland Ward Baxter (@MaitlandWard) December 8, 2017
I'm Hittin' it Hard on a Monday... 💪🏻💦 pic.twitter.com/uKxFSbZROE
— Maitland Ward Baxter (@MaitlandWard) December 12, 2017
Overdressed 😂😜💁🏻 pic.twitter.com/2FEflTYj3v
— Maitland Ward Baxter (@MaitlandWard) December 29, 2017
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Strangled by Identity
This is great, at National Affairs:
My latest in National Affairs, with @RWBhandari https://t.co/oT18A3MGLz— Thomas Hopson (@thomasehopson) January 2, 2018
American politics is overwhelmed by bitterness and rancor. The norms that structure the work of our constitutional system are everywhere under attack. Partisan loyalties now seem to determine not only people's worldviews and policy priorities but also what facts they will accept or choose to treat as lies. The rhetoric of animus and apocalypse is the everyday parlance of both parties, particularly when each talks about the other. And although this polarization may have its roots inside the Beltway, its toxicity pervades the public.More.
None of this began with Donald Trump. It was all there in the culture wars of the Obama years and in the deep divisions of the Bush era. It is systemic. Our political dysfunction in this century looks less like a failure of individuals and more like a corrosion of our entire political culture and its institutions.
Many observers of this problem, especially on the right though increasingly on the left as well, tend to explain it by resorting to critiques of "identity politics." But identity politics is something we tend to see others doing while failing to recognize that we are doing it ourselves. And because we tend to miss the breadth of its scope and reach, we fail to see not only how central it is to the trouble with our politics but also how it might be overcome.
Identity politics is not just a problem of the left. It is a way of thinking that pervades our self-understanding. Our rancorous political conversation now consists of three competing theories of identity in America — three stories of how our differing backgrounds should shape our common political life. One of these (espoused by a significant swath of the left but increasingly co-opted by an influential minority on the right) treats politics as a continuous struggle across racial lines, and so conceives of coalitions on racial grounds. Another (advanced more commonly on the right in our time) insists that the principled distinction in our politics is not between racial groups but along the legal line of citizens versus non-citizens. Finally, the third theory of identity (espoused by some elites of both parties, and barely aware of itself as a theory of identity at all) views the other two schools of thought as pernicious and proposes its own form of identity defined by an ideal of cosmopolitan dignity.
Each of these theories, as practiced, is unstable. And each rejects the other two as un-American without really quite understanding them. It is this problem — our country's conceptual blind spot on identity — that drives so much of our present polarization. To be sure, disagreements over identity are a causa causans of why Republicans and Democrats can barely get along. But it isn't only that the two sides speak different languages; it's that our political languages fall short of our political needs.
The solution is not a new and improved theory of identity, although in time the country could use one. Instead, a practical solution would require us to begin by pivoting from philosophy to institutions. It is all well and good to debate the various theories of identity. But our leaders should also focus on building and sustaining those institutions that can concretely ground a functional civic life — one that works in practice even if it sometimes seems as though it couldn't work in theory. To begin this work, we should seek to better understand the quandary of American identity, so that we might rise above it.
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