Dana Mathewson

File this along with the "tax on meat" article I recently sent. From Urgent Agenda:

MAJOR SOCIAL ADVANCE – FROM REASON: Ian Calderon wants restaurateurs to think long and hard before giving you a straw. Calderon, the Democratic majority leader in California's lower house, has introduced a bill to stop sit-down restaurants from offering customers straws with their beverages unless they specifically request one. Under Calderon's law, a waiter who serves a drink with an unrequested straw in it would face up to 6 months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000. "We need to create awareness around the issue of one-time use plastic straws and its detrimental effects on our landfills, waterways, and oceans," Calderon explained in a press release. This isn't just Calderon's crusade. The California cities of San Luis Obispo and Davis both passed straws-on-request laws last year, and Manhattan Beach maintains a prohibition on all disposable plastics. And up in Seattle, food service businesses won't be allowed to offer plastic straws or utensils as of July. Forget nuclear proliferation. This is the real challenge.

Now I'll boast: Martha and I have an "understanding" with the bartenders at our favorite T.G.I. Friday's that they don't even bother to serve us water.

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Dana Mathewson

The excellent Power Line blog, based in my home area of the Minnesota Twin Cities, carries this article currently:

The Sad Decline of the FBI: You Read It Here First [Updated]

The FBI scandals continue to unravel. Scott has chronicled the saga of the missing Strzok/Page text messages, now apparently on the road to recovery. The FBI has continued to stonewall Congressional investigations, to the point where Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley says the FBI is playing "a bureaucratic game of hide the ball.”

And House Republicans have prepared a four-page memo that apparently summarizes the FBI’s malfeasance in connection with the fake Trump dossier. Some who have read it say it may lead to criminal prosecutions within the Department of Justice. DOJ is demanding a look at the memo, but so far House Republicans won’t turn it over. Why? Because they know what Justice bureaucrats will do with it. They will leak it to their friends at the New York Times and the Washington Post so they can preemptively attack the memo before the public gets to see it.

These scandals have been going on for quite a while, but people are finally beginning to notice. Howie Carr says it is time to abolish the FBI. Is that going too far? Maybe, but the Bureau has been coasting on its reputation for a long, long time. At a minimum, I would say that those who can be fired within the Bureau’s leadership, should be. Starting with Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Meantime, the Department of Justice has officially warned the House Intelligence Committee not to release its memo. It’s like the possible defendant in a criminal trial threatening prosecutors for having the audacity to reveal alleged evidence to the judge and jury.

More evidence of how far gone in Democratic Party partisanship the Department of Justice is. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a conservative Attorney General? Someone like Jeff Sessions?

This is the first time I can recall open government groups and many reporters joining in the argument to keep the information secret. They are strangely uncurious about alleged improprieties with implications of the worst kind: Stasi-like tactics used against Americans.

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Timothy Birdnow

I generally greatly admire Monica Showalter's writing at American Thinker, but she sure had a clunker here. Monica is arguing that Trump has outflanked the Democrats and other liberal amnetizers on the DACA issue, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Her argument is a monument to wishful thinking.

She starts out: more...

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Dana Mathewson

A few days ago, our drive-by media delighted in telling us that the liberal nabobs at Davos turned up their noses when our President arrived. Well, they may have done so, but they've changed their tune.

According to an article in the Daily Caller, which I found on Urgent Agenda,

President Donald J. Trump hosted a dinner with European business leaders and CEOs at theWorld Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Thursday evening.Trump has been making the rounds in Davos, holding bilateral meetings with other world leaders and conducting business roundtables. Trump met with various business leaders in shadow of the recent economic boom in America.

In a stunning moment, one by one, European titans of industry from companies like Adidas, Siemens and Bayer went around the table to thank Trump for the passage of tax cuts and the easing of corporate tax burdens. Almost every CEO had a new US-based investment or strategic business to announce.

The president of Seimens, Joe Kaeser, said, "since you have been so successful in tax reform we have decided to develop the next generation gas turbines in the United States.”

Trump responded "That’s great!”

Exchanges like this continued all around the table.

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Wil Wirtanen

Liberals want to throw out the Constitution.

The author doesn’t point out is that the progressives/libs/dimocrats have so distorted government that it does not follow the constitution. Having them design a new constitution would make us a shithole. Of course what would you expect to come from assholes.

A NOTE FROM TIM:

more...

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Jack Kemp

I like the fact that a few days ago, the DREAMERS were protesting at Schumer's home in Brooklyn, saying they wouldn't let him sleep.

Immigrant activists protest at Schumer's home, chanting 'If Chuck won't let us dream, we won't let him sleep'

A note from Dana Mathewson

To use an quote from "Lord of The Rings," Schumer is "in a cleft stick of his own making." Politics was defined by Ronald Reagan as "the art of the possible" and it just may be that Schumer may have gotten himself into something that he may not be able to get out of, due to the intransigence of his own party. We used to rail about the intractability of the Republicans, but Newt's analysis of the current Democrat Party makes them look like they are virtually unleadable. I don't envy Chuckie one bit. And he is learning the hard way that Trump, unlike Republicans of old, is unrollable, and Mitch McConnell is aware of that and seems to have grown at least the vestiges of a spine.

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Dana Mathewson

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Dana Mathewson

Remember the Australian woman who was killed in MPLS by the Muslim cop?

Here are a few more details in the investigation of the case. A few only.

more...

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Dana Mathewson

Looks like 2020 will just be the usual suspects after all...

Oh, DARN!

Oprah's not interested in running in 2020. How can I go on living?

2c from David Dickinson:

My hopes, my dreams, my very emotional stability - dashed!

Dana replies:

Where is the glamor? I mean, the glamour? The Second Black President and the First Woman (Wymyn) President, all rolled into Won! Better-lookin' than Moochie and Hillary and Lizzie, sweeter than Zippy, more talented than, uh, Joe...

Help me out here, guys, I'm running out of comparisons. more...

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Timothy Birdnow

After winning the government shutdown battle President Trump has now surrendered to the Democrats.

From Conservative HQ:

"But conservatives didn’t have to wait too long to get the word that what the President apparently means by "a permanent solution on DACA” is the same thing as Democrats mean by a permanent solution to DACA – citizenship for millions of illegal aliens.

The Associated Press is reporting that President Trump says his immigration plan will let protections for younger immigrants "morph into" citizenship in 10-12 years.

This is the same thing that the hated Gang of Eight "comprehensive immigration reform” bill promoted by failed Republican presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio (and steered behind the scenes by President Barack Obama) proposed back in 2013, and it led to the defeat of then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and the end of Rubio’s presidential ambitions.

Some well-meaning conservatives may see the opportunity for some grand conservative sounding deal on immigration reform that would include legislating a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients and coupling it with a few watered-down elements of the Goodlatte bill or Senator Tom Cotton’s RAISE Act.

This is a dangerous folly."

end excerpt.

What happens to people when they go to that s$%&hole on the Potomac? Something rots in their brains. America is going to die, DIE, if we continue to allow millions upon millions of people with no experience with America to simply stroll in here and bring their Third World socialist countries with them. Nations do die, folks; it's happened many times in the past. We are playing with fire.

And even an "outsider" like The Donald can't be trusted on this issue.

A nation is not just a geographical place, but a set of customs, beliefs, laws, and traditions. We no longer believe that ours are any better than anyone else's and are allowing aliens, true aliens, to settle here as permanent colonists. What made America great, what enticed these people to come in the first place, was not natural resources or good luck but a system and a culture that made our nation great. If we allow taht to be redefined in the interest of "multiculturalism" or "diversity" we will cease to be of any consequence, and likely will fall into a pit of violence and destruction unseen in human history.

Why can't people like Trump or McConnell or any of the rest see that?

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Timothy Birdnow

I generally agree with essays I see at The Federalist Patriot, but here is one I just couldn't stomach a bit. Seems one Lewis Morris is arguing for the U.S. to remain in NAFTA and in fact not really renegotiate it, despite what Donald Trump promised.

For example:

"Scrapping the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was one of Trump’s campaign promises although congressional Republicans and many members of the business community caution against such a move. An open letter to Trump from over 300 state and local chambers of commerce last October pointed out that NAFTA is responsible for 14 million jobs and $3.3 billion in trade on a daily basis." more...

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Dana mathewson

Frankly, it must suck to be Chuck Schumer these days. Trying to "lead" the Senate Democrats is worse than herding cats. At least cats have some common ground. Here are two very good articles from Fox News.

Liz Peek analyzes things in terms of "Schumer's Mistakes," while the indispensable Newt Gingrich gives us an analysis of the Senate Democrats and just why Schumer's job is so difficult.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/01/24/liz-peek-schumer-s-mistakes-pile-up-endangering-democrats-prospects-for-2018.html

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/01/24/newt-gingrich-schumer-shutdown-turns-into-schumer-surrender.html

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Wil Wirtanen

Only Losers follow the Kenyan Klown

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Jack Kemp

Former Pres. Obama will be speaking at a synagogue in New York City tonight.

Also...people who didn't get the sold out tickets for Obama's speech can attend the following Media Age more-or-less-updated version of Gounod's opera "Faust." It should be a Hell of a show...

https://www.thenewgroup.org/jerryspringertheopera.html

JERRY SPRINGER - THE OPERA

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Dana Mathewson

From Power Line:
This shocking report comes from the Jerusalem Post:

Maariv reported that former US secretary of state John Kerry met in London with a close associate of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Hussein Agha, for a long and open conversation about a variety of topics. Agha apparently reported details of the conversation to senior PA officials in Ramallah. A senior PA official confirmed to Maariv that the meeting took place.
more...

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Dana Mathewson

This may well be considered "old news" by now, except that so much of it is still murky. McCarthy sheds a great deal of light here.

Andrew McCarthy -- Clinton–Obama Emails: The Key to Understanding Why Hillary Wasn’t Indicted

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Timothy Birdnow

Here's a thought to chew on; had the Republicans done the right thing during the impeachment of Bill Clinton the last decade of disaster would ahve been avoided. The disgrace of Clinton's removal from office would have forced Hillary out, and without her there never would have been an Obama (he was drafted despite being a neophyte because he was NOT Hillary) and we wouldn't have the "Russian collusion" story ad nauseum, or the Mueller investigation, or any of this. All because the GOP was too frightened to remove a President with reasonably high approval numbers due to a good economy.

And lest we forget, the feminists and others circled the wagons for Bill, a known sexual predator, dismissing complaints about sexuual abuse by women because it hurt their champion. The end result was Harvey Weinstein and so many other scumbags running amok because they could.

America will pay the price for Bill Clinton for at least a qurter of a century and probably much longer.

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Timothy Birdnow

California Democrats are pondering ways to steal half of the Trump tax cut. Calling it a tax increase, these desert vultures peck at the eyes of American free enterprise. From the Federalist Patriot:

"Phil Ting, is just one of the many Democrats nationwide who are mulling over how to take advantage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. He along with his Sacramento colleague, Kevin McCarty, have introduced a bill that would collect half of what million-dollar-plus corporations gain from the newly reduced 21% corporate tax rate. Their assertion is that a chunk of corporate tax savings should be rerouted and invested in programs geared toward non-wealthy residents. Because, according to Ting, "Trump’s tax reform plan was nothing more than a middle-class tax increase.” more...

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Brian Birdnow takes the Post-Dispatch to task yet again:

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Dana Mathewson

Hint: he may often appear stupid but he's not.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/01/civil-war-on-the-left-part-53-riot-of-the-cavemen.php

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