Author: Doug Santo

The response from President Trump to a CNN reporter during the president’s press conference following the G7 is why the president maintains relatively high popularity. Click the link to view.

“Who are you with, out of curiosity?” Trump asked.

“CNN,” the reporter responded.

“I figured,” Trump said. “Fake News CNN. The worst. But I could tell by the question. I had no idea you were CNN. After the question, I was just curious as to who you were with. You were CNN.”

Trump told the reporter that his relationship with the G7 leaders is “great” and assigned it a rating of a ’10’ on a scale of 0 to 10.

“So you can tell that to your fake friends at CNN,” Trump told the reporter.

Trump Press Conference

The media just can’t help themselves. The reporting is all negative. Trump alienated our allies. Trump is the worst. Trump is dumb. Trump is having mental problems. The world hates the U.S. now. The old world order is over. Trump disrespected U.S. media. You name it, the fake news has reported it, and it’s all a disaster.

I think the meeting went fine. Trump told our allies the days of taking advantage of the U.S. are over. They can play fair on trade, or they can take a hike. The U.S. annual GDP is larger than all the other G7 countries combined. We have run huge trade deficits with most of the countries present. Trump is exactly right that the U.S. will prevail in any economic trade war with any or all of the G7 countries.

Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration, August 1939.

Polling and national sentiment do not seem to support a huge blue wave in the upcoming election. Momentum seems to be with Trump, and is based on his successes with the economy, foreign policy, judges, and thumbing his nose at the media and elite society. I think the giant fizzle that is the Mueller investigation also supports Trump.

“…The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 70% of Likely Republican Voters say they are more likely to vote this year than they have been in past election years. That compares to 64% of Democrats and 51% of voters not affiliated with either major political party.

Among all Likely Voters, 62% say they are more likely to vote this year. Only six percent (6%) say they are less likely to do so, while 30% say they are just as likely to vote this November as in any other year.

By comparison, in July 2014, 57% said they were more likely to vote that November compared to past elections. Enthusiasm was higher two years ago during the presidential campaign, with 67% who said they were more likely to vote…”

Original Here

Joel Kotkin:

“…Yet as they consolidate control, California Democrats must face some profound contradictions, as the Marxists would say. The gentry—tech oligarchs, real estate speculators, and venture capitalists—stand comfortably with the left on symbolic race, gender, and environmental issues. But these party bankrollers could be hard-pressed if they face the prospect of higher taxes to pay for a state single-payer health-care system, massive housing subsidies, and Governor Brown’s choo-choo, not to mention the state’s ever-soaring pension costs. As Amazon is learning in Seattle, progressive politicos have figured out where to find the biggest piles of cash. Aggressive taxation of tech companies is already becoming a trend in Silicon Valley.

A stronger, motivated grass-roots Left could constitute the greatest immediate challenge to Governor Newsom. Many Californians, particularly millennials and minorities, face a lack of high-wage jobs, soaring rents, and essentially insurmountable barriers to homeownership. A majority of Californians, according to some surveys, express dissatisfaction with the state’s bifurcated economy. The disappearance of upward mobility makes these voters susceptible to embracing such things as rent control, higher minimum wages, free college, and free health care. They will support ever higher taxes on businesses and on generally white, affluent Californians. The call for new spending will become more problematic once the state comes back to earth from its Silicon Valley and real-estate inflation highs, which for now keep the operating budget in the black.

At some point, Newsom and the Democratic nomenklatura will have to deal with pervasive conditions of diminished opportunity, racial polarization, and fiscal weakness. When these realities eventually impinge, the state’s progressive rulers may find themselves on the defensive, and—if confronted with a plausible opposition—vulnerable, at long last…”

Original Here

This could not happen to a more deserving “comedian.”

“…More than a dozen sponsors for Samantha Bee’s late-night show Full Frontal did not run advertisements on Wednesday’s episode, a week after the TBS host called White House advisor Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt.”
Unlike last week’s episode which saw ad spots from national brands like Taco Bell, Apple, Haagen Dazs, and Jim Beam, Wednesday’s Full Frontal featured promos in large part from other programs on TBS and TNT, Variety reports.

Sponsors State Farm and Autotrader suspended their advertisements on the weekly show last week.

An embattled Bee returned to her Turner cable network show on Wednesday to deliver an angry apology, that was long on one-liners and short on remorse for Ivanka Trump…”

Original Here

The leaking in the Trump Administration has been terrible. No matter which side of the aisle you are on, the leaking is a detriment to the government. I don’t like to see people charged with crimes, but it appears this man was in a position of authority and responsibility and decided to take it upon himself to release secret information to the press. What bad judgement. I do not have much sympathy for him.

“…The best hope for a failed state such as Illinois is to let the state go bankrupt.

The State of Illinois incurred deficits reaching nearly $15 billion in 2017, and those deficits are projected to double to $30 billion in 2018. Illinois has also accumulated hundreds of billions in unfunded liabilities in public sector pension and health-care plans. This has exposed local jurisdictions to the risk of default or bankruptcy. In response, Illinois has issued large bailouts, further weakening the finances of the state’s government. The courts have exacerbated this problem by ruling the Illinois Constitution mandates state bailouts for public sector pension and health plans.

Fiscal rules in Illinois have been ineffective in constraining deficits and debt. Illinois, like 48 other states, has a balanced budget provision in its state constitution. But, in recent years, the state legislature has failed to pass a budget at all — let alone one that would balance revenues and expenditures.

In April 2018, a constitutional amendment to cap the rate of growth in spending at the rate of growth in the state economy was introduced in Illinois’ legislature. A majority of Illinois state legislators have yet to show support for such a fiscal rule…”

Original Here

I am not a big fan of Kevin Williamson, but he writes some funny stuff every now and then. Here’s a snippet on Samantha Bee.

Kevin D. Williamson:

“…Samantha Bee on her worst day, like Samantha Bee on her best day, is a reminder of one of the most underappreciated facts of public life in the 21st century: Mass democracy has no intellectual content. It is, as David French and others have noted, simply an extension of high-school cafeteria-table politics: status-jockeying and status-monkeying 24/7/365.25 and not much else. It doesn’t do much for the country, but it beats working for a living. Keep that in mind the next time you find yourself muttering “Hell, yeah!” when your favorite multimillionaire cable-news rodeo clown lays the rhetorical smackdown on one of his multimillionaire Central Park West neighbors two buildings over while you’re stuck in traffic commuting home to the suburbs from downtown wherever…”

Original Here

An interesting analysis. I think I would support this idea in a referendum.

“…Californians don’t “keep voting for this”. California is a huge state. Many residents consistently vote down intrusive regulations and excessive taxation. Unfortunately those voters face two gigantic problems. The first problem is that the interests of Californians who live in rural and suburban areas (which make up the majority of California’s geography) greatly rival the interests of those who live in urban centers. The second problem is that 80% of Californians live in urban centers – most notably Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.

A look at the voting map from Tuesday’s primaries shows the problem in full detail.

Democrat Gavin Newsom pulled a “Hillary” and secured most of the coastal dwellers. Everyone else chose the Republican candidate…”

Original Here

The Eagles tried to politically embarrass the president. The president kicked their butts up and down the street. If there is one thing the president knows, it’s how to manipulate politics and the media.

Daniel Henninger:

“…Donald Trump is a showman, who has been playing the media like a Stradivarius his whole life. Now he’s got Twitter , his own loud calliope.

In 2016, his Republican primary opponents didn’t recognize that we are living in an age of bread and circuses, an age Donald Trump didn’t create but into which he inserted his own circus. Curiosity seekers filled the tent and loved the show.

The sophisticates in the media thought they could beat Donald Trump at this game by burying him under waves of negative publicity. But he feeds off of it, just as he turned the Philadelphia Eagles’ White House no-show into a display of patriotic music, with the maestro at the center.

Now, fantastically, some Democrats are complaining that they can’t get their message out (the tax cut didn’t work, Medicare for all) because Donald Trump has blotted out the media sun. Gee whiz, whose fault is that?

The eclipse won’t end. The media has turned the Trump presidency into a phenomenon of constant self-absorption—their self-absorption in this one person. Donald Trump has become the biggest balloon in a political Macy’s parade of modern media’s own creation. They could let go of the ropes. But they won’t…”

Original Here

Michael Barone looks at the primary results in California republican districts that went for Clinton in the last national election to distill predictions for the next congress. He finds some good news for republicans.

Michael Barone:

“…This would be in line with polling that shows Donald Trump to enjoy almost universal job approval among self-identified Republicans—higher than all but one post-World War II president enjoyed at this stage in their tenure from his fellow partisans.

The 1994-2014 partisan divisions have been unusually long-enduring, aside from the short-lived shift to Democrats in 2006-08, and the actual number of Obama/Trump voters that switched 100 electoral votes to the Republican was small by historic standards.

Will a reversion to that norm give Republicans a narrow House majority once again this year? That’s one result — though certainly not the only one — that would be consistent with the primary results we’ve seen so far. Opinion can shift: perhaps another blue wave is building. But the one almost everyone was expecting six months ago seems to have crested and ebbed…”

Original Here

Google’s work force decided they should not work with the U.S. Military because it would be evil to do so and it would damage the Google brand. You can’t make this stuff up. These nitwits learn this stuff in college, and pay top dollar for the privilege.

Mark Thiessen:

“…Giving in to pressure from its workforce, Google recently announced that it is pulling out of Project Maven, a groundbreaking Pentagon program to harness artificial intelligence to sift through and interpret video imagery from drones. The move came after an uprising by 4,000 Google employees who signed a letter urging the company to cancel Project Maven and promise to never “build warfare technology.” Google should be ashamed.

In their letter, the employees said that working with the Pentagon would violate Google’s longtime motto “Don’t Be Evil” and “irreparably damage Google’s brand.” Excuse me? Are they saying that the U.S. military is evil? What would damage Google’s brand is the impression that its workforce thinks they are too good to support the men and women of the armed forces who face real evil on distant battlefields so that Google workers can sleep safely in their Google “nap pods,” enjoy free massages and take free guitar lessons.

Their objections to Project Maven are nonsensical. They fear that Google technology will be used to make drone strikes more accurate. What’s wrong with that?…”

Original Here

Troops of the 20th Armored Division and units of the 9th Army whoop it up between raindrops as the S.S. John Ericsson nears Pier 84, Hudson River as they return from Europe—victorious.

Outstanding piece by Conrad Black. Here’s a little taste:

“…However, there is extensive public evidence that Messrs. Clapper, Brennan (who recently tweeted that Mr. Trump could “not destroy America”), Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe, and Mrs. Clinton and her entourage all lied to Congress or to federal officials. The former attorney general and deputy attorney general (Loretta Lynch and Sally Yates), and Mr. Rosenstein himself, are among those implicated in misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, and all are in the gray zone of potential indictability and conviction…”

Conrad Black

Two CV-22 Osprey aircraft fly close together during the Cannon Air Show, Space and Tech Fest at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., May 26, 2018.

I am not entirely satisfied with the Supreme Court decision in this matter, but this take from Scotusblog seems to interpret the Court’s decision about right. It also predicts the next actions from the progressive left in their lawfare campaign against traditional American institutions.

“…What the Supreme Court said was different but may ultimately come to nearly the same place. The court said that the inconsistent treatment of Phillips and the protected bakers showed hostility towards Phillips’ religious faith. Colorado had violated its duty “not to base laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or a religious viewpoint.” The state must “proceed in a manner neutral toward and tolerant of Phillips’ religious beliefs.” The commission had been “neither tolerant nor respectful”; it had proceeded on the basis of “a negative normative ‘evaluation of the particular justification’ for his objection” (quoting Lukumi).

There is a practical holding and an ideal holding here. The practical holding is that the unequal treatment of Phillips and the protected bakers is evidence of unconstitutional hostility. Conscientious objectors embroiled in litigation will have to send testers to smoke out uneven enforcement of anti-discrimination law. We expect that states are unwilling to require socially liberal vendors to produce goods with conservative religious messages they find offensive or against their conscience. If that is so, then those states cannot require religiously conservative vendors to produce goods in violation of their conscience.

The Supreme Court has announced a powerful ideal. Even when a law has no explicit exceptions, hostile enforcement is unconstitutional. Single-issue agencies that enforce state civil-rights laws must approach claims to religious exemptions with tolerance and respect. And this is apparently an absolute rule; the court does not consider whether hostility might be justified by some state interest, compelling or otherwise.

But a requirement of tolerance and respect, or even the avoidance of hostility, is difficult to enforce. The opponents of religious exemptions will now start doing the sorts of things done by many other government officials resisting constitutional mandates. They will seek doctrinal and rhetorical manipulations to cloak their hostility to the constitutional right, and their unequal treatment of objectors they agree with and objectors they don’t…”

Scotusblog