Headlines

World leaders tell Biden: We need you

EU regulators hit Google with $1.7 billion fine for blocking ad rivals

Finland world’s happiest country ... America lowest ranking ever ...

Harris: ‘Open’ to discussion on eliminating Electoral College

Trump administration withholds report justifying ‘shock’ auto tariffs

A day before it crashed, Lion Air’s Boeing plane was reportedly saved by off-duty pilot

The Conway Show! Trump rips ‘husband from Hell’ ...

Germany furious at U.S. ambassador for calling out low defense spending

Mueller’s old boss delays departure as probe wraps up

FedEx just warned the whole globe is slowing

Border battle: 1million illegals with final deportation orders — still remain in country ...

CNN stunned to find pro-Trump Latinos: We want longer and taller wall

Headlines

The legal battle that could undermine law is at the center of the Mueller investigation

Market turmoil washes out Apple and Alphabet's gains for the year

Prosecutors say Trump directed illegal payments during campaign ...

Jerry Nadler vows to shut down House probe into DOJ-Democrat collusion

Trump leans on McConnell to bots on criminal justice reform

China's November export, import growth shrinks, showing weak demand

American entrepreneurs who flocked to China are returning home, disillusioned ...

Finland: Crackdown on criminal migrants because of 'evil' rape gangs

Paris police arrest hundreds in [yellow jacket] political protests again

If the Fed doesn't raise rates this month, the market could panic, Cramer says

Chinese police close down 1,100 social media accounts ...

... Police fight yellow vests at E.U. HQ as protests spread to Belgium, Netherlands

Headlines

Climate change 'not as bad as we thought,' say scientists ...

Macron, addressing Congress, departs from Trump on vision for 21st century

Apple Cook in private meeting with president ...

Finland to terminate failed Universal Basic Income experiment

Chris Christie finds his way back to Trump's heart

ROSEANNE ratings fall to earth ...

Supreme Court appears ready to uphold Trump's travel ban

University of Nebraska professor arrested over NRA protest

Trump brings in the billionaires for his first state dinner

Russian scientist who invented nerve agent that poisoned spy in UK hit by car ...

NASDAQ open to becoming cryptocurrency exchange, CEO says

Poll shows Americans side with Trump over Mueller probe

Headlines

McCabe kept memos on Trump conversations

Career bureaucrats rally around McCabe

Cambridge Analytica denies sneaking Facebook data for Trump campaign ...

U.S. factory output jumped 1.2 percent in February

Report: Trump-linked firm exploited data on 50 million Facebook users

North Korean diplomat heads to Finland for talks ahead of possible summit with US: Report

Paper: Big tech needs to face Roosevelt-style trustbusting

Palestinians claim White House delaying peace plan until Abbas leaves office

Engineer at FIU reported cracks in structure days before bridge collapse

China and Germany agree to work on steel overcapacity after US tariffs

Dems rush to offer jobs to protect [McCabe's] pension ...

Judge Janine to McCabe: quit claiming 'victim status' -- you should have been taken out in handcuffs

Headlines

Paul Ryan sees his wild Washington journey coming to an end

Comey draft says it was 'reasonably likely' Hillary's server was hacked

Buchanan: Unlike Nixon, Trump will not go quietly ...

Eric Holder complains about 'BS' attacks on Mueller special counsel

Rubio a 'no' on tax reform unless child tax credit expanded

US oil production will boom next year, but forecasters say  it is getting harder to nail

Over 1 million flee Venezuela ...

U.S. Displays evidence Iran violated U.N. ban on weapons proliferation

FCC votes to repeal net neutrality rules

North Korea says that Trump is taking a 'dangerous step' toward nuclear war with naval blockade

Presidential hopeful wants Finland out of the EU: Nationalism bounces back ...

Disney/Fox merger rings death knell for cable TV

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which from Politico?

Steve Bannon takes his fight outside

Poll shows lots of support for Trump's stance on Charlottesvile

White House lawyer predicts quick end to Mueller probe ...

Stephen K. Bannon returns home to Breitbart News

Graham to Trump: Afghanistan pullout could cause another 9/11

Panicked New York set to remove subway tiles that vaguely resemble Confederate flag

NASA: 3-mile asteroid to graze past Earth [in] closest ever tracked

Bush: We're on the cusp of a second Civil War

Mother of Charlottesville victim: I won't speak with Trump

ACLU no longer automatically defends groups with firearms ...

Hero [Spanish] police officer shoots dead four terrorists ...

Finland terror: Two dead, several injured

The Grasshoppers

I know that John Hinderaker is generally my go-to guy at the Powerline blog, but Paul Mirengoff has a very pity entry on the debt debacle in Greece ... see: Greek Farce Explained. In this posting, Paul quotes a lot of the inside skinny about how the Greek poobahs misplayed their hands at the financing negotiations with the rest of the European Economic Community (EEC). Talk about the JV playing against the L.A. Lakers. This arrogant bunch of lefties from Athens carried with them there the grasshopper's attitude that the world owed them a living. They may have learned a very hard lesson ... which I don't think is over yet.

I myself have a few comments on these Mirengoff revelations:

- How can Finland be made to adsorb such of heavy burden of this Greek indebtedness? This posting reveals that this country is being asked to pay out 10% of its annual budget and 2.5% of its GDP to hold Greece's head above water. This can't be fair. If the rest of the EEC ponied up the same relative amounts, I suspect that this would cover Greece's shortfall many times over.

- How can the EEC or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lend Greece any more money when they know that they are not going to repay what has already been lent? Yes I know that the formation of the Euro has benefited Northern Europe, mainly Germany, greatly ... GNP growth-wise. But nevertheless, if you have to lend someone money to buy your products ... and you know that this debt will never be repaid ... this seems a silly commercial strategy.

- The U.S. generally has assumed an attitude that all this European economic kerfuffle does not affect us. But we forget that we contribute something like 18% to the IMF funding ... so what the IMF loses, we also partly lose.

Isn't rather ironic that present-day Greeks seem to have forgotten Aesop's lesson from "The Grasshopper and the Ant?"

Caught My Eye

Four tidbits on the Internet that have recently caught my eye:

1. According to the Congressional Budget Office the cost of Obamacare is now estimated at $1.76 trillion over ten years (and well over $2.5 trillion if you count other implementation costs according to Charles Krauthammer on Fox News last night) as opposed to the "around $900 billion" that Obama promised in order to get this monstrosity "passed" through Congress ... see: Washington Examiner Piece).

2. Relatively unnoticed, President Obama's Pentagon is also proposing to save $13 billion by 2017 by upping the premiums on military health care benefits ... see: NY Post Article.  Shame on them!

3. A relatively obscure Bureau of Labor Statistics table is now getting some media attention.  It is called "U-6" and it highlights the structural unemployment in the United States.  Are you ready for the (more) realistic number?  It's 14.9% ... see BLS Release.  Yes, it has come down too, but it is still quite a bite higher than the 8.3% figure ballyhooed by the national media.

4. As part of its fire-hose crony-capitalism spending,  the Department of Energy provided a loan guarantee to a car company of $529 million to build cars in Finland ... see: ABC News Report.  Here is a quote from Consumer Reports when it tried to check out this new "green" car (the electric Fisker Karma): “We buy about 80 cars a year and this is the first time in memory that we have had a car that is undriveable before it has finished our check-in process.”

Oh yes, and one more ... yesterday U.S. Marines were disarmed when our Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, spoke to them in Afghanistan ... a clear affront to our proud soldiers by our lily-livered empty suits.   See: The Telegraph Article.

And so, to bed ...