Headlines

Trauma and gaffes crash Biden’s VP selection process

Trump unloads on governors over George Floyd protests, ‘Most of you are weak’

50 Secret Service agents injured in clashes ...

Black federal officer Patrick Underwood shot and killer in riots

UK would veto Russia’s return to the G-7

Coronavirus updates: Frontier Airlines starts taking passengers’ temperatures, Fauci worries about resurgence

AFL-CIO HQ attacked ...

Donald Trump: Joe Biden supporters bailing anarchists out of jail

Poll: Biden notches 10-point lead over Trump in general election matchup

BET founder Robert Johnson calls for $14 trillion of reparations for slavery

Cop accused of murder on ‘suicide watch’ ...

Nolte: You get what you vote for and in Democrat cities you get riots

Headlines

As Trump rages over border, Kushner quietly plans legal immigration boost

Payrolls post another disappointing month in March as job market keeps slowing

Bernie denies spreading creeper accusations ...

House Democrats want ‘oversight’ on Fox News editorial decisions

Coming soon: The death of the filibuster

Weekly mortgage refinancing spike 39% after huge rate drop

Chinese woman carrying malware arrested at Mar-a-Largo while Trump in town ...

Nadler: ‘An agent’of POTUS — ‘Deserves no benefit of the doubt’

Black leaders blast Dem war on super PACs

Elizabeth Warren wants to make it easier to jail executives for company abuses

Lightfoot elected as Chicago’s first black woman and open gay mayor ...

Flashback: Joe Biden exposed himself to female Secret Service [agents]

Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which ones from Politico?

GOP on egg shells as Trump storms into Phoenix

ANTIFA starting to organize on college campuses

State warns against travel to Cancun, Baja ...

China increases illegal presence in Latin American seas

Secret Service director cleans up comments on Trump's travel demands

Court blocks major pipeline approvals, says Feds didn't consider climate change

Study: Earth was warmer during medieval times ...

Report: Teens ditching Facebook ...

How Trump swallowed a bitter Afghanistan pill

Friend of Trudeau adviser gets diplomatic post at double the usual salary

Mag: Kaepernick should sign with Google ...

Taliban to Trump: 'Afghanistan will become another graveyard' for Americans

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites. Guess which ones came from Politico?

Media claims a scalp -- House Intel Chairman Nunes steps aside in Russia probe

Coulter: Obama should testify under oath on Trump surveillance

Report: White House backs Wall Street splitting of lending, investment banks ...

Bannon's departure solidifies McMaster's control over NSC

[As said on Lena Dunham's] HBO 'Girls': Unborn baby [is a] 'parasite growing inside of you'

Republicans push [nuclear option] button ...

Update: Shia movie sells three tickets ...

Muslim births to outpace Christian births within 20 years ...

Trump: Chemical attack in Syria 'crossed many, many lines'

Rare 'Pink Star' diamond becomes priciest diamond ever, sold for $71.2 million

Secret Service agent on Pence detail busted with hooker

Healthcare bust -- No deal as Congress goes into recess

Home Runs

Obummer's Soon-to-be Washington, DC Home

There are five people in President Obummer's family (counting his Robinson mother-in-law), so this apparently entitles them to five luxurious homes which they either have or plan to have soon -- Chicago, New York, Hawaii, Washington, DC, and Rancho Mirage, CA ... for some pictures and other details, see: Word Press Article. From what I understand this article has made at least one error, the Obummers will only be  renting the Washington home until Sasha graduates from high school in two years (unless she goes to college in DC?)

My back-of-the-envelope calculation is that the annual Obummer operating expense for these five residences has to easily exceed a million dollars. Yes, government pensions, speaking fees and book sales might just cover this after he leaves office, but from whence comes the necessary scratch now (estimated at least half of this which his salary as president doesn't even cover)? And imagine what the Secret Service is going to have to shell out to protect all five of these manses! Yes, protecting Trump is also going to be prohibitively expensive. Is there no ceiling to presidential and ex-presidential costs? Perhaps Congress needs to put some limits on what we taxpayers are willing to front to protect our now-royalty and ex-poobahs?

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites.

Three Pakistani men apprehended at Arizona border ...

Gingrich will not be in the Cabinet ...

'Hamilton' [cast and audience] disses Pence ... Bitter on B'way

Obama agrees to halt amnesty lawsuit until Trump DOJ in place

Fight for $15? McDonald's to place automated ordering stations at all US locations

Challenging times: Univision to fire up to 250

ISIS has 60-80 operatives in Europe ...

Missing: Thousands of Secret Service badges, guns, phones

Claims of votes by the dead, felons cloud NC governor's race ...

Lobbyists leave Trump's transition team after new ethics rules

AMAZON to sell cars ...

Bernie: If Trump has 'guts' to stand up to corporate America 'he will have an ally in me'

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites.

New Populism and Silicon Valley on collusion course ...

California and Trump on collusion course over immigrants ...

Secret Service doesn't want Trump going to UFC fight .

108,600 votes swing 46 Electoral College votes to Donald Trump ...

[Super] 'Super moon' to grace Earth's sky [Monday night]

Beijing warns president-elect against defying world by killing climate deal ...

NYT Publisher vows to rededicate paper to report honestly ...

Paul Ryan: GOP not Trump's party

Al Franken: Voters should be mad at GOP for Obamacare ...

Arab Spring price tag put at $614 billion

Students protest classmates celebrating Trump victory, demand EXPULSIONS

Michael Moore: 'Racist' Trump voters backed 'Hussein' [Obama]  twice ...

Culture of Corrumpion

Today's unemployment numbers were a shock! Estimates were for 150,00 to 200,000 new jobs to be created ... the actual reported number was 38,000 ... quite a miss ... see: New York Times Article. Still the unemployment rate fell from 5.0% to 4.8% ... a big drop considering the paltry new jobs being created. This was because the US workforce participation shrank by an almost unprecedented 500,000 after months of steady gains ... very suspicious.These mostly poor "statistics" could not have been better news for Hellery Clinton for a number of reasons:

1) They should keep the Federal Reserve Bank from raising interest rates this or next month or maybe not until December ... auguring well for the incumbent party in an election year

2) Like what was hinted at on CNBC this morning, if the true employment numbers were actually higher, they can be put in the bank and pulled out this coming November ... right before the presidential election

3) The Obummer administration can still brag about this (phony) low unemployment rate caused by this suspiciously large workforce shrinkage

Am I suggesting that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has become politicized and fiddles its reporting to help Democrats? Yes I am. And it is at least the third time that I think this has happened there in the last four years ... see: my Parboiled blog entry and the hyperlinks contained therein for the sad details. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, once a proud purveyor of the best data available, now seems to be engaging in subterfuge ... making up data to suit the political needs of its Washington bosses. And, it also seems that the stock market is beginning to discount these shenanigans ... for it is not down nearly as much as one might expect given today's dismal unemployment report. Perhaps Wall Street is rooting for Hellery?

If, as I suspect, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been corrupted by this Obummer administration ... can we then add it to this administration's culture of corrupted ... the corrupt IRS (remember the Tea Party denials), the corrupted Justice Department (remember Fast and Furious), the corrupted State Department (remember Benghazi), the corrupted EPA (remember the killing of the coal industry), the corrupted Secret Service, the corrupted Department of Education (remember Common Core), the emasculated Defense Department, the corrupted Veterans Administration, the corrupted NOAA (remember climate change data "adjustments"), the corrupted Health and Human Services Department (remember Obamacare), the corrupt Energy Department (remember Solyndra, etc), among many others?

Potty Mouth

Donald Trump is certainly unique in his approach to political campaigning. He is now matching his puerile insults directed to his rivals with a non-presidential parcel of potty talk ... using  the f-word, the p-word, the s-word and who knows how many more guttural utterances. There have been numerous presidents who have brought dignity to this position -- Ronald Reagan, Harry Truman, both George Bush's, Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, etc. And there were a few who have sullied this office ... to the point where the fumigators needed to be called in after they left ... you know who they were (one of whom now wants to be the First Husband.)

If The Donald ends up in the White House, perhaps one of the jobs of the Secret Service will be to keep a bar of Fels Naptha soap close at hand.

Afterward: HST was included in the above list ... however, I forgot that one time President Truman referred to "manure" in a speech. A reporter asked Bess Truman if she couldn't get him to say "ferterlizer." She responded that she had only recently got him to say "manure."

The Heavy Hand of Government

If you can't trust the government, then whom can you trust? Well, apparently NOAA's reputation as an impartial observer of global warming has once again taking a hit as it has been revealed that, over the last two years, it has been revising down older recorded temperature data from Maine in order to make it look like things have been warming up there ... and in the rest of the country ... when in fact they haven't. John Hinderaker of Powerline has just pointed this out in his recent blog posting ... see: Powerline Blog Entry for all the sordid details.

This fast and loose revisionism is about as smarmy as a supposed "scientific" government agency can possibly become. I realize that such malfeasance might get them in good with the current Democrat administration ... but, longer term, this can't be good. I suggest that this agency now is vying with the IRS, the State Department, HHS, the Secret Service, the EPA, the White House, the VA, the CDC, NSA, and the TSA for this year's Heavy Hand of Government medal ... an award which I just coined.

Perhaps we could have an annual ceremony for the winner ... with all the hoopla of Oscar Night? With Al Gore or Michael Moore as its Master of Ceremonies?

Nation's Health vs. Wave Election

Clearly this nation is slowly slipping into a possible health-care crisis. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) seems to be botching its job on a daily basis. An emigre from Liberia has come down with Ebola shortly after entering the United States in Dallas. Apparently he had been let go from his job at FedEx and quickly decided to pursue his destiny in the United States ... visiting "immigrant" relatives in Texas. Whether he ever planned to return to Liberia will never be revealed, but my guess is clearly no. Unfortunately  before he left Liberia he helped carry a pregnant woman by one leg who was dying of Ebola ... and, in the process, contracted the disease. And now he has, because of a inattentive emergency room worker, possibly passed this dreaded disease on to untold Texans of all ages and stripes.

The issue that I would like to address here is why do we now face this possible health-care crisis? If this disease ... which our fearless leader vehemently said was not a threat within our shores ... does indeed cause much misery and even death in our country, then I believe that it will be because there have been numerous failings on the part of our government. What are they?

1) We, unlike Great Britain and France, have not stopped all flights into the U.S from the hotbeds of this Ebola outbreak in West Africa. One can speculate about the reasons for this lapse, but I believe that political correctness ... and our president's roots ... are at the head of this list.

2) The Center for Disease Control has clearly dropped the ball in this skirmish. Why have they not issued and enforced strict guidelines for dealing with possible cases of Ebola? Due diligence by them might have prevented the emergency room lapse that was the nexus of of current problems. I also believe that CDC is showing management problems like many other of Obama's fiefdoms ... the IRS, the Justice Department, the Bureau of Veteran's Affairs, the Secret Service, and the Department of Homeland Security.

One more management lapse for Obama is clearly too many at this time in the election cycle. For example, the CDC also had allowed a three-times convicted felon to be used as a security guard when the president visited there in September. Yes the Secret Service was primarily at fault, but doesn't the CDC also due background checks?

3) The Obama administration is attempting to use immigration reform as a wedge issue in the upcoming November elections. The fact that our porous borders may be causing a national health emergency (or emergencies since there are other health problems manifesting themselves due to this summer's influx of thousands of unscreened illegal immigrants from Central America) can not help to embellish the story that the Obama administration is attempting to peddle. Any voter with a modicum of sense will see that our government may be putting our nation at risk for its own political gain.

I sincerely hope that the CDC is right and that it has its arms around this current Ebola problem. But, if it doesn't ... watch out for the wave!

Afterword: George Will apparently has many of these same thoughts ... see: Fox News Story. And, it seems, so does the Diplomad blog ... see: The Diplomad.

The Real Hillary

A Retrofitted Hillary

They say you can judge a person’s character by how people subservient to this person are treated … those who cannot respond to abuse.  The following squib reminded me of such behavior … and contains the following quote:

As bad as it sounds, Kessler points out that there is one detail that [Secret Service] agents despise even more than having to view Biden in his birthday suit. That would be having to protect former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

Here is the source of the quote: Breitbart Squib

And here is the memory that this quote engendered … many years ago a high-level White House insider during the early years of the Bill Clinton presidency related the following incident to my wife and myself. Apparently one quiet Sunday morning Hillary and Bill were being driven to church by the Secret Service in the presidential limo. The poor agent driver (one asked to take a bullet for her) made a wrong turn and, during the time it took for him to correct this miscue, he was assailed by the First Lady with a stream of invective that would have embarrassed a longshoreman. It was also the case that much of the staff serving Hillary in the White House would cower in their offices if it was known that Hillary was on her way down the hall. (Perhaps, in Hillary's case, the "lady" part of First Lady needed some rethinking.)

I have also heard very flattering things said about Hillary from her peers … those who could possibly benefit her. But I wonder, if she runs for president, more such stories of how she mistreats those beneath her will be reported?

Testy Taster

A while back I wrote a blog entry about how President Obama couldn’t eat a lobster roll at a Republican lunch because he didn’t have his “taster” with him (see: Taster).  Since then I’ve got to thinking about what a strange and interesting job this would be. Imagine an employment where you are only considered useful when you keel over from strychnine poisoning? How about your year-end review? … “You didn’t find any poison … you will need to try harder next year.”  How is such a job recruited … by an ad on Craig’s List … or in the Pyongyang Daily?  Or perhaps it's that Secret Service schlub who was caught with the hooker down in Columbia … is he being forced into this duty?

How can a “taster” be identified … by a chef’s hat or perhaps carrying a big spoon?  What kind of benefits does it offer … particularly death benefits?  Why can’t this taster be some kind of scientist who performs a quick series of chemical tests on the meal in question?  Why must he/she actually swallow stuff?  This must be a pretty testy person who has to taste the President’s food.  Yes, he/she get to savor some pretty fancy vituals … until it’s over.  Then you can’t even write a tell-all best-seller book and retire.  Talk about your demeaning occupations … this has to be below flipping burgers … or even being our Secretary of State.

This whole thing smacks of a royal court … which our Presidency is resembling more and more.  Where are the jesters, the acrobats, the motley fool?  Oh, yes, we have Joe Biden ...

Greyhound One

Apparently a $1,000,000,000 war chest is not enough to run The Barry's 2012 reelection campaign.  Now U.S. taxpayer schlubs are being hit up for another 5 or 6 million dollars to pay for a three-day Presidential "listening" bus tour in Midwestern swing states.  The buses being used for this tour have been tagged Greyhound One (and Two?) and were bought by the Secret Service at a cost of at least $1.5 million apiece.  Mitt Romney calls this boondoggle a "Magical Mystery Tour"  (see Mitt Romney).  These vehicles together with first-class hotel accommodations (see Lucianne Dubs) and a retinue of SUVs should bring the total cost of this obvious campaign tour to at least $5 million.

Avi Nelson, a radio talk show host here in Boston, this afternoon assumingly described this trip as being paid for by the Democrat National Committee.  He was wrong.  It is being paid for by us, the ever-suffering nudnick taxpayers.  But now that the federal debt-ceiling has been raised, our government checks should clear.

Gate-Crashing-Gate

All the TV networks, cable shows, and the print media are currently obsessed with the White House gate crashing of the Salahis into Obama's first state dinner ... these "15-minute-of-famers" were on the Today Show this morning spinning their self-serving scenario. Other than the apparent lapse in Secret Service security surrounding the President, I find this another preposterous non-story story. Why does our country relish such cotton-candy events with such fascination when there are so many other under-reported and under-analyzed earth-changing events taking place? -- Iran's nuclear ambitions, Climate-gate, the Afghanistan surge, 10%+ unemployment, huge federal deficits, the growing mortgage crisis, Eric Holder's boners (terrorist's NYC trial, continued funding of ACORN, etc.), Charlie Rangel's malfeasance, and so on.

We Americans need very much to get our heads screw on properly and re-prioritize our need-to-know news interests.