Headlines

Headlines

‘There’s no discipline to his strategy’: Trump is undermining his own campaign

Amazon to buy self-driving technology company Zoox

Biden campaign won’t say if he supports removing statues of Washington, Grant, Roosevelt and Jesus

Glasgow: Stabbing rampage at asylum seeker hostel ...  Report: 3 dead, police wounded, suspect dead

Trump says push for less coronavirus testing was sarcasm

Texas rolls back it’s reopening a day after pausing plans, as coronavirus cases rise

CBP chief says 95% of illegals being returned rather than detained

Biden vows to force Americans to wear masks in public

John Bolton: Boris Johnson ‘playing Trump like a fiddle‘

Coronavirus updates: Housing and jobs markets show signs of slowing recovery

Trump says BLM leader’s threat to ‘burn down this system,’ is ‘treason, sedition, insurrection’

Veepstakes: Kamala all in on defunding police

Headlines

Health officials shift focus on coronavirus, say elderly and sick at risk

Coronavirus live updates: Washington state weighs mandatory measures to contain outbreak

Outbreak spreads to 32 states and DC ...

NIH readies vaccine test

Hillary Clinton: Right still winning the message war

Kamala Harris endorses one-time rival Joe Biden’s White House bid

All hospital beds filled with patients ‘by May 8th’ ...

Illinois SCOTUS won’t dismiss charges against Jussie Smollett

Rome locks down northern Italy, as coronavirus cases surge

Amazon is secretly working on a cure for the common cold

Illinois races toward default ...

Denmark: 62% of young Somali migrants convicted by age 30

Headlines

Trump warns against panic amid first US coronavirus death

Coronavirus live update: White House issues new travel warnings, first US death confirmed

Americans canceling domestic travel ...

Molten: Poll shows Trump earns more than twice as much trust as media

Russia pledges to reduce tensions following Turkey talks

Amazon sellers struggle to keep products in stock amid coronavirus outbreak

Gates: may be ‘once-in-a-century’pathogen we’ve been worried about’

Google, Facebook, and Twitter support internet free speech — in Pakistan

New York might cancel Republican presidential primary

Washington state confirms first coronavirus dearth

Independents outnumber registered Republicans for the first time ...

Trump calls for lower rates amid coronavirus fallout: ‘Fed should start being a leader’

Coronavirus in Italy, over 1,100 infected, 29 dead

No More Heroes

Fascists protesting Fascism

For some stupid reason we are killing off all our heroes. That great general, Robert E. Lee, is now no more ... because he tried so nobly and effectively to defend his culture. John Wayne who stood so tall as a proud American is now brought down by an old interview in Playboy magazine. Richard Nixon who saved thousands of American lives by pulling off the impossible ... extracting us from the war in Vietnam  ... is vilified like few others for trying to cover for the petty crimes of his subordinates.

Many of our young bubbleheads are now trying to erase George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson’s names from our monuments, locales and universities because they owned slaves ... forgetting that these men put their own lives on the line to save the future of all of their countrymen, slaves included. Even that great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, is now under fire by our snowflakes for not making reform happen at an impossible pace.

For our current bevy of cowardly iconoclasts, please be put on notice ... before you try to pull down any more of our verified heroes ... please first show yourselves to have some noble qualities ... instead of hiding behind insipid slogans and milksop masks.

The Swamp

Washington, DC is not just s swamp. It is a toxic soup of hypocrisy, malfeasance, elitism, payoffs, dipsomania, mendacity, egomania, sexual harassment, lassitude, pomposity, racism, grandstanding, anti-semitism, thievery, stupidity, spendthrifts, maliciousness, subterfuge, pettiness and group think ... maybe even murder.

DC would be so much more hospitable with alligators, panthers, caimans, water moccasins, crocodiles and pythons.

Bubble Brain

I've often thought that nobody should be allowed to vote unless they can name the three branches of our government (legislative, executive and judicial), Now, newly-elected New York City Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has exhibited stunning ignorance of even this simple fact. She thinks this answer is the "the president, the Senate and the House" (her new venue). If you don't believe me, please watch: Daily Wire News Video.

Now this 29-year-old new Representative has gone from being a Bronx bartender to a $175,000 per year gig helping to guide our ship of state. She has a cum laude degree in economics from Boston University and has promised her equally-clueless voters free healthcare, free housing, free college and just about free everything else ... without any clear idea of how to pay for this largess. (She also wants to eliminate the Columbus Day holiday.)

She clearly is a babbling bubbling brain ... naive as to what she is getting into. Unfortunately, she is not by herself in that reform school under the dome in Washington, DC.

Afterthought: However, one bright spot -- she is against the NYC tax giveaway to Amazon!

After afterthought:

Headlines

Manafort to cooperate with Mueller as part of plea deal

Homeowners sitting on $6 trillion in available cash, but they're not tapping it

Jane Fonda says Moonves ouster 'only the beginning' ...

Jeff Bezos rips Trump for 'dangerous" attacks on the Washington Post

GOP defend Kavanaugh against sexual harassment allegations

Nobel Prize winner Schiller sees 'bad times for [stock] market' ahead

[Alexandria] Cortez wears $3,500 outfit for photo-op with construction worker?

Report: Michael Bloomberg plotting  a 2020 presidential run as a Democrat

Averaging in NYT op-ed makes case for indicting Trump

The real reason that Amazon's HQ2 will be near Washington, D.C..

Feds collect record income taxes ...

Ruth Bader Ginsberg tips 'highly partisan' Kavanaugh hearings

Tweaking Trump

A group is raising money to move a 45-foot statue of a nude woman from San Francisco to Washington to be facing the White House. Its sponsors  claim that it is to celebrate women's equality ... or is it to honor Hugh Heffner's passing? In any case a suggestive statue of a naked woman belongs in a museum or a bordello ... not on our National Mall that hosts thousands of families with children daily ... see: USA Today Story. I can't imagine that our Park Service gave even a tentative approval for this bit of bad taste.

I really think that this pathological  effort is meant as a tweak to Trump and the Republicans and will never actually come about.

Quote of the Day

I take it back. Washington isn't a swamp. It's a cesspool, a sewer. -- President Trump

Afterward: If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. -- President Truman

Impeachment!

Judge Derrick Watson of Hawaii has joined with six other judges from Washington, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut in issuing a restraining order prohibiting President Trump from using his Twitter account to communicate with the American people. This gaggle of jurists has indicated that nowhere in our Constitution does it state that tweeting is included in our First Amendment protections.

Were President Trump to violate this injunction, Representative Maxine Waters of California is prepared to initiate impeachment hearings in the House with the proviso that any member who is a Twitter fan of Trump's will be ineligible to vote in this matter. Senator Chuck Schumer has gone on all the major networks reading a statement in support of Water's initiative and adding that, were a trial to be held in the Senate, these same voting restriction will apply.

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?

Redskins

For the second time the U.S. Patent Office has canceled the trademark for the Washington Redskins saying it is “disparaging to Native Americans” … see: Sports Illustrated Story. The previous time this decision was reversed in the courts ... see: Bleacher Report. But exactly how many of our Indian friends are "offended" is unclear. Is one enough? One hundred? This battle is not over, but if the Redskin’s owner, Dan Snyder, does eventually buckle to our Washington PC police, may I suggest that he change the name to the Washington “Transgenders," or  the “Statists," the “Muslim Brotherhood” or even the "Ruddy First People" That way he would surely be safe from further opprobrium from these Obama jackboots.

At some point we should all look back and contemplate how truly repressive our current administration has become. Does our Constitution mean nothing to them? And, most sadly, how few voices are crying out ...

Afterward: My son has suggested that the Redskin's owner change his team's name to the Washington Elizabeth Warrens ... in order to stay in the genre. Not bad ...

More Workplace Violence?

The Department of Homeland Security has tagged today’s shooting at the Anacostia Navel Yard in Washington, DC as not related to terrorism … see: The Daily Caller Story.  Must this be another case of workplace violence?   As many as three shooters kill twelve people (IDed so far) and it is not terrorism?  Homeland Security people need to x-ray their own bodies with those airport full-body scanners … because they clearly have their heads up their arses.

Update: According to Breitbart, the only shooter so far identified, Aaron Alexis, was a Buddhist ... see: Breitbart Story.  Correct me if I am wrong but aren't Buddhists nonviolent by definition?

reddit Gallery

The social networking site, reddit (a classification I dispute), from time to time has posted some dramatic (often nature) photographs.  I have started saving some of the better of these images and will be offering them here occasionally as a bonus to my readers ... and an incentive to go visit reddit yourselves. Enjoy here the first few:

Sheraton Hotel, Huzhou, China

Spiral Aurora

Andes Volcano

Ruby Beach, WA

Screw Job #4

Our Dear Leader has just slammed the White House door on visitors as a consequence of the government spending sequestration that started on March 1^st (see: Washington Times Story)   No longer can Girl Scout troupes tour our First Family’s residence while visiting Washington, DC to see the cherry blossoms.  No longer can a future President say hello to Barack Obama on a Boys State visit (like Bill Clinton did with JFK many years ago).  No longer can the hoi polloi see the 54 Christmas trees that Michelle Obama lavishes on her residence at year end (see: Oh Oh Tannenbaums).  What does this White House public access cost our government?  Maybe a few hundred thousand dollars a year?  And our Secretary of State, John Kerry (who served in Viet Nam), just signed over a U.S. taxpayer check to President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt totaling $250 million (see: Huffington Post Story) because he promised to be nice to us.  (This amount equals about 1,000 years of the White House being open to visitors.)

I think the world has started to spin out of control …

General Quarters

At an event this weekend I was asked (by a liberal … what else in Massachusetts) who my favorite President was. I said that, in my lifetime and although I didn’t vote for him, Ronald Reagan was the best, but probably Lincoln overall. Trying to bait me, I think, this amiable lefty then ticked off a number of, to me, awful presidents, Clinton, LBJ, Carter, etc. Then he mentioned General Eisenhower. I said he was OK, but not great.

This got me to thinking about Generals who later went on to be President … George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Clearly Washington was the standout General/President on this list … for he led our nation through its pre-political nascence with a steady, moral hand and established gentlemanly codes of conduct for the President and the Office of the President that have survived up until recently. All the others, although serving admirably militarily, in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and World War II did not, in my opinion, add much luster to the White House.

The question that then begs itself is why? Perhaps, it is because governance is so different from leadership in battle. As a General, your subordinates are a little more focused and loyal when they know (knew) that they could be shot at dawn for screwing up. More recently, Presidents have seen many of their staff write “tell-all” books in order to get their 15 minutes of Warhol fame. George Bush, in particular, was plagued by a retinue of incompetent direct reports. His loyalty to them usually far exceeded theirs to him. Barack Obama, unfortunately, seems to be suffering somewhat from this same lack of competent underlings, but with the loyalty ratio inverted. Generals have staff members who have survived years of testing in their respective jobs. Presidents, on the other hand, often surround themselves with fresh-faced political hangers-on who often mistake media fawning for good decision making.

Generals take an existing organization and move it forward. Presidents build a new organization every four or eight years and the good ones must be able to inspire these organizations to excel. In other words, Generals lead with their stars while Presidents lead with their ideas. Using this as criteria, General Colin Powell probably would not have excelled had he been elected President. And the U.S. electorate should probably pause before it next tries to promote a military hero to its Presidency.