Headlines

Trump names Mulvaney acting White House chief of staff

Stocks broke a key level and child aim for the year's low

Obamacare, RIP ... judge declares unconsttutional without tax

Venezuelans lament gun ban: Allows government to dominate them

CBO: Crminal justice [reform] bill would reduce federal prison population, increase spending

Elon Musk tweets fans might see a pickup truck next year

[Rep.] Schiff digs into Trump's personal finances ...

Report: 'Destroyed' North Korean nuclear site may still be functional

Trump considers delaying border wall fight until January

Mueller investigation cost $25 million in first 16 months, report shows

Moscow to set up military base in Carabbean ...

Weekly Standard to shut down

French Kiss

Over the weekend Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, had most talking heads aflutter by saying that he had persuaded an "impressive" person to run for president on the Independent ticket. Who was it ... Mitt Romney ... Paul Ryan ... Ben Sasse ... Tom Cotton ... Rick Perry ... Scott Walker ... Rick Santorum? Whether this end run was to insure that Hellery Clinton would win in November ... or that this band of desperadoes were just trying to cause no candidate to get enough Electoral College votes to win outright ... and thus the House of Representatives would then decide the election ... was the unclear motive. But Bill Kristol clearly has had a hair across his somewhere about Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination.

However, after a few days media tease, we just learned who this dark horse was ... David French, a conservative National Review writer, former Iraqi soldier and Tennessee lawyer... see: Daily Caller Article ... not exactly a household name. Matter of fact I strongly suspect that the person Kristol had in mind over the weekend got cold feet and Mr. French was a last minute substitute to save face. Now since any candidate needs to have a 15% national poll showing to get in the final debate programs, I suspect that Mr. French may have just had his fifteen minutes of fame ... ala Andy Warhol. This bit of snidery on my part is not meant to sully Mr. French, but I can't say the same for Bill Kristol who, to me, has finally stepped over the line into kookdom.

And he calls Donald Trump a "roaring jackass" ...

Validation

It's nice to see when the points I have made in a blog are validated in a national media article. I made a number of arguments in my take-down of Planned Parenthood recently ... including its misleading claims about its abortion practices and statistics ... see: Pee Pee. Now the Weekly Standard has published an article that validates most of my points in this above-reference post ... see: Weekly Standard Article. In particular these quotes comes directly from this referenced Weekly Standard piece:

PolitiFact concedes the source of this statistic is Planned Parenthood's own annual report. If you take the number of services listed in the report, exclude the ones that don't apply to women who aren't pregnant, you do indeed get a figure that showing that over 94 percent of pregnant women who go to Planned Parenthood get an abortion.

and

In fact, the stat that only three percent of Planned Parenthood's services are abortion is so misleading, that the editorial board of USA Today has decided it's not credible and they won't use it for the exact same reasoning PunditFact lays out here.

"Some critics have taken issue with Planned Parenthood’s measurement of "services." Performing an abortion is more involved than administering pregnancy tests or giving someone a contraception kit, for example. The share of abortions might be different if cost or hours of services were used. (However, that information is not in the 2013-14 annual report.)"

QED