PrairiePundit

Washington Post: A skeptical climate-change column whips up outrage among N.Y. Times readers New conservative columnist Bret Stephens’s debut touched off a switchboard-clogging reaction from readers, who began calling the Times to dump their subscriptions. Shut up they argued.  This has become the mantra of the radical left in the US.  Name calling and heckler vetoes to anyone who challenges their point of view.  From the campuses to critics of climate change they put their hands over their ears and make weird noises to keep from hearing opposing points of view.  The answer to this know-nothingism by the left is to keep challenging them on the facts and their arguments. The Times deserves some credit for being willing to publish the piece.

NY Times: On Trade, a Feisty Trump Risks Economic Damage The president’s threat to pull the United States out of the North American Free Trade Agreement would hurt the very workers he says he aims to help. I think Trump's pitch about NAFTA was mainly addressed to winning blue-collar votes in blue states like the Rust Belt.  In Texas, NAFTA actually created jobs.  It is estimated that exports are responsible for about a million jobs in Texas. From the Rio Grade Valley where produce processors and transportation companies bring in food products to keep fresh fruits and vegetables in the grocery stories when they would be out of season for domestic farmers, to oil and gas shipments to Mexico, there are just a lot of jobs tied to this trade and I am glad to see Trump backed off the border adjustment tax idea. That said, I do not think his attacks on NAFTA will hurt his rust belt supporters because their problems are with Democrat controlled states which never really took adv

Crux: Pope to Catholics: get out, spread faith, help cholesterol My doctor keeps telling me I should fight cholesterol like the devil.  Why would the Pope want to help it?

Evan Slegfried: You would think that after losing over 1,000 elected positions at the federal, state and local levels since 2010, Democratic Party leaders — now out of power in the White House and both houses of Congress — might be hard at work crafting a message that would broaden the party’s appeal and move away from the conspiracy-addled angry radicalism of its base. You would be wrong. Jolted by Hillary Clinton’s unexpected loss to Donald Trump, Democrats and progressives have retreated to an alternate reality. In this safe space that they’ve created for themselves, Clinton didn’t lose so much as the Russians won. Red Mania hasn’t been confined to the fringe, but is being promoted by Democratic representatives, including Maxine Waters and Ted Lieu. Waters took it so far as to suggest on MSNBC that GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee, is leaving Congress because of his “connections” to “what is going on in the Ukraine and perhaps in Russia itself.” Thei

The Sun: THE US has mobilised a fleet of missile capable drones to blitz North Korea amid warnings it is running out of bombs to hit ISIS. The Grey Eagle drones are designed to carry Hellfire missiles and have reportedly been deployed in South Korea as war looms with the North after Kim Jong-un’s third missile test fire this month. The deployment is part of a built up of military ordered by US President Donald Trump. Already the US deployed Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) aimed at shooting down Kim Jong-un’s ballistic missiles. And USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group has arrived in waters near the Korean peninsula yesterday, where it was joining the USS Michigan, a guided missile submarine that docked in South Korea on Tuesday. State department spokesman Mark Toner said: “In addition to Thaad these [drones] are defensive measures that are a response to what we – and by ‘we’ I mean South Korea, the United States and Japan – view as a real and credible threat

Salena Zito: Dennis Dixon didn’t vote for Donald J. Trump. For the first time in his 46 years, the self-described “moderate Midwestern Republican” sat out a presidential election because he was less than thrilled with both major candidates. “I wrote in John Kasich,” he says, with a trace of humor. Dixon stands in the showroom of Griffiths Furniture along West Main Street — a charming business district, its sidewalks decorated with grape-vine etchings to celebrate the produce for which this Ohio wine region is known. He is not one of those voters who doesn’t wish success for the president. Quite the contrary, in fact. “If he continues to stick to his guns and do what he is doing, I’d vote for him if he ran again,” Dixon says. He may not have liked the candidate but he is “enjoying the heck out of his presidency.” What he likes about Trump is his determination on certain issues, “but he is also willing to show flexibility when it counts. That is the kind of outside non-politi

Washington Post: The 1967 class graduation photo. (Marine Corps) 50 years after Vietnam’s bloodiest battles, the ‘lucky ones’ meet for what could be a final reunion In 1967, these graduates from Quantico were shipped to Vietnam. They would fight in some of the bloodiest battles of the war. Some were killed only days after arriving. I was in one of the classes that graduated from the Marine Officer's Basic School in 1967.   I then attended the Communications School before going to Vietnam.  I was first assigned to the 3rd Marine Division Communication Center and soon became the assistant commander. While much of time was spent in an air condition reinforced concrete bunker, there were times when I was sent into harm's way.  I one time had to deliver some top secret documents to Khe Sahn shortly after the siege was lifted.  As I was about to exit the cargo ramp of the plane artillery fire started hitting the runway and the pilot pulled out of the landing and shortl

NY Times: Alarmed by Trump’s Agenda, Protesters Join Climate March Demonstrators poured into the streets of Washington and offered a chant: “Resistance is here to stay, welcome to your 100th day.” It is really simple.  They have not engaged the skeptics in a debate on theory.  Instead, they have engaged in name calling such as "denier" or have accused them of wanting to destroy the planet. They have no satisfactory answer for the fundamental flaws in their climate change models that keep predicting a warming that is much greater than observed temperatures.  Normally when you have projections that are not realized it is because one or more of the assumptions used in projections is invalid.  The people responsible for the models can't seem to identify which it is, but it is very likely they are overestimating the impact of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. All the marches in the world can't change that reality.

Foreign Policy: Keep Your Eyes on the Protests in Russia’s Provinces While the world watches Moscow for signs of unrest, hundreds of small-scale protests are heating up in Putin’s heartland. All is not well with the non-oligarch citizens of Russia.  Prosperity is only for the well connected in a society that looks corrupt for those who are not enjoying any benefits.

Defense Update: Visit at Ground Zero – From the MOAB Attack Site in Afghanistan   There is much more at the link above. I suspect that there may be a message to North Korea in these photos.

CNBC: China's semi-official Global Times newspaper criticized an ongoing "game of chicken" between North Korea and Washington but also knocked Pyongyang's tech talents. Early Saturday, the reclusive communist nation launched yet another missile, presumably in a new display of force amid a verbal war of words with President Donald Trump . However, the missile exploded seconds after liftoff , and officials said the failed test involved a short-range, non-nuclear missile able to hit Seoul but not Japan. "The test's failure shows that the country's missile technology is not mature, and that the missile-launching vehicle paraded on the Day of the Sun not long ago may have only been a mock-up," the English-language Chinese publication said in a commentary. Moreover, it contends North Korea's missile tests are not just for research and development purposes but part of "an outdated confrontational mentality" demonstrated by the hermit regime

The Sun: BATTLE STATIONS US warship sails within ‘striking distance’ of North Korea as Donald Trump prepares ‘show of force’ after Kim Jong Un’s failed ballistic missile test Medium range rocket crashed down into the Sea of Japan minutes after failed launch last night More ships could be on their way to join the aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine with 150 Tomahawk missiles.  I am getting curious about the botched missile tests.  Has the US found a way to take them out in their launch phase?  That would be a powerful defensive weapon.  Meanwhile, the Norks may be looking for spies among their own military which could lead to a continued purge.

Kathleen Parker: Disliking Trump is getting very boring It is getting harder to find something interesting in the Post with so much of their real estate occupied by anti-Trump stories and opinion pieces and nit picking fact checkers.  It is getting harder to find a substantive discussion of actual events and news. The Trump national security team appears to be doing much better than the one they replaced.  Instead of having amateurs running the war effort Trump has turned it over to experts who actually know something about defeating the enemy.  So far his handling of the Korean situation appears deft.  He has gotten China to put pressure on North Korea, something that previous administration have been unable to do. The paper seems to feature Democrat criticism of the Trump tax policy over the benefits it will produce for the economy.  That Democrats don't like tax cuts is not news.  Focus on the substance and what it is intended to do and not the fact that rich people will

NY Times: Vouchers Found to Lower Test Scores in Washington Schools An Education Department study found that students who switched to private schools under the system had lower results than their peers, but found their new schools safer by a large margin. I suspect the lower grades are caused by the inadequate education they were getting at their previous school.  As someone whose parents moved around a lot when I was in school, I sometimes found that the material in the new school was ahead of where it was in my previous school requiring me to catch up with the rest of the students.  The safer learning environment is also likely to lead to better results in the long run and less likelihood of dropping out.

NY Times: Trump Could Save Tens of Millions of Dollars Under His Proposed Tax Plan President Trump would benefit from his proposed repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax and a reduction in other tax rates. This is absolutely meanless without context.  The top 10 percent of earners in the US pay 70 percent of all income taxes.   One could argue that they are paying more than their fair share.  But it is ridiculous to focus on the fact that those paying 70 percent of the income taxes benefit the most from tax cuts. That is just left wing class hatred that has nothing to do with the economic benefit of allowing these earners to spend their money some way other than supporting Democrat vote buy schemes.  If they are allowed to buy yachts, that creates and saves jobs.  If they want to buy custom furniture, that also creates jobs and results in those who have those jobs paying taxes too. If they want to invest in expanding their business that is also better for the economy than gov

Breaking Defense: The brutal ground war in Iraq holds vital lessons for sophisticated future operations in the Pacific , Australian Maj. Gen. Roger Noble said today. Military pundits often draw a sharp distinction between what they consider low-tech warfare against irregular forces , as in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and high-tech war against states like China and Russia . But when Noble went from a tour in Iraq last year to the Hawaii headquarters of US Army Pacific , he said, the cutting-edge concepts of Multi-Domain Battle that USARPAC is experimenting with forcefully reminded him of coalition operations against Daesh , the self-proclaimed Islamic State. ... Multi-Domain Battle calls on the services to break out of their traditional comfort zones and extend their reach into each other’s domains so they can support each other and attack the enemy from multiple angles at once. That requires the military to develop not only new weapons — from cyber tools like Stuxnet to

Kimberley Strassel: Here’s how to know a Republican president has scored big on a proposed tax reform: Read the New York Times —and chuckle. The newspaper’s headline Wednesday lectured: “White House Proposes Slashing Tax Rates, Significantly Aiding Wealthy.” The story said that Donald Trump had offered a “radical reordering of the tax code,” though one that he “rushed” so as to “show progress before the 100-day mark of his presidency.” The proposal was but a “skeletal outline” and “less a plan than a wish list.” It contained “no explanation of how the plan would be financed.” And, oh, it would “richly benefit Mr. Trump” personally. This was a news article, by the way, not an editorial. The president’s tax proposal—a big, swashbuckling vision for enacting pro-growth principles—offends many on the left by its very nature. Within a few minutes of its release, liberal economists, politicians and pundits were ripping it as a payoff to the wealthy, a deficit buster, regressive, unreali

Fuel Fix: As West Texas’ Permian Basin becomes more saturated with drilling activity, more rigs are returning to the Eagle Ford shale in southern Texas. The U.S. added 13 rigs actively drilling for oil and gas this week and almost all of them came in Texas. The Lone Star state added 11 rigs, including five in the Eagle Ford. The booming Permian added two rigs, while the Haynesville Shale in East Texas tacked on one more rig, according weekly data compiled by the Baker Hughes services firm. The only other state to add multiple rigs was Oklahoma with three. New Mexico, which includes part of the Permian, actually lost three rigs, and another three came offline in the Gulf of Mexico. The total U.S. rig count is now at 870 rigs, up from an all-time low of 404 rigs in May, according to Baker Hughes. Of the total tally, 697 of them are primarily drilling for oil. ... In a little less than a year, the rig count in the US has more than doubled.   The Eagle Ford formation in South Tex

David French: California Is Seceding from the Constitution Forget the ludicrous #Calexit movement — why should a state bother seceding when it can simply nullify the portions of the Constitution it doesn’t like? A troubling trend is emerging: California is imposing its own vision of free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of the press on its citizens, and it’s daring the courts to stop it. ... And the Ninth Circuit appears to be in on the conspiracy to thwart the US Constitution.

Institue for the Study of War: Key Takeaway: Turkey’s President Erdogan is trying to coerce President Trump into shifting American support from Kurdish forces toward Turkey’s proxies in Syria, which include al Qaeda-linked elements. Erdogan may launch a new ground operation into Syria in order to create ground realities that could force the U.S. to reconsider his demands. Erdogan may open a new front line in his campaign against America’s primary anti-ISIS partner in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in coming days. Erdogan seeks to coerce President Trump into accepting Turkey and Turkish-backed opposition groups as alternative ground partners to the SDF in the fight against ISIS. The YPG dominates the SDF and is the Syrian branch of the Turkish Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which is waging an active insurgency against the Turkish state. Erdogan views the YPG’s ascendancy in northern Syria as his primary national security threat. Erdogan has signaled that he will launch

Matthew Continetti: The Democrats’ First 100 Days Column: Disunity, obstruction, incoherence, obsession, obliviousness Continetti does a great job of the primary mission of the media--to put facts in perspective.  That is something that much of the mainstream media has failed at and it is the reason their credibility is shrinking.

Morning Consult: As political journalists prepare to gather at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday to celebrate their work, a new Morning Consult poll is likely to make many of them cringe. In the new poll, roughly half (51 percent) of Americans said the national political media “is out of touch with everyday Americans,” compared with 28 percent who said it “understand the issues everyday Americans are facing.” President Donald Trump, a frequent public antagonist of the press and the first president in 36 years to skip the confab, is also slightly more trusted than the national political media. Thirty-seven percent of Americans said they trusted Trump’s White House to tell the truth, while 29 percent opted for the media. Only 38 percent said they have “a lot” or “some” trust in the media covering Trump’s White House fairly, compared with about half (52 percent) who said they didn’t have much or none at all. Almost half (48 percent) also said th

Washington Post: They were kicked out of college for sexual misconduct. Now they’re suing to clear their names. The legal pushback from some men has emerged in response to a wave of campus activism in recent years and a shift in federal enforcement of Title IX. This use of Title IX is a gross violation of the due process rights of the accused.  As these cases wind their way up to the supreme Court they are likely to result in judgments against the schools and the Obama administration policies that pushed the star chamber like settings against the students.  When a sexual assault is alleged it should be dealt with by the criminal justice system where both the accused and the alleged victim's rights are more likely to be protected.

Huffington Post: In 100 Days, Donald Trump Hasn't Done Much Except Show Off His Signature While this is probably meant to dispute his successes, it appears to also be an admission that many of the things they predicted about Trump have not happened.  And he has made a good start on his pledge of deregulation, signing 13 Congressional Review Act measures removing several regulations.  Deregulating is the opposite of the authoritarian conduct they projected.

NY Times: Trump Tax Plan Would Shift Trillions From U.S. Coffers to the Richest The vast majority of benefits would go to the highest earners and largest holders of wealth, analysts said, setting up a battle over the government’s strained resources. Well, it is not the government's money, to begin with.  It is not like the government is paying rich people, although this story would certainly give that impression with the headline alone.  The inefficiency of government redistribution of money from the rich to those pushing the dependency agenda misses the importance of allowing people who earn money to select how they will invest it or spend it.  Those expenditures actually create nongovernment jobs that also result in taxes to the treasury. While Democrats may look down their noses at people who buy yachts or hire someone to make custom furniture, those purchases create real jobs and not government handouts.  If the money saved on taxes is invested in a business, it also has

NY Times: Risen From the Grave, Keystone XL Pipeline Again Divides Nebraska Despite President Trump’s support of Keystone XL, state regulators still have say over the route. Some landowners see the pipeline as a threat to their water, farms and history. There is a pipeline across the road from my property and I probably drive over several more of them on my way to town.  So pipeline fear seems irrational to those of us close to several of them.  I occasionally see crews checking on the pipelines but this is just maintenance and standard safety checks.  I still think they are the safest and least expensive way to transport oil and gas.  If you want to drive a car or truck and stay warmer in the winter, you should favor pipelines. The anti-energy left is behind many of these protests and they are the same people who were begging for "gas money" so they could go protest other pipelines.

Washington Times: Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said Thursday that China has threatened to impose sanctions on North Korea if it conducts further nuclear tests. “We know that China is in communications with the regime in Pyongyang ,” Mr. Tillerson said on Fox News Channel. “They confirmed to us that they had requested the regime conduct no further nuclear test.” Mr. Tillerson said China also told the U.S. that it had informed North Korea “that if they did conduct further nuclear tests, China would be taking sanctions actions on their own.” Earlier Thursday, the senior U.S. Navy officer overseeing military operations in the Pacific said the crisis with North Korea is at the worst point he’s ever seen, but he declined to compare the situation to the Cuban Missile Crisis decades ago. ... Earlier this spring, China announced that coal imports would cease for the rest of the year, pursuant to United Nations sanctions it had helped pass. The North Korean capital is also bei

Jared Meyers: ... Trump’s hiring freeze will also help lower the rate of new regulations. As research from the Mercatus Center has shown, there is a high correlation between the number of employees at an agency and the number of regulations issued by that agency. President Trump has also taken advantage of the Congressional Review Act, which gives Congress the power to overturn recently finalized regulations through a simple majority vote. So far, he has signed at least 13 such repeals. Previously, this tool had been successfully used only once in its 20-year history. ... There is more. Meyers offers three additional things Trump can do to reduce regulations.  The media seems to be largely ignoring these successes but what I find interesting is the lack of much pushback from those who want to keep the regulations.  Perhaps they realize that many of them are indefensible.

Don Surber: To the embarrassment of the media, their polls keep showing Trump supporters stick with President Trump because they do not believe the media's anti-Trump propaganda. Not only that, the media's biggest fear is coming true. People now regret not voting for Trump. From Yahoo News : Murray, the owner of a small business-finance company in California, admits he likes to be different — “to take the contrary position.” Yet even he is surprised to have reached his latest conclusion — that while he strongly supported Hillary Clinton during the campaign, and voted for her without reservation, he now wishes he had cast that vote for Donald Trump. “I like what he’s doing, and I wish I had voted for him,” he says. Not having supported Trump sooner, he says, makes him “feel like a coward.” Ha ha ha. ... There is more. With close to 90 percent negative coverage of the President the media is still flailing and failing.  It has gotten where one has to dig deep in

Susan Wright: Ted Cruz: California Has Infested The 9th Circuit Court With A Corrosive, Left-Wing Influence ... Out of 25 judges, 18 have been appointed by Democratic presidents, so you can get the sense of why that particular court is so bereft of commonsense. Allowing the other states within the circuit to secede would help some, but it would not fix the problem of liberal forum shopping within Califonia to thwart common sense.

Newsweek: ... But the grim reality is that a pre-emptive strike, against North Korean missiles or nuclear facilities—or both—could well mean war. Should the day come when President Trump believes he needs to order a pre-emptive strike against targets in North Korea to eliminate a direct threat, the U.S will not be able to take out all of the North Korean artillery front loaded near the border. “Not,” says former National Security Council staffer Victor Cha, “without using tactical nuclear weapons,” which is not something the U.S. would consider, given that Seoul is right down the road. A U.S. strike, simply put, could well trigger the second Korean War. What would another armed conflict on the peninsula look like? During the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953, some 2.7 million Koreans died, along with 33,000 Americans and 800,000 Chinese. In any pre-emption scenario now, the U.S. would try keep the strike limited to the task at hand; at the same time Washington would signa

Allahpundit: Doesn’t really matter. This is a game of hot potato at this point. The Freedom Caucus took the blame, fairly or not, for tanking the original House health-care bill last month. Now they’ve hatched an amendment that makes the bill more palatable to conservatives , letting states waive the federal mandates for Essential Health Benefits and community rating subject to certain conditions, but which does little to make it more appealing to Republican moderates. The stuff that would make it more palatable to them, like rolling back planned cuts to Medicaid, isn’t in the new version and would only spook House conservatives all over again if it were. In fact, if anything, because it gives states the power to let insurers charge people with preexisting conditions higher premiums under some circumstances, the new bill is arguably a heavier lift for moderates than the original bill was. (And possibly will prove even less appealing to voters.) But from the conservative point of view

Houston Chronicle: The Texas House gave final approval Thursday to a wide-reaching 'sanctuary cities' ban that would grant sweeping new powers to police officers in the state by allowing them to question a person's immigration status if they have been stopped with reasonable suspicion. The chamber passed Senate Bill 4, a priority item for Gov. Greg Abbott this session, on a party-line vote with 94 Republicans in support and 53 Democrats against. The legislation would force police to honor all federal requests to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally until federal authorities can investigate the person's status. It also would prohibit local jurisdictions from passing or enforcing an ordinance that prohibits police officers from inquiring about a detained person's immigration status, which would nullify the Houston Police Department's 1990 policy on the matter. ... There is much more. Hopefully, this will improve the public safety and e

LA Times: To read the polls and hear the pundits, President Trump’s first 100 days have been an utter disaster, ranking among the worst in history. But that’s not how Karen Malady sees it. The 59-year-old accountant was drawn to Trump’s unconventional candidacy from the start, unlike other Republicans who came around reluctantly. She saw him as an outsider and disrupter, and his first months in office proved her right, she said, about that and other things, too. Like no matter how much he tries, some won’t ever give Trump a fair shake. “He’s trying to build a foundation to protect this country, and they just pick apart the little things,” Malady said, as fading daylight slanted into the headquarters of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, a nonprofit charity. “‘This person was picked on, and, oh, by the way, this person is of that nationality, so that makes him a racist.’ “No,” she said with a small shake of her head, “they take that little they can and they dig with it.” The ang

AFP: A Russian naval spy ship on Thursday sank in the Black Sea off Turkey's coast after hitting a Togo-flagged vessel packed with livestock but all of its 78 crew were rescued by Turkish coastguards. The Russian military said the Liman -- a former research ship re-fitted as an intelligence vessel -- had a hole ripped out of its hull in the early afternoon incident. The collision took place in fog outside the northwestern entrance to the Bosphorus Strait, one of the world's biggest shipping thoroughfares that passes through Istanbul into the Sea of Marmara. The Turkish coastguard said in a statement that the collision involved the Togo-flagged vessel Youzarsif H which was carrying a cargo of livestock. It said that of 78 Russian personnel on board the ship, 63 were rescued by the Turkish coastguard and the other 15 by the Youzarsif H itself. ... The ship carrying livestock suffered only minor damage and went on its way.  I suspect that this former research ship did

Real Clear Energy: ... ... wind and solar together still supply less than 1.5% of America’s energy. Fast growth from a small number is like winning $100 in Vegas on a $10 bet. Nice, but not life-changing. To find a “radical and pervasive” change in energy markets we have to look elsewhere. Over the same decade noted above, the amount of energy added to America from shale hydrocarbons was 2,000% greater than the additional supply from solar and wind combined. That actual revolution also happened because of the maturation of new technologies. But, notably, in this case it took place without the stimulus of special subsidies. The scale and velocity of the shale revolution is underappreciated. It is the fastest and biggest addition to world energy supply -- not just hydrocarbons, but all forms of energy -- that has occurred in history. The only time something close to as dramatic has occurred was in the decade following the 1968 opening of Saudi Arabia’s giant Ghawar oil field.

Washington Post: North Korea releases video clip showing simulated attack on White House The video comes at a particularly tense time in relations between North Korea and the United States, with the Trump administration sending warships to the region in a show of force against Kim Jong Un’s regime. The North Korean regime seems deeply frustrated by its inability to frighten the Trump administration into accepting their weird regime and its nukes.  All these videos will be used against them at the UN should the US decide to take out their nuclear program

NY Times: Coulter’s Free Speech Fight and the Right’s Battle Cry Conservatives like Ann Coulter are eagerly throwing themselves into volatile situations on college campuses, inspired by a backlash against political correctness. College campuses have become cesspools of liberalism.  The intolerant left does not want to hear opinions different from their own. It is not like they are being made to attend and listen to contrary opinions the way conservatives are who have to listen to liberal professors.  No, they just do not want conservatives to be able to hear opinions of non-liberals.  They are treating education as a militant liberal indoctrination program.

Washington Examiner: A CBS News poll released Wednesday found the majority of Americans believe President Trump is having an effect inside the Beltway and is not letting the political culture change him. The April 21-24 survey found 54 percent of U.S. adults think Trump is changing Washington, while 30 percent said the district is changing him. Among Republicans, more than two-thirds said he is the stronger in his relationship with Washington. Even 49 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Independents said the Republican leader has taken control of the gridlocked city. ... This has to be disheartening to the Democrat operatives with bylines in the media who have virulently attacked everything Trump has done.  He seems to be succeeding on many fronts.

streiff: Yesterday a federal judge in San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction against enforcement of President Trump’s executive order depriving jurisdictions that refuse to obey federal law from receiving federal grants. The judge is a guy named William Orrick III and he makes a great case for why the Congress should take up judicial impeachment as a lifestyle choice. If you followed the saga of the Center for Medical Progress’s undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood you will recognize Orrick’s name. He is the federal judge who basically overruled the US Supreme Court’s Pentagon Papers decision and issued a restraining order forbidding CMP from releasing videos because it might hurt the business interests of the abortion industry.... ... Instead of being a real judge he is a liberal Democrat operative with a robe.  He appears to be a go to guy for Democrat activists seeking to thwart the rule of law.

The bombshell story which indicates that Iranian who were being prosecuted for illegal activity in the US were released does not seem to phase this Democrat.  It was also largely ignored by the mainstream media which is still carrying water for Obama and his bad deal.

Washington Examiner: Veterans Affairs has 346 workers who do only union work These people should either be fired are put to work directly helping veterans.  If they were fired the money could better be used helping veterans down on their luck.

Jay Caruso: What business does the United Nations have, getting involved with United States domestic policy decisions? When I read about the UN and what they said about the repeal of Obamacare, I nearly lost it. There are nations around the world where citizens live in squalor. The kind of poverty most in the United States couldn’t begin to fathom. People regularly die from illnesses most can cure in the United States with over-the-counter medicines. So to see that the pinheads at the United Nations are warning the United States a repeal of Obamacare might be a violation of the Geneva Conventions, I nearly laughed .... ... If the UN wants to ensure that it falls into deeper disregard in the US, pushing this kind of junk is one way to do it.  Only a liberal opinion writer at the increasingly marginal Washington Post could take this seriously.

Washington Times: It’s the terrorist marriage made in hell. The Islamic State group and al Qaeda , long rivals for supremacy in the jihadi struggle, are feeling more pressure to combine as the Islamic State loses its territorial base in Syria and Iraq and the still-potent terrorist network founded by Osama bin Laden prepares to welcome legions of foreign fighters fleeing the advancing U.S.-backed coalition, analysts and officials in the region say. “The discussion [on combining forces] has started now,” Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi warned this month in an interview with the Reuters news agency. Born out of al Qaeda ’s Iraqi faction that battled U.S. and coalition forces during the bloody years of the American combat mission, the jihadis famously broke with the Pakistani-based terrorist group in 2012 to form the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria , also called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Two years later, the group would declare a “caliphate,” rename itself the Islam

Washington Times: As President Trump ’s top advisers prepare to hash out a final policy on the Paris climate agreement dumped onto their laps by President Obama, another option has hit the table: Declare the deal a treaty and send it to the Senate to be killed. The treaty option could emerge as the middle ground in the increasingly tense battle between “remainers” on the one hand, who say the president should abide by Mr. Obama’s global warming deal, and the Paris agreement’s detractors, who say Mr. Trump would be breaking a key campaign promise if he doesn’t withdraw from the pact. Mr. Trump ’s principal advisers are slated to meet Thursday to hash out a final set of recommendations for the president, with several deadlines looming next month. At an initial meeting of top staffers Tuesday, several memos and letters that were circulated laid out the options, including the treaty proposal put forth by Christopher C. Horner and Marlo Lewis Jr., senior fellows at the Competitive Ente

Bill Gertz: Russia is increasing disinformation operations aimed at undermining government and public support for American military forces in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. officials. The stepped-up disinformation includes creating and circulating recent news stories falsely claiming American soldiers were engaged in sexual misconduct in Poland and were exposed to mustard gas in Latvia. A more recent example involved a Russian broadcaster falsely attributing a statement on Russian electronic warfare to a retired U.S. general. A U.S. official in Europe said the military's European Command and the State Department cannot say for sure whether Russia is behind the fake news stories. But the spreading of disinformation is increasing, he said. "There have been a number of fake news stories, propaganda, lies, whatever you want to call it, over the past two weeks," the official said. "Specifically, in Poland, Estonia, and Ukraine, just to name a few." The

Fuel Fix: The U.S. is set to ship its first shale gas to a member of the former Soviet bloc as Europe seeks to cut its dependence on fuel from Russia. Poland’s state-owned PGNiG SA bought a spot liquefied natural gas cargo from Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass plant for delivery in June to the nation’s Baltic Sea import terminal, the first such contract for Central and Eastern Europe, it said Thursday. No LNG has been shipped to northern Europe since Sabine Pass started exports more than a year ago. Poland may offer a new outlet for Cheniere, which said it’s targeting emerging markets as new production facilities from Australia to the U.S. lead to a glut of the fuel. Poland’s Law & Justice government has sought to cut the nation’s dependence on Russia’s Gazprom PJSC for more than two-thirds of gas supplies, stating it has no plan to extend a long-term supply contract beyond 2022 and plans new infrastructure including a pipeline to Norway. ... I have long argued that US LN

Daily Mail: 'The Earth will break': North Korea vows to wipe out US and South Korea with '5million nuclear bombs' carried by children  The chilling message from the Central Committee of the Kimilsungist-Kimjongilist Youth League warns that 'the Earth will break' if it launches an attack. It promised to destroy the US and its South Korean neighbours if either shows 'a slight provocation,' as international tension reaches breaking point. The warning came as South Korea announced on a high-altitude rocket system to be built on its own soil, giving allies the US powerful weaponry on the peninsula. North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency reported a spokesman saying the youths were 'keeping themselves fully combat ready to mercilessly wipe out with five million nuclear bombs the group of devils who are trying to bring a nuclear disaster to the inviolable country.' Somehow these bomb carrying kids did not show up in the recent milit

Daily Mail: Tax cuts for the middle class and an IRS return that fits on a single sheet of paper: White House unveils 'biggest tax cut in history' that kills the death (tax) and cuts corporate rate to 15% Yes, I am sure the liberals will start griping about "tax cuts for the rich."  Hopefully, there will be some incentive for corporations who have been hoarding profits overseas to avoid the US confiscatory tax rates to bring that money home and invest it in growing their business in the US. If Democrats oppose these cuts, they will deserve to be defeated.

BBC: The top US commander in the Pacific has said an advanced missile defence system in South Korea aims to bring the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un "to his senses, not to his knees". Adm Harry Harris said the US would be ready "with the best technology" to defeat any missile threat. The White House has taken the rare step of calling senators to a classified briefing on North Korea. Democrat Chris Coons said afterwards that it had been "sobering". While unusual, the step to hold the meeting does not necessarily mean a crisis is imminent. The US has deployed warships and a submarine to the Korean peninsula as well as its Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) missile defence system. China argues the deployment of Thaad will destabilise security and there have been protests in South Korea itself, where three people were injured in clashes with police as the system was being delivered to a former golf course on Wednesday. ... The Nort

Kyle Mizokami: ... While the sheer number of artillery tubes could theoretically kill a large number of civilians, operational issues complicate matters and push the number of civilian casualties greatly downward. Despite the thousands of artillery pieces, only 700 heavier guns and rocket launchers, plus the newer 300-millimeter MRLs, have the range to strike Seoul. Only a third would normally be fired at once, and notional rates of fire would be slowed tremendously by the need to withdraw guns into their hardened artillery sites (HARTS) to shelter them from counter battery fire. Other factors reduce the projected loss of life in the greater Seoul metropolitan area. The city has extensive air raid shelters for civilians that will quickly reduce the exposed population density. The North will struggle to keep these heavy artillery units supplied with shells, particularly with its aging supply system. Finally, U.S. and ROK forces will quickly begin hunting down units participating in

Washington Post: Drugged driving eclipses drunken driving in tests of motorists killed in crashes Forty-three percent of drivers tested in fatal crashes in 2015 had used a legal or illegal drug, eclipsing the 37 percent who tested above the legal limit for alcohol, according to a new report. I assume that "legal" drugs refers to prescription medication.  If that is the case, most of those drugs come with warnings against using them while driving.  I think they tend to make people drowsy and less alert.  It is not clear whether using legally available marijuana was also a part of this group. There have been numerous pictures in news stories of people using opioids and passing out but most of those involve doing so while the car is not moving and the pictures also tend to feature it happening with kids in the car.

NY Times: Trump Is Said to Abandon Contentious Border Tax on Imports The proposal was to be part of changes in tax law, but was scuttled, people briefed on the matter said, after complaints by big businesses like Walmart and Toyota. I have been saying this was a bad idea since it was first raised and I am no Walmart of Toyota.  In fact, neither of these companies would actually be paying the taxes, they would only be collecting them from customers like me. It is a tax that would lower most people's standard of living by something close to 20 percent.  Where these companies would be hurt by the tax is that they would have fewer customers for their goods because of the tax.

NY Times: President Plans to Unleash a Wave of Oil and Gas Drilling President Trump is expected to sign two orders to expand offshore drilling and roll back conservation on public lands. As a candidate, he promised to create jobs in energy. This is another example of Trump overturning Obama policies that favored Russia and OPEC.  By making the sites available for energy exploration trump is living up to his commitment to make the US energy independent. However, the success of the US in exploring for shale oil and gas has reduced the price of oil to a point that producers will have to analyze whether production in the areas opened by Trump will be economically viable.  At least the market will be driving the decision and not the arbitrary machinations of control freak Democrats. What is clear is that Obama and the Democrats were dead wrong when they said the US could not drill its way to cheaper oil.  I think he used this misleading statement as an excuse to push for less eff

NY Times: Rising Seas Are Putting Historic Sites at Risk Eroding shorelines have damaged Port Arthur, the famous prison in Tasmania that housed the British Empire’s toughest convicts in the 19th century. It is but one example of a global problem. The ocean has ebbed and flowed throughout history and it is not an indicator of climate change.  Recall that Al Gore claimed the ocean would rise and flood lower Manhattan, and then tried to claim that Hurricane Sandy proved his prediction correct, even though he said it would happen because of a sea level rise from melting ice, which has clearly not happened.  He also predicted that the Arctic would be ice free. Other failed predictions of doom : New York City underwater? Gas over $9 a gallon? A carton of milk costs almost $13? Welcome to June 12, 2015. Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago. Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100