PrairiePundit

NY Times: ‘It’s Not Going to Hurt’: Cohen’s Testimony Does Little to Change Minds Across America, Michael Cohen’s testimony was, for many, just one more television show on the flat screens hanging in restaurants and bars. .This Democrat show failed to live up to media predictions but it lived down to my own belief that it would not change any minds.  In fact, Cohen pretty much destroyed the Democrats Russian collusion case hoax.  Now they are left trying to pick through business transactions looking for an excuse for their next coup attempt.  I suspect they are unlikely to find anything in those either.  When you are talking about business deals of the size and scope of major hotels and business towers, there are scores of lawyers representing all sides picking through the details and doing due diligence and in the end, these major law firms have to write opinions that the transactions are lawful.  The chances that the Democrats will...

Forbes: Scientists have discovered a breakthrough technology, a way to pull CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it back into coal. This new discovery has the potential to change the way we think about CO2. The research, recently published in the journal Nature Communications , provides a step-by-step guide in turning CO2 into coal, acting to remove the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and lock it away in solid carbon form. Carbon sequestration, the act of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locking it away is a growing field aimed at mitigating climate change. Major oil and gas companies, like Shell, are spending billions of dollars to develop carbon sequestration plants that store CO2 in porous reservoirs within Earth. However, this approach is expensive as it requires CO2 to be compressed into liquid form and injected into rock formations within Earth. Due to cost, this approach is not economically viable without heavy subsidies and/or a carbon tax to help offset cos...

NY Times: The Republicans of Gilead Take Aim at Reproductive Rights This is semantic gobbledygook.  When a living breathing child is outside the womb be it a matter of five minutes or five years, a mother does not have the right to kill it.  That abortion extremists think they should have that right is inhumane.  Once the baby exits the womb killing it is not an abortion, it is a homicide.

Kurt Schlichter: So, Senator Willy Brown Side Piece and Senator Panders With Wolves have decided to so something even Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit never dared – they’ve come out in favor of reparations. “Reparations” is, of course, the notion that a bunch of people who are not guilty of slavery owe money to people who were not slaves for some reason that never quite gets explained but that you’re racist for wondering about. This horrific idea is, not shockingly, really unpopular with the majority of people who did not do anything wrong but are expected to cut a check. It is, however, really popular with the leftist activists driving the out-of-control clown car that is today’s Democrat Party. ... You would think I’d need to pay full reparations freight, but hold on. My mom’s mom cruised over here from Scotland in about 1910. Do I get a break for that since it was a half-century after slavery ended? And it ended, in some tiny part, because of my great-great grandfather, or maybe g...

Washington Post: Catastrophic flooding has turned a California town into an island, and the worst is yet to come “Good morning. Guerneville is officially an island,” the Sonoma sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post Wednesday. Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote : ... During the 2011-16 California drought, politicians and experts claimed that global warming had permanently altered the climate, and that snow and rain would become increasingly rare in California. As a result, long-planned low-elevation reservoirs, designed to store water during exceptionally wet years, were considered all but useless and thus were never built. Then, in 2016 and 2017, California received record snow and rainfall -- and the windfall of millions of acre-feet of runoff was mostly let out to sea. Nothing since has been learned. California has again been experiencing rain and cold that could approach seasonal records. The state has been soaked by some 18 trillion gallons of rain in February alone....

NY Times: Israelis May Have Committed Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza Protests, U.N. Says Investigators said Israeli security forces killed 189 Palestinians and wounded thousands during protests last year, including children and people with disabilities. This is another example of how the UN stands logic and rules of warfare on their head when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians.  This is a case where the Palestinians attack the border with Israel and Gaza and use other means to attack civilians and do property damage while pushing children and the lame into the front of the confrontation.   The UN assertion is ridiculous and shows incredible bias toward the defensive measures used by the Israelis in response to the provocations.

Washington Examiner: The economy grew at by 2.9 percent in 2018, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday morning in its quarterly report on Gross Domestic Product, tied for the strongest growth in 13 years. The figure fell just shy of President Trump’s stated goal of yearly 3 percent growth. Still, Thursday's report showed GDP growing at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2018, better than analysts expected for the quarter that included the beginning of the partial government shutdown. ... The economy has tended to exceed expectations since Trump's policies went into effect.  A trade deal with China could probably boost it even more.

Jack Hellner: ... It is too bad that journalists won't question John Kerry and other fear-mongers, but here are a few easy ones for them: How come the ice is still in the Arctic after 150 years of exponential growth in fossil fuel use, since we were told it would be gone by now? What caused the ice to melt after the Ice Age, since humans and fossil fuels couldn't have caused it? We have been warned that because humans and fossil fuels cause warming, we would have snowless winters. Why were the predictions so wrong, and why should we believe the doom and gloom about the future since previous predictions have been 100% wrong? Scientific studies have shown that droughts were much longer in the past, prior to when humans and fossil fuels could have caused them, so why do climate change alarmists continually lie that we cause longer and more severe droughts? Isn't that a daily assault on the truth? There are thousands of questions, and it is sad that no one asks t...

Monica Showalter: Democrats have gone balls-to-the-wall in their attempt to pin Russia collusion charges onto President Trump. Tankerfulls of ink and light years of pixels have already been spilled about the matter from their press allies. Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is suing the Trump administration to make special counsel Robert Mueller's final report public. Investigations, even on tangential matters, such as a new one focused on President Trump's dishonest former lawyer Michael Cohen, continue to mushroom. And Democrats show no signs of stopping. Here's a headline from yesterday's  Politico : " Hillary Clinton: Congress should be 'doing more' on Russia probe."  Here's another one, from Feb. 21's  World Tribune , "Democrats: Regardless of Mueller report, ‘this is going to keep on going’." So what does all this " banging and slamming and booming and crashing " mean to Iowa voters, wh...

William Jacobson: Michael Cohen Show takeaway: Dems and Prosecutors focused on finding a Trump business crime They are searching for a crime unrelated to his actions as President.  I doubt they are going to find anything significant.  Business transactions of the magnitude of the Trump organization are over-lawyered by not only counsel representing the company but also by top attorneys representing the banks and other institutions they are dealing with.  Those attorneys have to sign off on the legality of the transactions as well as do due diligence in looking at the parties involved. I also think that even if they find a slip up in the arrangements it would not constitute an impeachable offense unless it was somehow connected to his actions as President.  I think the chances of finding something like that is remote.  Trump has actually been a much more effective President than most people expected.  His policies have helped to produce...

Reuters: At least 8 tons of gold were removed from the Venezuelan central bank’s vaults last week, an opposition legislator and three government sources told Reuters, in the latest sign of President Nicolas Maduro’s desperation to raise hard currency amid tightening sanctions. The gold was removed in government vehicles between Wednesday and Friday last week when there were no regular security guards present at the bank, Legislator Angel Alvarado and the three government sources said. “They plan to sell it abroad illegally,” Alvarado said in an interview. The central bank did not respond to requests for comment. Alvarado and the government sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not say where the central bank was sending the gold. They said the operation took place while central bank head Calixto Ortega was abroad on a trip. In 2018, 23 tons of mined gold were transported from Venezuela to Istanbul by plane, according to sources and Turkish government data. The ...

Mark Meckler: Comedian Bill Maher’s surprisingly classist monologue on the Friday edition of his HBO show “Real Time” wasn’t funny, but it was revealing. He unintentionally showcased his blue-state contempt for the poor and revealed the new political battle lines: white progressives versus the white working class. Maher said in the monologue that America suffers from “spatial geographic inequality,” which was a multisyllabic way to say that all the smart, rich people live in just a few East and West Coast cities. Far from being a rallying cry for more economic equality — maybe what you would expect coming from liberals who constantly talk about such issues — Maher sunk his teeth into this economic disparity and revelled in it. First, he mocked their buying power. “Maybe that has something to do with why Trump voters are obsessed with ‘owning the libs,’” he said. “Because the libs own everything else.” He bragged that he and his “blue state” friends were having a “prosperity par...

This looks like another bad faith effort by the Democrats to attack the President.  The media also joined in again by falsely claiming Trump was given prior knowledge of Wikileaks release of Democrat emails.  They keep republishing a false narrative without evidence. The Cohen testimony was choreographed by Democrats in Congress and apparently planned as a distraction to Trump negotiations with North Korea. Even left-leaning CNN thought the hearing was a flop .

Fuel Fix: ... A subsidiary of Chicago power generation company Exelon, Annova LNG is seeking permission from state and federal regulators to build a $3 billion plant that would take natural gas from various shale plays around the United States and produce 6 million metric tons of LNG per year that would be exported to customers around the globe. FERC officials are not expected to make a permit decision until July. In his letter, Patrick wrote that the proposed project would create jobs and bring economic benefits. "This project is not only expected to create 700 construction jobs, equivalent to almost $325 million in direct labor income, but also expected to create 165 high-paying permanent jobs for the people of our state," Patrick wrote. Opposition: Enviros file 1,100 comments against Annova LNG project Annova LNG and two other export terminals proposed at the Port of Brownsville face stiff opposition from a coalition of environmentalists, fishermen, shrimpers an...

Daily Mail: Boeing unveils its 38ft-long autonomous 'Loyal Wingman' drone that uses AI to fly alongside piloted aircraft and is designed to carry a missile or bomb payload  Boeing has unveiled a new autonomous fighter jet plane that's designed to be a sidekick for piloted planes and could take to the skies as soon as 2020. The unmanned drone, dubbed the 'Loyal Wingman,' is 38 feet long, has a 2,000 nautical mile range and is equipped with onboard sensors that enable it to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, as well as electronic warfare. This is an interesting concept that is probably pretty far along if they are going into service in the next two years.  I suspect they could have missions other than the ones described.  They might also be able to operate in swarms.

Washington Free Beacon: In a rare move, a Republican amendment to gun legislation brought to House floor by Democratic leadership was adopted after multiple defections from moderate Democrats. The House voted Wednesday on H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019. The bill would expand background checks to include all gun sales, rather than just sales by licensed gun dealers as under current law. Republicans in the minority countered with an amendment to require that federal officials notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement whenever a lawful or unlawful immigrant tried to illegally purchase a firearm. That measure, opposed by most Democrats, was voted down when the bill was still in the House Judiciary Committee. When Democratic leadership brought H.R. 8 to the full floor for a vote, Republicans made a motion to recommit the bill with the ICE amendment, usually a last-ditch symbolic action taken by the minority party with little chance of success. But in a surpris...

David Harsanyi: So I was going to have a little fun at the expense of CNN this morning, contrasting the news site’s headline for the Democrats’ gun restriction bill—“House to vote on guns background check bill with bipartisan support”—which has garnered exactly four Republican co-sponsors, with its headline for the Sen. Ben Sasse’s anti-infanticide bill, which I was certain would be solely about the “GOP” despite having four Democrat Senators voting to move the bill forward. Turns out, it was even better. There was nothing to contrast because, as far as I can tell, CNN doesn’t feature a single story on their website regarding the Democratic Party blocking of Sasse’s Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would have saved newborn babies who survive abortion attempts from negligent homicide. CNN didn’t even bother producing one of those predictably prejudiced pieces, like the ones we saw in Politico or the Washington Post yesterday, mischaracterizing Sasse’s bill as “a...

Red States: Poll Shows Most Voters See Dem Party As Socialist. Here’s Why It’s Not Good News For Them ... According to MSN , the latest Public Opinion Strategies survey found that while the vast majority of Democrats want the failed economic system put into place here in America, a majority of voters don’t want it at all: While 77 percent of Democrats believe that the country would be “better off” if it were more socialist, overall a majority of voters don’t, by a margin of 51 percent to 45 percent, according to the latest Public Opinion Strategies survey. This especially appears to be true with swing voters when asked if we’d be “better off if our political and economic systems were more socialist, including taxing the wealthy more to pay for social programs, nationalizing health care so that it’s government-run and redistributing wealth,” according to MSN: “Significant majorities of key 2020 swing voter groups like white suburban women (40 percent agree/57 percent disagree)...

Real Clear Investigations: ... Omar Escobar Jr., the Starr County district attorney, says that far from being an exemplar of grassroots democracy, Vela is the “godmother of voter fraud.” Vela denied the allegation, contending that the people she assists struggle with issues ranging from mobility to unpacking the multiple envelopes and instruction sheets that mail-in balloting entails. “I volunteer to help them vote,” she said. “It’s up to the worker to do this legally and fair. I always let the people vote for whoever they want to.” Escobar seethes when he thinks of Vela and everyone else who collects, submits and even fills out the ballots of the elderly and the infirm. He is among a group of current and former district attorneys in South Texas who say it is long past time to reform what he sees as a threat to democracy in the Lone Star State – absentee or mail-in ballots and how they are handled. “The time has come to consider an alternative to mail-in voting,” said Escoba...

PJ Media: Video posted online Monday shows the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), using U.S.-supplied TOW missiles in its ongoing campaign against Assad regime forces in the northern province of Idlib. The video was published by Ebaa News, with claims that the target was a group of Syrian soldiers.... he incident took place in Abu Duhur, and the video claims that eight soldiers were killed. The missile appears to be a BGM-71D/E TOW of the variety that the CIA had provided to "vetted" Syrian groups prior to July 2017. The spillage of weapons provided by the CIA and the Pentagon to so-called "moderate" rebel forces in Syria, only to fall into the hands of terrorist groups like HTS and ISIS, was perhaps the most predictable outcome of the civil war. One of the first actions taken by the Trump administration two years ago was to halt the CIA weapons program, which prompted many of the U.S.-backed groups to flock to al-Qaeda. The CIA program ...

Washington Examiner: US Cyber Command took Russian troll farm offline during 2018 elections It beats bitching to Putin about it.

Washington Examiner: R-word dodge: 2020 Democrats avoid saying 'reparations' This is a desperate attempt to keep these groups on the liberal plantation.  The Trump economy is lifting millions out of poverty and dependency and this is the way they are trying to stop the attrition of voters leaving the party.  Do they think the Egyptians should also pay reparations to the Jews for enslaving their ancestors?  How about the Turks paying Europeans reparations for all the people they took as slaves.  The world slave is believed to be derived from Slav or Slavic witch if the group the Turks captured and put in servitude.

Silvio Cantu, Jr.: We continue to hear that there is no crisis on the border. However, the situation in Mexico does not support that conclusion. Let me ask you this: have you talked to anyone in Mexico lately? When you do, eventually, you will talk about the violence in the country. Over in Cancún, a Caribbean resort with beautiful beaches and wonderful hotels, the violence has arrived. This is from the latest advisory .... Gang activity? That's interesting. Why the gangs? What are they fighting about? They are not fighting over the blondes on the beach. They are killing each other over drug routes to the U.S. ... That is what all the violence is about in Mexican border cities and why the cartels are using caravans as cover for their export of drugs.  While the media attempts to play down the murders by illegals in this country, they are not counting the thousands dying every month from the drugs being imported.  Why do you think that 20 percent of th...

Eli Lake: ... ... When a president wants to start a war, he doesn’t position the U.S. Agency for International Development at the border. He sends in the Marines. What’s more, Venezuela’s interim president, Juan Guaido, is not asking America to invade Venezuela. So far, U.S. policy has been to persuade its allies to recognize his presidency; to sanction Maduro, his regime and the national oil company; and to urge the military to defect. It’s regime change through private and public diplomacy. This is the approach emphasized Monday at a meeting of Latin American countries formed to address the crisis caused by Maduro’s misrule. The so-called Lima Group made it clear that it was not endorsing an invasion or military force for now. Instead it announced plans to take Maduro himself to the International Criminal Court. Skeptics may ask how Guaido will force Maduro to leave without guns or a foreign army. But Guaido’s method of appealing to the conscience of the military and organiz...

PJ Media: YouTube last week deplatformed a YouTube channel that specialized in exposing Stolen Valor cases. "Stolen Valor," of course, refers to cases where dishonorable pretenders are caught making fraudulent claims of military honors they didn't earn. Retired Navy Seal Don Shipley has made it his life's mission to expose these shameless charlatans. His channel had 232,806 subscribers at the time it was taken down and had been in operation since around 2008. He told PJ Media that he thinks his channel was taken down because he had "outed Nathan Phillips," who had "masqueraded as a Vietnam Vet." ... Shipley told PJ Media that this wasn't the first time his channel had been put in "YouTube Prison." "I have been in YouTube Prison before when phony SEALs would cry to them about being posted," Shipley said via email. He said his posting privileges in the past had been restricted for six months. "This time I was told/ema...

LA is losing its charm.  It has not only a housing crisis but also has a health and crime problem as a result of people using camping tents as "affordable housing. Further up the coast to Seattle, Washington a similar degradation of civilization is taking place . A report commissioned by Seattle business leaders and written by a member of the previous Mayoral administration concludes that a small number of homeless repeat offenders are involved in thousands of criminal cases in the city. Titled “System Failure” the report looks at 100 offenders and finds they are involved in over 3,500 criminal cases. Most of those offenses involving stealing from area businesses to pay for drug habits. And because the homeless have learned to work the system, they often spend little or no time in jail, and never appear for court.... ... Liberal cities on the West Coast are starting to look like third world countries and bringing with them their world crime and disease.  Why people k...

Daily Mail: Marine recruits are being given lessons about the 9/11 attacks because many were not alive when they happened New recruits wishing to join the United States Marine Corps are being taught about what happened during the 9/11 attacks because many of them not even being alive with the atrocity happened. History has always been part of the basic training.  It allows recruits to understand Marine Corps values and what is expected of them.   I used to enjoy flying into San Diego where you could see the recruits going through their training from the airport.

Jay Timmons: Economic commentators are catching on to the story manufacturers have been sharing for a while: In 2018, manufacturers were the stars of the U.S. economy. Our industry had the best year for job creation in more than two decades, adding an average of 22,000 jobs every month—bringing the total number of American manufacturing workers to more than 12.8 million. Powered by tax reform and regulatory certainty, manufacturers spent the year keeping our promise to secure those tools and invest in our people. In addition to hiring new workers, manufacturers also raised wages and benefits and invested in new operations and new equipment. Reflecting the historic nature of 2018, the National Association of Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey, which has tracked manufacturers’ sentiment for 20 years, hit a new record of optimism. Manufacturers entered 2019 with strong momentum, and now we expect the growth and hiring to continue. We have challenges, to be sure, and know there will alway...

Washington Post: Cohen expected to describe Trump’s ‘lies, racism and cheating,’ person familiar with congressional testimony says Here are 20 questions Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, could face from lawmakers that might shed new light on probes swirling around Trump. Look, Democrats and your media cohorts.  We know you don't have a high regard for the President.  Repeating allegations against him has become a bore.  At this point, it is not going to change minds about the President.  The haters are going to hate whether he testifies or not and the supporters are going to either not believe what is said or not care.  The media has shot its wad on pushing the false narrative about Russian collusion and forfeited its credibility on its scandal-mongering about Trump.

NY Times: Chicago, Seeking a New Mayor, Sees Many Black Residents Voting With Their Feet As Chicagoans prepare to vote in a new mayor, the city stands at a pivotal crossroads, with black residents leaving by the thousands even as new white residents flow in I can't blame them.  It is not a safe city.  The black on black murder rate in Chicago is a tragedy that the city has not been able to fix. It would take an increased force to space ratio of police to deal with the problem and there seems to be no appetite for that in the communities or in City Hall. .

Karol Markowicz: Making kids lecture on climate change is using them as pawns Using kids to make childish arguments about the climate is a form of child abuse.  It is something that the climate change crowd has been doing for some time usually before judges and now before politicians.  The parents who allow or promote this activity should also grow up.

Red States: Boston: 2 Grisly Murders Could Have Been Prevented, If Not For A Judge’s Stance Against Deportation A senseless judicial decision followed by senseless murders.

Reuters: U.S. television network Univision said on Monday Venezuela was deporting a news team led by anchor Jorge Ramos after they were briefly detained at the presidential palace because their line of questioning upset President Nicolas Maduro. ... Ramos, a veteran anchor born in Mexico, said he asked Maduro about the lack of democracy in Venezuela, the torture of political prisoners and the country’s humanitarian crisis. The president stopped the interview after being shown a video of young Venezuelans eating from a garbage truck. “They confiscated all our equipment,” Ramos told Univision in an interview. “They have the interview”. ... Well, Ramos is now more familiar with what a real despot acts like.  He is lucky Maduro did not make him and his team eat garbage.

Washington Free Beacon: Study: Green New Deal Would Cost Up to $94 Trillion Sen. Barrasso: 'Green New Deal would bankrupt the nation' That translate to $600,000 per household.  Most Americans do not have that amount of money.  They especially don;t have money to invest in a sinkhole project that would never achieve its stated objective.

Conrad Black: ... The Democrats placed all their bets on Hillary Clinton, and kept raising the ante in the misplaced belief that President Trump could be driven from office as a traitor, a crook, and an incompetent. They bet everything and will lose everything, and some of their prominent personalities will be doing the tap dance before the grand jury in the run-up to the next election. Their vast media claque will suffer a severe lapse of credibility and ratings, given how heavily invested they are in peddling hatred and contempt of the president, which has vastly exceeded fair comment and any acceptable standard of journalistic professionalism. It is as these facts impend that this astonishing public marathon of Democratic presidential candidates has swarmed out of the undergrowth. Even highly informed Americans can scarcely have heard of at least half of those who are tossing their headgear into the ring. It seems that the wrong lesson has been drawn from the first election in ...

Washington Free Beacon: Iranian leaders disclosed over the weekend that they are aware of recent attempts by the United States to conduct secret sabotage operations against the country's contested ballistic missile program, but dismissed claims these operations have been successful. Iranian General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Aerospace Force, acknowledged recent attempts by the United States to hack into Iran's missile program and throw it off course—an offensive measure successfully used by the United States and allies against Tehran in the past—but said Iran had discovered the operations early on and took measures to block the hack attacks. U.S. efforts to sabotage Iran's missile program prompted Iran to clandestinely infiltrate an American Army Command center last week and take control of several advanced U.S. drones, as the Washington Free Beacon reported last week, according to the IRGC commander. "We have un...

Fred Singer: The non-warming of the climate has become a topic much discussed since about 2005. John Christy has testified to Congress about the "gap" between IPCC climate models, which are based on steadily increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 and observations of atmospheric temperatures, measured by both satellites and radiosondes, 1978-2015 (see Christy fig. below). There have been many attempts to explain this discrepancy, ranging from a flat denial that such a gap exists (Tom Karl, Science, 2015, pp. 1,469-1,472, doi: 10.1126/science.aaa5632) to attempts to account for the "missing incoming energy." For example, Kevin Trenberth has proposed that the missing energy, instead of warming the atmosphere, "hides" in the deep ocean, to be released later. Based on all the foregoing discussion, of the log-dependence of CO2 forcing (Myhre et al., GRL, 1998, vol. 25, doi: org/10.1029/98GLO1908) and its possible climate-cooling effect, I have a simpler hypoth...

Washington Examiner: FBI chart showed 'gross negligence' not an option to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her emails ... Ryan Breitenbach, the House majority counsel at the time, pressed Priestap about the email and asked why gross negligence, or the federal statute of 18 U.S.C. 793(f), was excluded from the chart of what it was willing to charge Clinton, but the statute apparently was used to obtain a search warrant to obtain material in the Clinton case. Priestap said he didn't know who sent the email or why they used the language, "DOJ not willing to charge this." However, he did say his "attitude is that if there is a Federal criminal statute still on the books, then, you know — and we think there may or might be a violation of that, we still have to work to uncover whether, in fact, there was." ... Comey claimed that the government would have to show intent even though the statute does not require it.  However intent can be shown when it is d...

Crain's New York Business: ... Almost from the moment in November when Amazon decided to put its second headquarters in Queens, opponents grabbed the spotlight. The political reporters are obsessed with the impact of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and once she seized on the issue with other progressive groups, their opposition and whether they could defeat the establishment became the story. But less than a month later, the respected Quinnipiac poll found that voters in Queens and the rest of the city supported the Amazon deal by a wide margin. The media narrative was simply wrong, but the reporters (too few of whom were business reporters) clung to their story line. The most egregious example came at the second City Council hearing on the deal, when the reporters ignored a pro-Amazon rally outside City Hall to focus on the opponents inside. Days after a Siena poll confirmed the Quinnipiac finding, Amazon announced it would no longer pursue a Long Island City location beca...

Washington Examiner: Senate Democrats on Monday defeated a GOP attempt to advance legislation that would clarify that babies who survive attempted abortions must receive medical care. Republicans and anti-abortion advocates pushed for the bill, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, to receive a vote so that they could put individual senators on the spot regarding the issue of third-trimester abortion. GOP senators have been aiming to pressure Democrats to state whether they believe any limits should be placed on abortion after controversial comments appearing to indicate otherwise from Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. The legislation fell short of the 60 votes it needed to advance in a procedural maneuver, 53 to 44. Democrats Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Doug Jones of Alabama joined all Republicans present in voting in favor. ... During his floor speech ahead of the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the b...

R Street: ... In 2014, Cuomo engineered the banning of hydraulic fracturing in New York, despite the likely existence of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas underground that could have added thousands of jobs for upstate New Yorkers. More covertly, Cuomo’s administration has slow-walked or blocked state-level permits that would have allowed two natural gas pipelines to move gas from Pennsylvania to the greater Northeast. The net result of all of this is that Cuomo’s blocking of pipelines into and through the Empire State costs New York households in the range of $1,000 in heating costs per year, regardless of the household’s income. New York’s geographic position means all six New England states—Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine—are now overly dependent on imported natural gas from Trinidad and Russia that is often between two and three times as expensive per heating unit. Since New Yorkers keep re-electing Cuomo to high office, one co...

NY Times: Is Your Rent Through the Roof? Oregon Wants to Fix That Oregon is expected to enact the nation’s first statewide rent control law, in response to rapidly rising housing costs. Other states are watching closely. Rent controls give builders and developers less incentive to increase the housing supply which is the best way to create affordable housing.   If you look at the most expensive housing in the US, it is usually in states with control freak regulations like New York and California.  The most affordable housing is in markets where there are fewer restriction on home building.  People moving from the highly regulated states to Texas can get a nicer home for less money.  Rent controls are a huge mistake.

Washington Post: 58 former national security officials to issue declaration on Trump’s national emergency The president has “no factual basis” for proclaiming an emergency at the border, said the bipartisan group, which includes former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright and former defense secretary Chuck Hagel. I would not hire either of these people to make this sort of decision.  They may not care about open borders and the crime that comes with it as well as the harm it does to Americans looking for entry-level jobs, but the victims of those events sure think it is an emergency that needs to be addressed.  I find their declaration unpersuasive.  What they are also overlooking is the nonsensical opposition of the Democrats to a border barrier.  Their assertion that these barriers don't work is demonstrably false.  They are working around the world right now and they are working in areas of the border that do have them.  I see their ...

NY Times: Can America Still Build Big? A California Rail Project Raises Doubts The state’s governor has sent an expensive high-speed rail project into disarray. If California can’t build it, who can? Texas industries and governments are combining to build an engine of trade to deliver oil and LNG in huge quantities to the world and to the US.  Texas companies would build even more infrastructure to deliver natural gas to chilly northern states if Big Green was not blocking the effort.  In California, with few people blocking a rail line it got bogged down in regulations and cost overruns that it could not overcome.   It was a project that Sarah Palin correctly labeled the "bullet train to bankruptcy."

Maureen Ferguson: Nothing speaks louder in the ongoing debate over late-term abortion than a crying newborn baby, particularly a baby who was accidentally born alive after an attempted abortion. The voices of these abortion survivors are very powerful. Now adults, they have been speaking out to tell their stories . The Senate is about to vote on a bill to protect such infants. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act , sponsored by Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., requires appropriate medical care be given to a baby who survives an abortion. President Trump is going further, pressing Congress to ban late-term abortions altogether. The rhetoric surrounding both bills has become heated and has left many people wondering how to separate fact from fiction. To determine the truth about late-term abortion, look at the abortion industry itself. Examining its research tells us whether late-term abortions are rare, the reasons why women seek them, and whether the president’s graphic descri...

Monica Showalter: You don't often hear about protests in Cuba, despite the hellish conditions of that socialist dictatorship, but I suspect that's going to change, and maybe pretty fast. Alberto de la Cruz at  Babalu blog reports  that protests are breaking out on the communist island dictatorship in the wake of Venezuela's popular fight for freedom: Video from Cuba shows hundreds of Cubans marching on the streets of Havana this Saturday in protest of the communist Castro dictatorship. This rare show of massive dissent in Cuba comes on the eve of the Castro regime’s sham referendum vote to ratify a new communist constitution. Translation:  HAPPENING   NOW – Hundreds of people have taken to the streets of Havana, Cuba in protest against the Castro regime. It has the look of a chain reaction, and for that reason, Marxist Nicaragua and Bolivia need to be watched closely, too.... ... Like Reagan before him, Trump is demonstrating how fragile...

Jerusalem Post: Former head of Venezuela’s intelligence services Hugo Carvajal revealed powerful ties between the administration of President Nicolás Maduro and the Hezbollah terrorist group, as well as wide-spread corruption and drug activity, the New York Times reported on Thursday. The nefarious activities were directed by Maduro himself as well as Interior Minister Néstor Reverol and former vice-president Tareck El Aissami. Allegedly, those who were meant to combat drugs were engaged in trafficking them, Carvajal said. El Aissami was not only a drug kingpin, said Carvajal, but also had connections to Hezbollah, and attempted to arrange Hezbollah terrorists to work with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC] through Venezuela. In a meeting that took place in 2009 Hezbollah terrorists met El Aissami and Carvajal in Syria and gave the two Venezuelan state representatives three assault rifles as gifts. ... A government which bans its own people from owning guns ...

Fox News: As Venezuela continues to crumble under the socialist dictatorship of President Nicolas Maduro, some are expressing words of warning – and resentment – against a six-year-old gun control bill that stripped citizens of their weapons. “Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” Javier Vanegas, 28, a Venezuelan teacher of English now exiled in Ecuador, told Fox News. “The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population.” Under the direction of then-President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan National Assembly in 2012 enacted the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law,” with the explicit aim to “disarm all citizens.” The law took effect in 2013, with only minimal pushback from some pro-democracy opposition figures, banned the legal commercial sale of guns an...