PrairiePundit

NY Times: With One Win, Ocasio-Cortez Emerges as a Political Star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stunned the Democratic establishment by beating one of the senior leaders in the House, Joseph Crowley, in Tuesday’s primary in New York. She has been a waitress, a community activist and a campaign organizer for Bernie Sanders. She spoke with us about her mission. With socialism history of failure on a grand scale and the economic incompetence that comes from it, it is still surprising that people not only still support it but even vote for people who do.  It is a demonstration of how uneducated Democrats have become even if they have been to school.  She should try being a waitress in Cuba or Venezuela before trying to push this evil ideology on normal Americans.

Gary Gindler: I don't know about you, but I had to reread the recent report by Michael Horowitz, inspector general of the U.S. Department of Justice, at least three times until I understood the meaning of what had happened. Moreover, I had to (reluctantly) recognize the justification of the main conclusion of the inspector general: that the apparent political preferences of the Clinton investigators played no part in the decision of the Clinton prosecutors. Why? Because the FBI, as it turned out, did not even investigate Hillary Clinton. The FBI had no such intention. Instead, an investigation was conducted into her email server. The circumstances appear to resemble this. Crucial evidence was found at the scene of a crime. All the investigators' efforts were directed to discerning this and only this evidence of where it was made, where it was bought, how it fell into the hands of the criminal, etc. Everyone was so busy investigating the evidence that the search for a ...

Washington Free Beacon: The U.S. Office of Special Counsel filed a Hatch Act violation against a federal immigration judge for voicing her support for Hillary Clinton and denouncing Republicans from the bench. The independent prosecutorial office recommended disciplinary action against Carmene "Zsa Zsa" DePaolo, an immigration judge for the Department of Justice, for her comments during an open hearing for an illegal immigrant facing deportation charges. "OSC alleges that DePaolo violated the Hatch Act when she promoted then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's plan for immigration reform during a deportation hearing over which DePaolo was presiding in March 2016," the office said Wednesday. DePaolo advocated for Hillary Clinton's campaign and a Democratic takeover of Congress from the bench during the hearing. "According to the complaint, the respondent at the hearing was facing deportation and a subsequent 10-year bar on reentry into the...

Charles Hurt: ... The once-serious political party known as “Democrats” has been hijacked by lawless lunatics who have been sowing discontent and fomenting violence for years now. Just ask all the families of police officers in America who have been executed over the past four or five years by militants inspired by the so-called “Black Lives Matter” movement. This would be the same movement that Democratic leaders are terrified of standing up to. When their last standard bearer — Hillary Clinton — made the grave error of declaring that “all lives matter,” she later issued an apology and a correction. After a lifetime in politics, you would think that the woman might understand that political rhetoric has consequences. Yes, this civil war is upon us. Or ask all the American families who have suffered murder, dismemberment and terror at the hands of MS-13 gang members who streamed across the broken border. A border that the Democratic Party — back when it was still a serious...

Washington Times: While top Democratic lawmakers are wallowing in violent rhetoric — calling out mobs to publicly harass Trump officials, and not firing interns who yell obscenities at President Trump because Mr. Trump is worse — their base is being even less fastidious. Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin noted an example of direct incitement to murder — and berated Twitter for allowing it to stay despite the obvious violation of Twitter terms of use. The tweet in question was from a woman named “Kayleigh-Marie,” who wrote “I am f—ing sick of trump and his minions. Can someone just assassinate him already?!?!?!.” The text was accompanied by a GIF of a gun pointed directly at the camera, making the viewer look down the barrel of the weapon. The tweet was posted at 11:08 a.m. on June 20 and was screen-grabbed by The Washington Times as still present Wednesday evening. As of 10:33 p.m. Wednesday, the assassination tweet had received 642 retweets and 369 “Likes.” “Really, @TwitterS...

John Kass: It’s already been a terrible week to be a Democratic Party boss, a week of emotional pain, sighs, sadness. And though it was bad from Sunday on, things got even worse on Wednesday. Democrats lost the Janus v. AFSCME case in the U.S. Supreme Court. The 5-4 decision strips vital public union political muscle away from the old-line bosses in states like Illinois. “Public-sector unions have been able to wall people in by the coercive power of law, but that’s changed thanks to this Supreme Court decision,” said John Tillman, CEO of the conservative Illinois Policy Institute that organized the lawsuit started by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. “Unions won’t have that monopoly control over the political process that has created fiscal nightmares in Illinois and other states. It’s a new day,” Tillman told me. It might be too late for Janus to have an impact on politics in November, but studies show government workers peel away from left-leaning public-sector unions when th...

Fuel Fix: Offshore wind farms hold great promise as sources of clean energy, but the most power is produced at night when it's needed the least. Storing that wind energy has been a vexing problem for power producers, but a partnership in Europe announced this week that it may have found a solution. Equinor, the Norwegian company formerly known as Statoil, teamed up with Masdar, an energy company based in United Arab Emirates, to develop a battery that can store wind energy. The project, known as Batwind, was unveiled in Scotland near the site of a floating offshore wind farm. Electricity produced at Hywind Scotland will be transported by cables to an onshore substation where the 1 megawatt batteries are connected to the grid. The battery capacity is the equivalent of 128,000 smart phones. Batwind storage works like an energy warehouse, according to the announcement. Then when power is needed, it would be sent to the power grid. ... This does not strike me as cheap energ...

Daily Mail: 'Being able to buy whatever you want!' Foreigners reveal the most alluring things about America, from being able to get 'melted cheese on any food' to the 'freedom you can enjoy' Reddit asked it's non-American users to write what's appealing about the US. People responded about how citizens could ask for melted cheese on any food. That seems to be a statement about the superiority of capitalism and free markets.  It is the kind of answer you might expect from someone suffering under socialism such as those in Venezuela, but other countries lack free markets as can be seen by Trump's attempts to get them to drop their tariffs which make goods cost more in those countries.

John Kass: ... It seems almost quaint to remember Hillary Clinton kicking more than 60 million people to the margins of American culture. She sentenced them to eternal limbo in her “basket of deplorables.” Remember? Her audience tittered and giggled. A few wise Democrats saw this instantly as a horrible mistake, just as Chicago Democrat David Axelrod now understands that the ugly sounds coming out of U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters’ mouth — and the larger Democratic orgy of public shaming of Republicans — are terrible political mistakes. Chicago is a practical town. A crooked, violent town, yes, and broke, but practical in some things. Wise Chicago Democrats could see the chaos Clinton unleashed with her “deplorables” remark. But by then it was too late. America heard her words. And more than 60 million of them voted for Trump. It wasn’t the only reason she lost the election. It wasn’t the Russians. Clinton was the dowager empress of a discredited Washington establishment. 2016 was ...

Market Watch: Some forecasting pros suggest the U.S. economy could top 5% growth in the period running from April to June, perhaps clearing the highest bar in 15 years. After a surprising drop in the U.S. trade deficit in May , a handful of Wall Street firms jacked up their estimates for the second quarter and more are likely to do so. Most notably, Macroeconomic Advisers raised its forecast to 5.3% from 4.5% for gross domestic product, the official scorecard for the U.S. economy. The firm’s forecast is one of the most detailed on Wall Street. A closely followed GDP tracker by the Atlanta Federal Reserve, meanwhile, estimates the U.S. will expand at a 4.5% annual rate in the second quarter. ... Why is the economy suddenly growing so fast? Consumer spending has bounced back after a paltry increase early in the year, buoyed by tax cuts and a strong labor market in which jobs are plentiful. Business investment has been strong. And the nation’s trade deficit has been smaller than expec...

Washington Post: Departure likely to trigger bitter showdown over Trump’s selection of replacement Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, 81, has been the court’s most important member for more than a decade, casting the deciding vote on the court’s controversial Citizens United campaign finance decision, the constitutional right to same-sex marriage and the continued viability of affirmative action. No matter who Trump nominates I expect to see Democrats actually worse than when they wrongly stopped the Bork nomination under President Reagan.  They view the seat as critical to clinging to the evils of liberalism which has animated their use of the Court over the last 60 years.   They see the Court as a means to impose policies they could not get support for at the ballot box.

Joel Kotkin: In recent years, many of America’s leading lights have embraced Europe as the model for America. Books like “The European Dream” and “The United States of Europe: The New Super-power and the End of American Supremacy”, both published in 2005, as well the 2010 “The European Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age” reflected a broadly progressive view that Europe represented the essence of an enlightened future. Many Western journalists, horrified by Donald Trump, have designed Germany’s Chancellor Merkel or France Emmanuel Macron as “new leaders of the Western world.” Simply put, this is delusional. America under Donald Trump may be polarized and somewhat out of control, but Europe is in clear and imminent decline. The continent is lagging economically, demographically and even culturally, as Politico noted recently, these oft-underappreciated United States. A generation ago Europe’s cities seemed safe, well-maintained and glorious while ours...

Washington Times: The Justice Department said Wednesday it has begun distributing hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money that had been tied up in a major court battle over sanctuary cities. Byrne Justice Assistance Grants are used by localities and police departments across the nation to pay for equipment, training, personnel or other pressing needs. The Trump administration last year said it would condition the money on localities’ willingness to cooperate in holding illegal immigrants for pickup by federal deportation officers. Chicago sued, saying the conditions weren’t part of federal law. A federal district judge had ruled for Chicago, but issued a nationwide injunction saying the conditions couldn’t be applied to any Byrne grants. The Justice Department put nearly $200 million in 2017 money on hold as the case proceeded. But on Tuesday an appeals court narrowed the ruling, saying that while the district court could decide the fate of Chicago’s practices, it co...

LA Times: The Supreme Court dealt labor unions a sharp defeat Wednesday, ruling that teachers, police officers and other public employees cannot be forced to pay dues or fees to support their unions. By a 5 to 4 vote, the justices overturned a 41-year-old precedent and ruled that the 1st Amendment protects these employees from being required to support a private group whose views may differ from theirs. The decision, in Janus vs. AFSCME, strikes down laws in California, New York and 20 other mostly Democratic-leaning states that authorize unions to negotiate contracts that require all employees to pay a so-called fair share fee to cover the cost of collective bargaining. ... But today’s more conservative court disagreed and said employees have a right not to give any support to a union. These payments were described as a form of “compelled speech” which violates the 1st Amendment. The anti-union National Right to Work Foundation, which funded the challenge, predicted the ruli...

Michael Goodwin: A headline on a story about escalating liberal outrage toward President Trump and his team wondered whether the resistance movement had veered off the “high road.” Veered off? When was it ever on the high road? Certainly not when congressional Democrats boycotted Trump’s inauguration. And certainly not when, soon after the election, Dems tried to pressure Electoral College electors in states that Trump won into backing Hillary Clinton. Even more important, was the Obama administration taking the high road when the FBI gave Clinton preferential treatment despite her sloppy handling of classified emails? Or when it weaponized the FBI and CIA to paint Trump’s campaign as a Russian agent? Those actions and others were not mere expressions of policy disagreements. Nor did they emerge from the ether. They are the fruit of a poisonous tree. The poison behind the resistance movement is the lie that Trump was an illegitimate candidate, and is now an illegitimate president. Wh...

Washington Post: Trump feels personally betrayed by Harley’s decision to avoid tariffs President Trump’s aggrieved tweets about Harley-Davidson’s plan to move some production offshore showed how he is grappling with the effect of policies he expected to produce a more favorable outcome, trade experts said. The whole purpose of Trump's tariffs is to force other countries to reduce their's in return for him dropping US tariffs.   Harley Davidson's move undercut his leverage.  The end goal of Trump's policies is true free trade on a level playing field.

NY Times: No, Democrats Don’t Want ‘Open Borders’ President Trump has made this false claim at least two dozen times since taking office. Democrats support border security measures, though not the border wall he wants to build. This is one of the reasons I do not trust liberal "fact checkers."  The Democrats don't just not support the wall.  They don't support any immigration reform that would halt the flow of illegal immigrants.  I have not seen one Democrat proposal in recent years that would stem the flow of illegal migration and their current objections to Trump policies without the wall suggests they want the illegals to be allowed in the country.

Daniel J. Flynn: uried in Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz’s report on the Clinton email investigation lies a disturbing passage concerning information obtained by the FBI alleging that Attorney General Loretta Lynch attempted to put her thumb on the scales of justice to exonerate Hillary Clinton. “Comey said that he also was concerned about an issue specific to Lynch,” Horowitz reports. “As discussed in more detail in the classified appendix to this report, Comey told the OIG that the FBI had obtained highly classified information in March 2016 that included allegations of partisan bias or attempts to impede the Midyear investigation by Lynch.” What, specifically, did the “highly classified information” indicate? It is “highly classified,” so we naturally remain in the dark. What justified making the information “highly classified”? Nuclear secrets? A list of U.S. spies abroad? War plans to invade Canada? We do not know. But in an age when the Justice Department assails w...

Conservative Treehouse: MAGA Earthquake Hits Minnesota: “The crowd at Trump’s Minnesota rally was 60% Democrat and Independent”… That is an astounding number considering the support shown Trump at the rally.  It also suggests that the GOP has a shot at flipping some seats in what used to be a Democrat bastion.

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