Measure to split up California pulled from November ballot by State Supreme Court

Environmental group behind efforts to block split.  California is and probably always will be what it is by the will of environmentalists. TD

7News, San Francisco via Weasel Zippers  . . . "The California Supreme Court has blocked a measure that would divide the state in three from appearing on the November ballot.

"The court's ruling states that because there are questions about the proposition's validity, the potential harm of putting it on the ballot now outweighs concerns about delaying the vote until a future election

RELATED: Poll: One third of Californians still support plan to leave the US

"Prop 9 qualified for the November ballot last month.

"The proposal, led by venture capitalist Tim Draper, would split the country's most populous state into three new states of near-equal population: Northern California, California and Southern California, according to the proposal.

RELATED: Plenty of obstacles remain if voters decide to split California in 3

"Northern California would include cities between the Bay Area and the Oregon border. Southern California would begin in Fresno and cover most of the southern state. The "new" California would cover Los Angeles County and much of the coast below San Francisco Bay, the proposal said.

"Opponents sued arguing the proposal abolishes the state constitution, which cannot be done in a ballot initiative." . . .

Photo Of Smiling Chuck Schumer Eating Doughnuts With Vladimir Putin Breaks Internet

Daily Wire  . . . "The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, ramped up to Defcon 1 after President Trump met with Vladimir Putin.

Looks like a bromance to me.

“I’m from Brooklyn,” the New York Democrat said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. “We learned one thing there, if we learned anything: when there’s a bully around, as Putin is, you show strength. But President Trump showed abject weakness. You know what that means? The bully will continue to take advantage of him. If President Trump was such an easy mark in Helsinki, President Putin will realize he’s an easy mark elsewhere.”
"Yes, Schumer — had he been the one meeting with the Russian president and former KGB agent — would have been tougher.
"Which makes it hilarious that a photo of Schumer smiling and eating doughnuts with Putin has re-emerged." . . .

SAVED FROM SOCIALISM: U.S. Saves Baby Oliver After U.K. Doctors Said His Heart Couldn’t Be Fixed

Daily Wire

"After baby Oliver Cameron was denied necessary medical treatment and funding by the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS), doctors in the United States were able to save his life.

Oliver

"Baby Oliver was born with a rare heart condition known as cardiac fibroma. The socialized healthcare system in the U.K. was not equipped to perform the necessary surgery to remove the non-cancerous tumor in his heart. Oliver would have to be put on a list to receive a heart transplant, and even then, he would only be expected to live to the age of 15, at the longest." 
"But due to the innovation and ingenuity of the United States, the necessary surgery was not only available, but had a 100% success rate at the Boston Children's Hospital.
"The NHS, however, initially refused to pay for the roughly $260,000 parents Lydia and Tim Cameron needed to fund the trip and procedure required to save their baby.
" 'No parent should have to bury their child," Lydia said at the time, according to The Mirror. "For the NHS to say, 'we’re sorry, we can’t help.' is devastating.' " . . .

Conrad Black: "Trump Will Win This Round With the Deep State"

Trump could have handled things better in Helsinki, and should not have provoked a clarification from National Intelligence Director Dan Coats. But fundamentally he is right. And he will win. 

American Greatness  "When the cant and emotionalism subside, the Helsinki summit will go down in history as a turning point in this American president’s struggle to disembowel the bipartisan regime of complacency and lassitude he successfully ran against. It may also be a modest inflection point in U.S.-Russian relations.

"President Trump knew what he was getting into in holding a press conference with Vladimir Putin. He knew the press would ask him whose version of Russian meddling in the 2016 election does he believe? Putin’s? Or that of former U.S. intelligence agency directors John Brennan, James Clapper, and James Comey? The question came and President Trump quickly moved to the missing Clinton servers and 33,000 erased Clinton emails under congressional subpoena.

"Trump’s response causes the ultimate evocation to the voters in this epic battle that has been lurching and raging over America and astonishing the world for two years. Many of the president’s political supporters expressed genuine regret. U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Trump had “missed an opportunity” to confront Putin publicly, and Newt Gingrich said that the president’s remarks were a “serious error,” requiring immediate correction. The departing NeverTrumpers like House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and Senators Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and John McCain (R-Ariz.), and even Trump late-comers like Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), were more critical. The Democrats offered almost uniform expressions of shock and anger that the president had humiliated the country.

"They all missed the point. The real issue surged to the surface and into the ether in a blinding flash about five minutes after the joint press conference ended in the form of a tweet from former CIA director John Brennan.

John O. Brennan

✔@JohnBrennan

Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???

Full article

Townhall

Distinguishing Civil War from Social Anarchy

 . . . "In truth, that status quo has already been swept away by an increasingly polarized public.  Conservatives wish to roll back the damage that the socialists have done; socialists wish to finish their social experiment at any cost."

Mike Harris

E.M. Cadwaladr  "The antics of the left since the 2016 election have proven beyond any doubt that leftists are not going to give up their agenda quietly.  Their street activists have shown themselves more than willing to engage in violence – creating a mob to evict a Trump rally from Chicago even before the election, beating up Trump-supporters on numerous occasions, and threatening members of the administration in public.  Leftist-dominated universities have long had the habit of lionizing 1960s and '70s domestic terrorists – in some cases granting them professorships.

"Also worth mentioning are various "lone wolf" assassinations and attempted assassinations almost certainly inspired by leftist rhetoric, notably a string of police killings by the Black Lives Matter movement and the shooting of Republican House whip Steve Scalise.  Antifa is no more a "protest organization" than Mussolini's blackshirts were.  Assaulting people in the streets doesn't normally fit under the constitutional rubric of "free speech."  Antifa's goal is to influence politics by creating fear of bodily harm among its opponents.  That is the very definition of terrorism.

"Nevertheless, mob violence and even political assassination still fall far short of an actual civil war.  In the increasing volatile and dangerous atmosphere of our time, we cannot lose our heads. We must, despite provocations, do our best to understand clearly what is happening around us.

Civil wars are made by certain distinct actions of public officials and are not simply an emergent condition that occurs after a certain level of street violence is reached.  Simply defined, a civil war occurs when two irreconcilable governing authorities seek to control a single country by mobilizing organized bodies of armed men to fight each other. " . . .

More articles by E.M. Cadwaladr, including this earlier one titled, Churches for People Who Dislike God

Why the Red Hen Is Different from Masterpiece Cakeshop

USSA News  "My good friend David Blankenhorn is one of the most admirable people I know, a man who has worked to strengthen the American polity and nurture social peace and progress. I have eagerly followed his work and participated in some of his projects. But there is one subject upon which we disagree sharply: religious liberty.

" 'David looks at the furor over the Red Hen denying service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders and compares it to Jack Phillips’s decision not to make a cake for a gay wedding. As a social media participant, I saw many folks make the same comparison going in both directions: Those who favored Jack Phillips complained about the hypocrisy of secular liberals cheering on the Red Hen; those who favored the Red Hen castigated the lack of consistency they saw in the views of those who supported Jack Phillips.

" 'In my view, being in business doesn’t mean that we throw out all of our convictions to become soulless creatures of commerce. If freedom means anything, it means freedom to choose the way we meld our deepest beliefs with the lives we lead among many others of diverse views. But to say that is, of course, to be forced to deal with the problem of Southern segregation—and indeed, facing that problem is key here because civil rights and gay rights are generally construed as being in the same category of rights unjustly denied.

" 'But we need to carefully distinguish Southern segregation from controversies such as the Red Hen and Masterpiece Cakeshop. Segregation wasn’t something that individual merchants dreamed up as a system. It was public policy. Given the power of that system and its ruthless implementation, one should not be surprised that it required the sweeping action of a larger entity, the Federal government, to take it down. Social bias against homosexuality of course has existed for a very long time, and there were legal ramifications to the bias; but homosexuals did not face anything comparable legally to the vast, diabolical system of segregation. It should be clear, then, that such a plan of reform to end segregation is not a suitable template for application to our many social disagreements. It would be one thing if we lived in a nation of government-backed Republican or Democratic restaurants and hotels, or if Christians were attempting to impose some kind of gay apartheid. But neither of those things is even remotely true. Just as some Jews have recently complained that comparing Donald Trump’s policies to the Holocaust mocks and cheapens the tragedies their people suffered, we could say the same of generalizing the Red Hen and Masterpiece Cakeshop in any way to compare them with Southern segregation." . . .

Standing up for Trump after Helsinki

Do Democrats seriously want to start talking about Russia and treason?

. . . "The Democrat-MSM complex depends for its effectiveness on people being completely oblivious to the past.  But life is not like that.  Bernie Sanders honeymooned in the USSR, for crying out loud!

"Consciously or not, President Trump has once again provoked his enemies to attack him on grounds that do not bear scrutiny." Video at the link.

Trump wastes no time bouncing back from Russia meddling comments

. . . "Trump also added an important wrinkle to his clarification. To wit, that while the Obama administration did next to nothing to stop the 2016 meddling because it was certain Hillary Clinton would win, Trump said his team “has taken very firm steps to secure” the election system for the fall midterms." . . .

Stop Calling It 'Treason'   "There is loose talk of “treason,” and no one expected more from Jimmy Kimmel: He is a comedian and, as he has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, a fool—a reminder that “comedian” and “fool” were at one point near-synonyms in English. But there is no Lear-style wisdom in Kimmel’s dangerous buffoonery, nor in that of Stephen Colbert et al., only the cynical, self-serving histrionics of high-toned bile merchants with time to fill between the Buick commercials." . . .
Rand Paul unloads on 'bigoted' John Brennan for attacking Trump


The loyal State Department translator who knows what Trump REALLY said to Putin behind closed doors - and is now facing calls from Democrats to testify under oath  No recording or notes made of this history!

Trump in Helsinki: The Score  . . . "Matlock righty asks how we can judge whether activity “interfered” with an election without assessing its impact: if the activity had no impact on the outcome, it could not be properly termed “interference.” This disclaimer has not prevented dozens of journalists and politicians from citing the report as proof that “Russia interfered” in the 2016 U.S. presidential election." . . .
"On this essential aspect of the Helsinki press conference, likely to be debated in history books and scholarly articles for years to come, I defer to the judgment of a man better informed than myself. I am satisfied that the ongoing corporate media/Deep State lynching of Donald Trump is based on a premeditated and consciously concocted falsehood. If this is true, and I believe it is, then God help us all . . . "  By:Srdja Trifkovic in Chronicles Magazine

John Brennan Misses Communist Russia  "He calls Trump a dupe, but Brennan actually was one for the Soviets"
"John Brennan’s anti-Trump tweets grow more and more maniacal. His latest tweet holds that Donald Trump’s Russian diplomacy in Helsinki “rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous.”
"That tells people all they need to know about the unseriousness of the left’s impeachment drive, not to mention exposing once again the demented malice behind the Obama administration’s spying on the Trump campaign."
Recall that Mr. Brennan referred to Jerusalem as Al-Quds, the Arab name for that city

Once Again, President Trump Is Magnificently Right—This Time About Russia  . . . "Unfortunately, the delusion that the United States would remake Russia in its own image persisted through the Bush and Obama administrations. I have no reason to doubt the allegations that a dozen Russian intelligence officers meddled in the U.S. elections of 2016, but this was equivalent of a fraternity prank compared to America’s longstanding efforts to intervene in Russian politics."

They said this, not me: Helsinki Is One of Trump’s Finest Moments
. . . "Wisely, for the good of his country and out respect for the truth, Trump refused to jump in the trap. And now the spoiled children who once again did not get what they want, are having a national tantrum. And moral cowards, like House Speaker Paul Ryan  (God bless Rand Paul), are terrified of these spoiled media babies and are seeking only to appease them." . . .

Political Hay; Everyone Is Smart Except Trump

American Spectator

That’s why they all are billionaires and all got elected president.

"Only Trump does not know what he is doing. Only Trump does not know how to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Anderson Cooper knows how to stand up to Putin. The whole crowd at MSNBC does. All the journalists do.

"They could not stand up to Matt Lauer at NBC. They could not stand up to Charlie Rose at CBS. They could not stand up to Mark Halperin at NBC. Nor up to Leon Wieseltier at the New Republic, nor Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone, nor Michael Oreskes at NPR, at the New York Times, or at the Associated Press. But — oh, wow! — can they ever stand up to Putin! Only Trump is incapable of negotiating with the Russian tyrant.

"Remember the four years when Anderson Cooper was President of the United States? And before that — when the entire Washington Post editorial staff jointly were elected to be President? Remember? Neither do I.

"The Seedier Media never have negotiated life and death, not corporate life and death, and not human life and death. They think they know how to negotiate, but they do not know how. They go to a college, are told by peers that they are smart, get some good grades, proceed to a graduate degree in journalism, and get hired as analysts. Now they are expert, ready to take on Putin and the Iranian Ayatollahs at age 30.

"That is not the road to expertise in tough dealing. " . . .

Watch: CBS Reporter Accidentally Witnesses Illegal Border Crossing, Gets Threatened

Weasel Zippers

"And this goes on every day, multiple times a day all across the southern border.

"Via Daily Wire:

Last week, CBS reporter David Begnaud posted a video online of his tense encounter with a human trafficker at the southern border as he witnessed two migrants guided across the Rio Grande “in broad daylight” just a few hundred yards from a border checkpoint.

Begnaud — whom John Sexton notes is the same reporter who debunked the false claims about the iconic “crying girl” photograph — went down to the border at Roma, Texas for a story about plans to survey the land for a future security fence. Stationed at a “lookout point” near a U.S. Customs checkpoint, Begnaud and his producer drove over the international bridge to the Mexican side of the river, leaving the camera crew on the American side.

Keep reading…

Trump, Obama, and Russia: A litany of hypocrisies

In the news conference with Putin and Trump, Putin mentioned that leftist billionaire George Soros meddles in elections.  Why isn't that being reported today?  Is it because Soros is a major benefactor of Democrats and that the media like his meddling?  We also know that the Obama State Department meddled in the Israeli election, so why doesn't the press care about that?

Jack Hellner  "Isn't it time the media reported the truth about who has been tougher on Russia among Obama, Europe, Hillary, Kerry, and Trump instead of continually regurgitating talking points that Trump is soft on Russia?

"In the first year of Obama's presidency, he reneged on a commitment to put missile shields in Poland and the Czech Republic, all to appease Russia.  He actually said he did it because Iran was dangerous.  Here is what the press wasreporting then:

Barack Obama has abandoned the controversial Pentagon plan to build a missile defence system in Europe that had long soured relations with Russia.

"In the first year of Trump's presidency, on the other hand, Trump agreed to put up the missile defense to counter Russia.  Take a look:

In a move set to counter Russia's reinforcement on NATO's borders, Poland and the U.S. have agreed that Warsaw will purchase the American-made Patriot air defense missile, the Polish government announced Thursday.

"Obama essentially didn't lift a finger when Putin attacked Ukraine.

"Trump is providing weapons in defiance of Putin and Russia.

. . . 

"Obama drew a red line in Syria about chemical weapons.  Then Obama did nothing about chemical attacks.  Then Obama, Kerry, and the Putin regime brokered a deal to pretend that that Syrian dictator and Putin ally Bashar al-Assad got rid of the chemical weapons.  Worse still, they trusted Putin to monitor the deal.

"Trump actually bombed Syria in defiance of Russia when Assad subsequently used the weapons that Kerry said were gone." . . .

If the media and other Democrats actually were worried about election integrity, they would support photo IDs to vote, as Mexico does, and as almost all countries in the world require.  The fact that politicians from around the United States require photo IDs for so many things in daily life yet pretend that somehow people aren't able to get them to vote shows they don't actually care about election integrity.

Emphasis added by TD

Hillary Clinton Is Exhausted, Everybody

Jim Treacher  "If you're a conservative, a Trump fan*, or pretty much anybody else in 2018 who doesn't like the Democrats or their agenda, you probably get scolded whenever you mock Hillary Clinton. Her voters are still very protective of her: "Why can't you leave her alone? Why are you so obsessed with her?" Well, she probably wouldn't catch so much flak for refusing to go away if she would just, um, go away. But she continues to show up anywhere there's a microphone, an audience full of people who cried on election night, and a check with a bunch of zeroes on it. So she's fair game. If you don't like that, it's not my problem.

"When Democrats lose presidential elections, they have to fill that void in their souls somehow. For example, they give the loser some shiny prizes to compensate for blowing it. When Al Gore was cheated out of the White House lost fair and square, his voters made it up to him by giving him an Oscar, a Nobel Prize, and even a Grammy. (A Grammy. For Al Gore.) Now the Dems are at it again. Hillary didn't get the one prize she wanted, so they keep throwing lesser prizes at her.

"On Friday the American Federation of Teachers gave her their "Women's Rights Award" because "Consolation Prize" would be too on-the-nose. It makes sense that the AFT, an organization that defends and protects incompetent professionals from the consequences of their behavior, is praising Hillary." . . .

Remember after Dan Rather's false news report about George W. Bush was exposed the industry gave him an awards ceremony?

San Francisco Begins Registering Illegal Aliens To Vote

Mike Harris

Daily Wire   "The Department of Elections in San Francisco on Monday issued voter registration for illegal aliens to allow them to vote for members of the city's Board of Education in the Nov. 6 election.

"Becoming California's first city to allow non-American citizens to vote in local elections, Supervisor Norman Yee said, "We want to give immigrants the right to vote."

"[For the record, "immigrants" are people who come to America through the legal process, while "illegal aliens" sneak into the country.]*

"In order to vote, the illegal aliens must live in the city, be at least 18 years old and be the "parents, legal guardians or caregivers of children under the age of 19 who also reside in San Francisco," ABC-7 reported." . . .

*Emphasis added by TD