California could use a management change

It does seem to be true that people get the government they deserve. TD

Silvio Canto, Jr.  "Over Sunday lunch, a friend was saying that he just got back from Los Angeles.  He added that he had not seen that much filth in some of the third-world countries that he visits for business regularly.  He looked at me and asked: " How do the voters put up with that?"

"My answer was that voters have been voting with their feet for years.  In other words, they leave the Golden State.

"California is a mess indeed, as Jim Bredo wrote:  

It has the worst ranking for homelessness, 8th worst for roads, and worst for teacher-to-student ratio. Its prisons are so crowded that the Supreme Court determined them to constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and it suffered the worst budget crisis of all the states during the Great Recession.

But residents are so mesmerized by the amazing weather and beauty of the place that they tend to overlook the quality of the services. And as a result, management does not change. The state has been under the same Democratic Party management for years. Their monopoly on power is so safe that they now hold supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature despite California’s worsening condition. Management has no incentive to change when it keeps getting re-elected.

Californians may not be voting out Democrats at the ballot box, but they have been voting with their feet. While California’s population has grown from 29 million to 39 million over the past 30 years, in each year during that period the state has seen a net loss in migration to other states.

The American President and the Queen

Earl of Taint

Mitt Romney, The Dog on the Roof of the Democrat Caravan of Crazies

Canada Free Press  "Mitt Romney has positioned himself as the Dog on the Roof of the Caravan of Crazies, including Wobbly Woofer Joe Biden,  running for DNC nomination in the 2020 Election Campaign.

“ 'Mitt Romney proved once again this weekend that the only reason he ran for US Senate was to trash President Trump for the next six years. (Gateway Pundit, June 8, 2019).

“In 2018 President Trump generously endorsed Mitt Romney for US Senator from Utah.”

"Dog Catcher Gateway Pundit points out that since that time Mitt has been nothing but a pain in the tush, taking swipes at Trump whenever and wherever possible.

"Just about everyone takes swipes at Trump for publicity,  ratings and career boosts,  including Political Opportunist Supremo Mitt Romney.

"Shades of Seamus, The abused Romney dog:

“ 'During a 1983 family vacation, Mitt Romney drove 12 hours with his dog on top of the car in a windshield-equipped carrier. This incident became the subject of negative media attention and political attacks on Romney in both the 2008 and the 2012 presidential elections. (Wikipedia)" . . .

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Kavanaugh ‘Boosted’ Female SCOTUS Law Clerks

Breitbart

"Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) told a group of judges in upstate New York on Thursday that her colleague, newly-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was the reason the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) had more female law clerks this term.“Justice Kavanaugh made history by hiring a team of all-female law clerks for his staff. Thanks to his selections, the Court has this Term, for the first time ever, more women than men serving as law clerks,” Ginsburg announced on Thursday.

"Ginsburg’s statement comes several months after Kavanaugh went through a drawn-out confirmation battle to become an associate justice on the Supreme Court over accusations of sexual misconduct.

"Democrats pushed the FBI for further investigation into those allegations, but the FBI determined those allegations against Kavanaugh to be “uncorroborated.”

"During the heated set of confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh made a promise to appoint a team of all-female clerks. The New York Times reported in October 2018 that he promised to hire a team of four female Supreme Court law clerks.

"Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee along with one of his accusers, California psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford, over decades-old allegations that Kavanaugh groped Ford at a high school party. Kavanaugh had repeatedly denied the allegations and Ford’s claims.

"However, nobody had been able to prove that Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh are true because Ford kept changing her version of the story.

"Of the people she named, not one of them said they could recall what happened around that time or whether Kavanaugh and Ford were in the same room.

"Kavanaugh is considered to be one of the more conservative judges on the Supreme Court, but he has sided with more liberal justices in several rulings." . . .

Shameless Kirsten Gillibrand embarrasses herself pandering at an Iowa gay bar

Thomas Lifson "Unfortunately for the junior senator from New York, it takes more brains than she possesses to pull off unprincipled political pandering.  Over the course of her political career, Kirsten Gillibrand has demonstrated a willingness to embrace any policy or group that she thinks will work to her advantage. When she represented a rural-ish upstate New York congressional district, she was all for the Second Amendment, but when elevated to the Senate (to replace Hillary Clinton), her principles reversed themselves.

"But then again, Bill Clinton was flexible in his principles depending on political advantage and got away with it with enough voters to get re-elected as president. Gillibrand’s problem is that she isn’t bright enough to pull off the slipperiness with aplomb.

"This lack of the finesse necessary to be a good political con artist was all too evident Friday in Des Moines, when Gillibrand visited a gay bar, The Blazing Saddle. She actually went behind the bar (at least she didn’t jump on top of it, Beto-style) and appeared to be (or feigned) drunkenness." . . .

When John Dean testifies, the real Watergate analogy should be made clear

Jonathan Cohen

"The Democrats in the House are opening their post-Mueller report hearings with testimony from John Dean, the former Nixon White House Counsel, whose riveting testimony in the Watergate Hearings helped push the House of Representatives towards an impeachment probe. While Dean is the Democrats’ choice, the hearing will provide the Republicans the opportunity to show that the true similarity of the current political situation with Watergate is between the Nixon and Obama administrations. By the time all is known, the real question may be: should Trump pardon Barack Obama.
. . . 
"As the facts in the origins of the Russian collusion investigation begin to become known to more than Fox News viewers, the similarities between the activities of the Nixon White House and the Obama administration will become glaringly obvious. John Dean needs to be asked a series of questions, and, since he would be under oath, would have to answer them somewhat as I imagine below:" . . .   Read the questions here...

PETA Condemns Fishing as ‘Cruel’ Harassment

These people vote and choose those who run this nation. TD

Breitbart  "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has denounced fishing as a cruel sport, insisting that fish feel pain and urging all anglers to become vegans.
“ 'Fish are sentient individuals who feel pain,” PETA stated in a tweet Friday. “Invading an animal’s natural habitat, harassing them, killing them, and eating them for fun is so cruel.”
“ 'Don’t go fishing this summer, or EVER,” PETA commanded.
"In their accompanying video, PETA asks viewers to try to imagine what their cold-blooded brethren feel by putting themselves in the fish’s place.
“ 'Anglers often try to retrieve hooks by shoving their fingers or even a pair of pliers down a fish’s throat. Doing this doesn’t just rip out the hook, but also part of the fish’s throat and organs,” the video states.
“ 'Can you imagine having a hook pierce your face before suffocating to death?” it asks.
“ 'No one deserves this. Try vegan!” it adds, seeming to suggest that human rights and fish rights are basically equivalent and that a fish is a “someone” just as a human being is." . . .

PETA Wants a Memorial to Dead Fish
"In her letter, [the PETA representative] argues that even though these memorial signs are usually reserved for humans, these fish deserve one because they’re people too:" . . .

"Perhaps their compassion can be directed to this dying, still unborn baby experiencing the pain of being aborted:  . . . "After injecting the hormone into the patient’s womb, the doctor left the syringe standing upright on her belly. Then, Selzer wrote, “I see something other than what I expected here. . . . . It is the hub of the needle that is in the woman’s belly that has jerked. First to one side. Then to the other side. Once more it wobbles, is tugged, like a fishing line nibbled by a sunfish.” 

"He realized he was seeing the fetus’s desperate fight for life. And as he watched, he saw the movement of the syringe slow down and then stop. The child was dead. Whatever else an unborn child does not have, he has one thing: a will to live. He will fight to defend his life. The last words in Selzer’s essay are, “Whatever else is said in abortion’s defense, the vision of that other defense [i.e., of the child defending its life] will not vanish from my eyes. And it has happened that you cannot reason with me now. For what can language do against the truth of what I saw?' ” . . .

Hours After Joining the Congressional Black-Jewish Caucus, Ilhan Omar Expresses Support for Linda Sarsour

Legal Insurrection

By once again standing shoulder to shoulder with anti-Semitic activist Linda Sarsour, Ilhan Omar demonstrated her goal was to undermine the bipartisan caucus she had just endorsed.

"If nothing else, one thing most people would agree on about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is that when she wants to get a message across, she doesn’t waste any time.

"Such was the case earlier this week when, on Wednesday evening, the freshman Congresswoman tweeted out support for a newly-formed bipartisan caucus for black and Jewish House members . . . and then sided with anti-Semitic activist Linda Sarsour in a Twitter war over one of the caucus’s Jewish founders just hours later.

"Here’s a timeline of what went down:

"On Monday, the American Jewish Community advocacy group officially announced the formation of the coalition:". . .

Biden has just blown his cred as a moderate, non-scary Dem

There is now no reason for moderate Democrats, scared of the party's vocal activist base and the hard-left shift they have forced on it, to trust that Biden won't cower and cave in to that base on other issues.  

Thomas Lifson  "The dirty little secret of Joe Biden's frontrunner status is that most traditional Democrat voters are scared of the party's vocal left-wing faction and the politicians who pander to them with ruinously expensive policies like the Green New Deal, racialism like "slavery reparations," and talk of raising taxes and imprisoning Donald Trump on charges to be determined later.

"The inevitable fall of Biden just accumulated downward momentum by his reversal of position on the Hyde Amendment (banning federal funding of abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the mother's life).  For decades, he has cited his deep Catholic faith as the reason he cannot support taxpayer-funded abortions.  But what's a deeply held religious position when his political career is at stake?" . . .

. . . So why support a bumbling, gaffe-prone (AKA stupid), ancient pol if he is useless as a bulwark against the hard left?" . . .

Where do pro-life Democrats go now?  . . . "ZIP code?  How pathetic!

"The flip is a total crock and makes Biden look weak and foolish.  The Hyde Amendment is about federal funding of abortion and nothing more. 

"Why did he flip anyway?  He is up significantly in the polls.  Standing up to the Left would work for Biden in the general election.  He could say he believes in Roe v Wade but not in forcing taxpayers to pay for abortion.  He could add that he agrees with most Americans who want restrictions on late-term abortions without taking a woman's right to choose.

" 'Pathetic" is not strong enough." . . .

Tony Branco

Donor To Alabama University After Donation Rejection: You Have Put A Shotgun In Your Mouth and Pulled The Trigger

Matt Vespa  . . . "As with any school, you don’t trash it and you don’t tell students to boycott it over something that is not within the realm of their control. The university’s board of trustees returned a $20+ million gift and removed the donor’s name from the law school. This comes after Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr. urged students to boycott the institution over the state’s abortion law that recently passed. The law is one of the strictest anti-abortion laws on the books, which sent liberals into a frenzy. " . . .

Is Germany Becoming Germany — Again?

Victor Davis Hanson

Merkel’s evident anti-Americanism is a familiar refrain. 

"The more things change, well, the more they . . . So it is with the perpetual German resentments of the U.S.

"Recently German chancellor Angela Merkel reminded us of that German fixation, when she made some astounding statements to the German media that revealed what many Americans had long ago surmised.

"Merkel all but announced that Germany, or for that matter Europe itself, is no longer really an ally of the United States: “There is no doubt that Europe needs to reposition itself in a changed world. . . . The old certainties of the post-war order no longer apply.”

"She insisted that Germany views the democratic United States as not much different from autocratic Russia and Communist China: Urging Europe to present a united front in the face of Russia, China, and the U.S., she said, “They are forcing us, time and again, to find common positions.” And Merkel concluded that therefore Germany must find “political power” commensurate with its economic clout to forge a new independent European path." . . . .

Don Surber's Highlights of the News for June 7th; some excerpts.

Don Surber

. . . "ITEM 6: Ladybugs.

"On September 20, 2018, NBC reported, "Where have all the ladybugs gone? Scientists worry as non-pest insect population dwindles. Scientists say light pollution and global warming may be to blame for declining insect population."

"We found them.

"The Associated Press reported, "A huge blob that appeared on the National Weather Service’s radar wasn’t a rain cloud, but a massive swarm of ladybugs over Southern California. Meteorologist Joe Dandrea says the array of bugs appeared to be about 80 miles wide as it flew over San Diego Tuesday."

"That proves global warming is over. Praise President Trump.

"ITEM 7: Climate Home News reported, "Joe Biden has promised to crack down on China’s coal power spree in other countries if elected US president in 2020."

"In 2008, he said, "No coal plants here in America. Build them, if they're going to build them, over there in China."

"He's a political weathervane.

"A big, dumb, creepy, sleepy political weathervane.

"ITEM 8: Agence-France Presse reported, "As most US farmers feel the brunt of the trade war with China, some, like garlic and honey producers who have struggled for years, are applauding new, higher tariffs on Chinese goods.

" "'It's been a pretty exciting time for us in Gilroy, California,' Ken Christopher, whose family runs Christopher Ranch, the nation's largest garlic grower, told AFP.

" 'Though nearly all garlic consumed in America was grown in the US prior to 1993, that changed almost overnight when Chinese exporters began flooding the US market with their product, all but wiping out garlic growers across the country, Christopher said."

"Be American. Buy American. Ward off vampires with American garlic." . . .