Democrat anger over the US flag beside the North Korean flag and the Trump salute

About Trump's salute  . . . "When a military officer returns the salute of a subordinate, there is no suggestion of subservience in the returned salute. Quite the contrary. When someone bows before a king, subservience can be inferred in many cultures.

"I assume that Trump’s critics understand this. Their shrill attacks on the president for returning the salute are just another manifestation of their hatred of the man."

When you are the darling of celebrities, you can do no wrong. TD

The Unconfined Life of Charles Krauthammer

A.B. Stoddard  "Charles Krauthammer once told me, “The way I look at life is that it's all an accident. Everything.” We were in the lobby of the Hall of States, blocks from the Capitol, having finished the “Special Report” panel upstairs at Fox News Channel. I was somewhat taken aback, though I knew immediately it would stay with me forever. Charles, after all, was looking up at me from his motorized wheelchair, confined to it for life after a freak accident at age 22 paralyzed him from the neck down. None of this is meant to be and there is no design, he said. We are all along for the ride, no matter the turns.

"News that Charles now has weeks to live, that cancer will take him, was beyond my imagination. The rightful, peaceful ending was not in store. For Charles, whose life was forever altered by a knife-twist of fate, there would be yet another tragic accident. Speaking directly in a public letter, Charles was valiant as ever. He acknowledged a vicious and arbitrary cancer, which had been there but was gone a month ago, had returned for good, and said, “This is the final verdict. My fight is over.”

"Charles, like all heroes, leads us by his example. In Bret Baier’s extraordinary 2013 Fox News special on Krauthammer, “A Life That Matters,” Charles’ describes his diving accident, and his refusal to dwell on it. His staggering resolve led him to finish medical school on time, while recovering in the hospital, with his lessons projected on the ceiling above. Putting off his studies would have been “fatal,” Charles told Bret. Years later Charles would begin driving again while sitting in a wheelchair. He once explained this miraculous development to me, citing the man who engineered a customized car for him, in riveting detail. His retelling revealed just what this path back to freedom meant, and what it felt like. Charles was smiling and exuberant and I held back tears, hoping he wouldn’t notice me choke up." . . .

Reparations: Who Should Pay?

Tom Trinko

"In their never-ending effort to Balkanize America and buy black votes by stealing from all taxpayers, including black ones, the Democrats are reviving their call for reparations for slavery.  After all, with blacks waking up to the fact that Democrats are doing nothing for them, a new bribe appears to be necessary.

"The first question is, who should be paid?  Obviously not blacks like Obama, who have not a drop of slave blood.  The government would have to spend a fortune to find out what percentage of slave blood black Americans had to see how much each was owned.  But it's worse than that.  If someone is 50% white and 50% black slave ancestry, how much does white privilege offset the debt owed due to slavery?" . . .

. . . "An added advantage of making Democrats pay is that since their policies have persecuted blacks right up to the present time, we won't have to figure out what percentage of slave blood blacks have when we divvy up the money.

"Every Democratic politician should have to put 10% of his after-tax income each year into a reparations fund that will be distributed to all blacks.

"Every registered Democrat voter – except for blacks, of course – will have to pay $100 every time he votes – including in primaries – which will also be placed into the reparations fund.

"Clearly, this is the only way that the injustice perceived by leftists can be addressed." . . .

Editorial: What’s Next on Same-Sex Wedding Cakes?

Religious and individual liberty survived the Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop decision unscathed, but we’re likely to see a day when businesses and individuals are punished by the state for abiding by their moral and religious convictions. When that happens, lawsuits may be less effective than simply refusing to comply, accepting the punishment, and allowing the world to see just how coercive “liberalism” can be.

Weekly Standard Editors

"On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who in 2012 refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Phillips, an expert baker who has owned his business, the Masterpiece Cakeshop, for 24 years, concluded that his Christian faith wouldn’t allow him to create a custom-baked cake for two men wishing to celebrate their matrimonial union.

"In 2012 the Court’s Obergefell decision hadn’t yet happened, and indeed Colorado law didn’t yet recognize same-sex marriage. The two men, Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, were planning to marry in Massachusetts (where same-sex marriage was already legal) and celebrate their union back in Colorado. Rather than simply picking a different bakery and perhaps complaining about Masterpiece Cakeshop on Yelp, they took their complaint to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The commission investigated the case and found that Phillips had violated the couple’s rights—this despite the fact that the baker’s understanding of marriage was at that time perfectly in keeping with Colorado law.

"The commission’s insistence that Phillips had violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act was not prima facie unreasonable. That law forbids an individual or business to “refuse, withhold from, or deny to an individual or a group, because of disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, or ancestry, the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of a place of public accommodation.” The addition of “sexual orientation” was added only a decade ago, but there it is in black and white.

"We suspect most fair-minded people feel there’s something unjust about coercing a baker to create a cake that, for reasons of deeply held conviction, he doesn’t want to create—especially when the same-sex couple in question needed only try the next bakery in the phone book. But the law was clear: No discrimination based on sexual orientation." . . .

The Facts Of North Korea Nuclear And WMD Program

Noisy Room Text quoted below:
"Professionals at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge Laboratories estimate it would take up to ten years to dismantle all programs and operations in North Korea. Further, Tehran, Moscow and Beijing will work hard to delay what they can due to eliminating evidence of their respective involvement for decades in North Korea.

The Nine Steps Required to Really Disarm North Korea

By WILLIAM J. BROAD, DAVID E. SANGER and TROY GRIGGS JUNE 11, 2018

NYT’s: The vast scope of North Korea’s atomic program means ending it would be the most challenging case of nuclear disarmament in history. Here’s what has to be done to achieve — and verify — the removal of the nuclear arms, the dismantlement of the atomic complex and the elimination of the North’s other weapons of mass destruction.

Nuclear Capabilities

• Dismantle and remove nuclear weapons
  Take apart every nuclear weapon in the North’s arsenal and ship the parts out of the country.
• Halt uranium enrichment
  Dismantle the plants where centrifuges make fuel for nuclear reactors and atom bombs.
• Disable reactors
  Shutter the nuclear reactors that turn uranium into plutonium, a second bomb fuel.
• Close nuclear test sites
  Confirm that the North’s recent, staged explosions actually destroyed the complex.
• End H-bomb fuel production
  Close exotic fuel plants that can make atom bombs hundreds of times more destructive.
• Inspect anywhere, forever
  Give international inspectors the freedom to roam and inspect anywhere.

Non-Nuclear Capabilities

• Destroy germ weapons
  Eliminate anthrax and other deadly biological arms, under constant inspection.
• Destroy chemical weapons
  Eliminate sarin, VX and other lethal agents the North has used on enemies.
• Curb missile program
  Eliminate missile threats to the U.S., Japan and South Korea.

President Trump says he is meeting Kim Jong-un in Singapore because the North Korean leader has signaled a willingness to “denuclearize.’’

But that word means very different things in Pyongyang and Washington, and in recent weeks Mr. Trump has appeared to back away from his earlier insistence on a rapid dismantlement of all things nuclear — weapons and production facilities — before the North receives any sanctions relief.

Whether it happens quickly or slowly, the task of “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization’’ — the phrase that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo keeps repeating — will be enormous. Since 1992, the country has repeatedly vowed never to test, manufacture, produce, store or deploy nuclear arms. It has broken all those promises and built a sprawling nuclear complex.

Full article here.

Michael Barone: California results suggest blue wave has crested and ebbed

Bear in mind we're discussing this state:

Michael Barone  "The nation is just past halftime in the 2018 primary election cycle. Twenty states with a majority of House districts, 228 of the total 435, have held their primaries, and all but the three with runoffs have chosen their Republican and Democratic nominees.

"The latest results, taken together with the generic ballot — polls asking which party’s House candidate you’ll vote for — tend to undercut the many gleeful predictions of a blue wave that produces a big Democratic majority in the House and perhaps the Senate as well.

"The RealClearPolitics average of recent polls shows the Democrats’ lead over Republicans on the generic vote declining from a 13-point margin (49 percent to 36 percent) last December to a three-point margin (43 percent to 40 percent) going into Tuesday’s primaries. Given Democrats’ disadvantage of having so many of their voters clustered in heavily Democratic seats, that suggests a statistical tie. That would mirror the CBS News estimate of 219 seats for Democrats and 216 for Republicans, with a plus or minus 9-seat margin of error. Donald Trump’s 44 percent job approval, well above his 38 percent favorable rating in November 2016, points in the same direction.

Collusion: Big Clinton Donor During Campaign Was Alleged Tax Cheat With Ties To Kremlin

Via Fox News:  "So who was colluding with who[m]? And did this involve foreign money which would be illegal?" Weasel Zippers

The murky nature of Hillary Clinton’s former presidential campaign fund continues to rise to the surface.Fox News has learned that one of the top donors to the “Hillary Victory Fund” (HVF) in 2016 was a Los Angeles-based attorney who is alleged to have misused company funds to create his own $22 million real estate portfolio. He has also been considered by California to be one of the state’s biggest tax cheats, and allegedly has ties to the Kremlin.The donor, Edgar Sargsyan, contributed $250,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund in 2016, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, ands chaired a $100,000-a-couple Clinton fundraiser in Beverly Hills in September 2016. He is also being sued by his former company for allegedly diverting those funds to start his own real estate company.“Nobody gave to the Hillary Victory Fund out of the goodness of their heart or some generalized desire to help 33 random state parties,” Dan Backer, an attorney with the Committee to Defend the President, which learned about Sargsyan’s donations to the HVF, said to Fox News. “They did so to buy access and curry influence – something the Clintons have been selling for nearly three decades in and out of government.”He continued, “The really scary question is, what did this particular donor with this strange web of connections hope to buy for his quarter-million dollars?”The Committee to Defend the President, alleges that Sargsyan’s former employer, SBK Holding USA — for which he was still working at the time of his HVF donations –- is an investment firm that is affiliated with United Arab Emirates president, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan,and its international affiliate has business interests in Russia. Among its dealings was a bid to finance $850 million for a major bridge project to connect Crimea with Russia.

Keep reading…

 The FBI officials who interviewed Hillary Clinton about her use of a private email server found some of her claims “hard to impossible to believe,”

“Willingness To Impact The Election:” IG Report Loaded With Bombshells

Weasel Zippers  "Link to full report.

"Via Daily Caller:

The Department of Justice’s internal watchdog released a much-anticipated report on the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.
The report contained several bombshells.
Anti-Trump FBI agent showed “willingness” to impact election
Anti-Trump FBI agent Peter Strzok showed a “willingness to take official action” to impact the presidential election, according to the new report from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
““(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” asked another anti-Trump FBI agent, Lisa Page. “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it,” Strzok replied.
Strzok’s text “is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects,” the report said.
FBI sat on Weiner emails for no good reason
When further Clinton emails were discovered on a laptop belonging to former congressman Anthony Weiner, who is married to longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin, the FBI agents overseeing her case took just under a month to take meaningful action, Horowitz’s report found.

Keep reading…

IG Report: FBI Agents Received Regular Handouts From Journalists 
"The Department of Justice inspector general identified a number of instances where FBI employees regularly spoke with members of the media and received a number of free perks from journalists including meals and tickets to various events.
. . . 
"The contact between FBI agents and the media extended to receiving “improperly receiving benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events.' ” . . .

Early breaking news of DOJ report

Katie Pavlich: DOJ Inspector General Has Released the New Report About FBI's Bias During the 2016 Election
"This is a developing story. Stay tuned for updates and additional information, which will be published shortly. "
Uh Oh: Republican Congressmen Are Concerned DOJ Inspector General Report Was Altered

FBI Agent Peter Strzok in Text to Lisa Page: ‘We’ll Stop’ Trump from Becoming President  . . . "“We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative actions we reviewed,” Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz wrote in the report. “The conduct by these employees cast a cloud over the entire FBI investigation.”
"In a Thursday morning statement, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer preempted any claims that the report, which will be sent to Congress Thursday, constituted evidence that Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials was tainted by political bias.
“ 'Although we have not yet seen the inspector general’s report, there is no reason — no reason — to believe that it will provide any basis to call the special counsel’s work into question,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor. “The IG report concerns an entirely separate investigation from the Russia probe that Special Counsel Mueller is conducting.' ” . . .

The Early Leaks Of The IG Report Are Clearly Targeted To Soften The Blow

. . . "We’ll know soon enough exactly what’s in this thing (to the extent that it’s not redacted).

"In the meantime, it’s interesting to note what leaks are coming out and how they are being spun. Keep in mind that this report is hundreds of pages long. To this point though we’ve only received two very clearly targeted leaks that at least appear to be trying to get out ahead of possible damaging headlines.

The media are of course playing along with great glee.

The first is this one…

Kathy Griffin calls Kevin Hart a 'p---y': 'He's a black man' who won't attack Trump

That would be this Kathy Griffin

Washington Examiner   "Comedian and frequent Trump critic Kathy Griffin lashed out at one of her peers for not criticizing President Trump in his sets.

"Griffin — who received significant backlash following a stunt last year in which she held a depiction of Trump's decapitated head — told USA Today that fellow comedian Kevin Hart is a "pussy," given that "he's a black man" but won't attack Trump onstage.

Hart

" 'I do feel like this is such an anxiety-ridden time for everyone that there is a thirst for all kinds of comedy," Griffin said. "And look, if you want to not hear about Trump at all, go see Kevin Hart. He doesn't even mention Trump."

" 'I personally think that's a pussy move because he's a black man. But I guess he's selling more tickets than I ever will."

"Hart is known for keeping politics out of his comedy specials but stopped far short of condemning Griffin's anti-Trump stunt when it occurred.

" 'You’re just looking at comics being comics," he said of Griffin during an appearance on ABC's "The View." "We always take risks, but sometimes it can be distasteful.' " . . .

Hillary Clinton could still face charges, experts say

Washington Examiner

"Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information is getting another look with the release Thursday of a Justice Department inspector general report scrutinizing the FBI's investigation into whether she committed crimes using a private email server as secretary of state.

"Although it would be controversial, the Justice Department is able to reopen the Clinton email case, and experts say President Trump's 2016 adversary arguably could be charged until March 2025 — after Trump would leave office even if he wins a second term.

"Sloppy workers, leakers, whistleblowers, and spies face a variety of criminal charges for mishandling classified records. But there are leading options available to prosecutors, with varying statutes of limitations.

"One law, 18 U.S. Code § 1924, forbids “unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material.” It carries up to five years in prison, with a five-year statute of limitations. Former CIA contractor Reynaldo Regis pleaded guilty in May to violating the law by taking home about 60 notebooks with classified information. There's no allegation he shared them.

"Former CIA Director David Petraeus also pleaded guilty under this law in 2015 after sharing highly classified information with his mistress and biographer." . . .

Anger isn't a strategy

Raging Bull

Legal Insurrection

To Trump's critics: Where's the beef?

. . . "So keep an eye out for the next time a liberal friend makes some variation of apocalyptic declaration about the man who has created a global high-end real estate empire; won the presidency against all odds, with 93% of the mainstream media acting as cheerleaders for his opponent; and passed major tax reform and directed targeted regulatory reform that has ignited the economy and wage growth after eight stagnant years of sub-par performance.  Now he is on the verge of remaking the global order so that it works better for America, as well as the rest of the world.  You might want to ask that friend, "What precisely is your basis for such a claim?"  One hundred bucks says that all you will get back is some version of "because...Trump!' "

Partisan cynics gone wild  . . . "Obama always got the benefit of the doubt, but Trump never does!  And they call this journalism?

"I don't know what happens next.  We may look back at the summit and see the beginning of something new or another failed effort with North Korea.

"In the meantime, the cynics get more cynical, and CNN keeps losing viewers."

Look who is mad at DeNiro and the C-worder  "Anger isn’t a strategy," Frank Bruni of the New York Times wrote.
"And with that he took on Robert De Niro and Samantha Bee (the woman who called Ivanka Trump the C-word)." . . .