Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Study Ranks Every State’s Highway System, Finds Road Conditions Worsening In Important Categories

Reason
North Dakota, Virginia and Missouri have the best performing, most cost-efficient state highway systems, while New Jersey, Rhode Island and Hawaii have the worst.

"After decades of incremental progress in several key categories, Reason Foundation’s Annual Highway Report finds the nation’s highway conditions are deteriorating, especially in a group of problem-plagued states struggling to repair deficient bridges, maintain Interstate pavement and reduce urban traffic congestion.

“ 'In looking at the nation’s highway system as a whole, there was a decades-long trend of incremental improvement in most key categories, but the overall condition of the highway system has worsened in recent years,” says Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the Annual Highway Report and assistant director of transportation at Reason Foundation. “This year we see some improvement on structurally deficient bridges, but pavement conditions on rural and urban highways are declining, the rise in traffic fatalities is worrying, and we aren’t making needed progress on traffic congestion in our major cities.”

"The 24th Annual Highway Report, based on data that states submitted to the federal government, ranks each state’s highway system in 13 categories, including traffic fatalities, pavement condition, congestion, spending per mile, administrative costs and more. This edition of the Annual Highway Report uses state-submitted highway data from 2016, the most recent year with complete figures currently available, along with traffic congestion and bridge data from 2017." . . .


Trump — or What, Exactly? Let’s compare Trump’s policies and behavior to that of prior presidents — and to his 2020 opponents’.

Victor Davis Hanson  "In traditional political terms, there is always an alternate agenda to an incumbent president’s that reasonable voters can debate. 
"In Trump’s case, two massive annual budget deficits — coming on top of the previous two administrations that doubled the national debt — seem fair game. No president for the past 19 years has sought to offer any remotely sane budget. And with still relatively low interest rates, massive federal spending, a $22 trillion national debt, and an annual deficit of nearly $1 trillion, it is hard to imagine, in extremis, that there remains any notion of “stimulus” or “pump-priming” left.
"Yet we hear little about such financial profligacy.
""Not a word comes from Trump’s critics about the need for Social Security or Medicare reform to ensure the long-term viability of each — other than the Democrats’ promises to extend such financially shaky programs to millions of new clients well beyond the current retiring Baby Boomer cohorts who are already taxing the limits of the system.
"To counter every signature Trump issue, there is almost no rational alternative advanced. "That void helps explain the bizarre, three-year litany of dreaming of impeachment, the emoluments clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the Mueller special-counsel investigation, Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti, Trump’s tax returns, White Supremacy!, Recession! — and Lord knows what next.
"The subtext of all these Wile E. Coyote all-too-clever efforts at trapping roadrunner Trump is not just the wish to abort an elected presidency; they’re offering the heat of hatred rather than the light of a viable political alternative." . . .

Political Incorrectness

You left WHAT in San Francisco?


Comedian Argus Hamilton: "San Francisco hosted the Democratic presidential candidates last weekend in the party’s state convention. The city is reeking with urban problems that nobody mentioned. Planned Parenthood should build a chain of homeless shelters all over San Francisco and call them Unplanned Adulthood."


Joe Biden Is 'Not Going Nuts,' According to Joe Biden

Politifact ignores Biden's lies, or should I simply say "misstatements"?
A comment to this article pointed out:
I still remember Politifact rating a statement Mitt Romney made during the 2012 primaries (not the time Obama dismissed it with his aircraft carriers and bayonets BS at the debate, this was earlier) about how far the Navy had shrunk that was factually correct, and they were told was factually correct, as a Pants-On-Fire falsehood. That told me everything I needed to know about Politifact.
The man himself declares: Joe Biden Tells Supporters: ‘I Want to Be Clear, I’m NOT Going Nuts!’

Biden’s Brother Promised Health Care Execs the Former VP Would Help Promote Their Business
. . . "Biden’s relatives have previously been accused of using their access to enrich themselves but the latest allegations, which are detailed in a number of sworn declarations filed in federal court on Friday, represent the first example of Biden’s relatives promising that he would use his influence to directly promote private businesses." . . .



Joe Biden Is 'Not Going Nuts,' According to Joe Biden  . . . "Which raises that age-old question, older than even Joe Biden: If a guy is crazy, does he know he's crazy?" . . .

Hoo Boy: New National Poll Shows Biden...Trailing Both Sanders And Warren
. . . "We'll see if this poll turns out to be an aberrant outlier, but according to these numbers, Biden has been matched -- and even slightly surpassed -- by both far-left contenders in the top tier.  Most interesting is the finding that although the former Vice President has seen his support among self-identified liberal voters wane, which isn't all that surprising, his bigger problem has been hemorrhaging support from moderate and conservative primary voters: . . ."

The Gambler: RBG and the Trump Campaign


The American Spectator
Trump is pushing his luck, even with another Supreme Court pick possibly in the cards.
"Over the weekend, the media took notice of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s apparently successful treatment for a malignant tumor on the pancreas. “No further treatment is needed at this time,” said Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City — which wasn’t the same thing as saying “Justice Ginsburg’s Supreme Court tenure is locked down and guaranteed.”
"Possibly the least edifying phenomenon you run across in politics — a highly unedifying pursuit these days, full of noise and rancor — is what might be called the death watch, as in how-long-before-we-get-to-replace-old-so-and-so-on-whatever-it-is. Few are the political folk whose disappearances for one reason or another excite public rejoicings. Ginsburg — a smart, snappy and rigorously honest jurist — isn’t among their number. “Long may she wave!” we need to exclaim so as to keep up some pretense of humanity amid all the grossness.
"This is not to deny she’s a major player in the 2020 elections — in one sense, the major player.
"Maybe Donald Trump understands, and maybe he doesn’t, that his widely supported project of tugging the federal judiciary to the right buys him tolerance he might not otherwise be vouchsafed — and well could lose if certain things don’t change.
"The bare, spare, unsentimental fact is that The Notorious RBG’s retirement from the Supreme Court, due to age and health, would allow Trump this year — next year — to strengthen a tenuous conservative majority on the court, made possible by the 2016 election, and possibly the next one up. At the same time, he would continue to staff the lower federal benches with conservatives." . . .

Former Staffers Urge Gillibrand to End ‘Performative and Obnoxious’ Presidential Campaign

National Review


. . . " 'Gillibrand, who has yet to breach one percent in major national polls, is working to secure the 130,000 individual donations required to appear on the debate stage next month in Houston — an appearance that one former staffer believes will only serve to harm her future political career." . . .
“ 'I don’t know that anyone even wants to see her on the debate stage. Everyone I have talked to finds her performative and obnoxious,” a former senior staffer in Gillibrand’s Senate office told the Post.
"Gillibrand has received roughly 115,000 individual donations, which places her behind upstart candidate Marianne Williamson, a self-help author with no political experience who has already surpassed the threshold required to qualify for the next debate."“ 'She comes across as an opportunist to the public. I think that’s the biggest problem,” said the staffer, noting Gillibrand’s reversal on gun rights and immigration restrictionism, causes she championed as a member of the House representing a rural upstate New York district but later abandoned when she ran for the upper chamber. “I think she’ll have to seriously evaluate her campaign and her candidacy if she doesn’t make this debate.' ”

For all you Bernie Sanders supporters: life under socialism and life under capitalism shown

Fidel Castro BFF Barack Obama is not available for comment. Somebody please check in with Bernie Sanders. TD
To mark the fall of the Berlin Wall Radio Free Europe photographer Amos Chapple visited the precise locations of 14 striking photos taken when the city was split - in the 1950s, 60s and 70s - and took 2019 versions of those scenes. And the contrasts - or lack thereof - are fascinating.






Berlin - THEN and NOW: Photographer visits the locations of 14 Cold War images and takes snaps to reveal how the German capital has been transformed

"Berlin today is one of the world's hippest, most affluent cities - a cultural powerhouse and a mecca for party animals.
"But just over 30 years ago it was a city torn in two, divided by a wall measuring 91 miles. On one side was capitalist West Berlin, on the other communist East Berlin. Anyone who tried to get over it was shot." . . .
. . . 
" 'The photo of the church taken from the television tower is, I think, the most interesting. To see how much the city has been built up since its devastation by war is amazing.
" 'It gives you a sense of how the city's elderly people must feel, looking at all these new buildings that the rest of us just pass by. They remember the rubble that once stood in its place, maybe sometimes the people they knew who were killed inside it.'
"Looking at his completed project, Amos says it was 'deeply educational'.
"He added: 'Looking at those old photos just reinforces my sense that government should never be allowed too much power. Whether the politics are right, left, fascist, communist or centrist - it doesn't matter. Any government is made up of people - they're just people. Even if they have good intentions, people make dumb mistakes and errors of judgement. I do, you do, we all do.
" 'So when I look at that line of scruffy communist militants standing there thinking they will make the world better by stopping people's freedom of movement, when I watch the Stasi videos of agents creeping through people's apartments, looking for evidence they were thinking the wrong way… I think it's terrifying, and it's a lesson.'
"The separation of Berlin began in 1945 when Germany was split into East and West Germany." . . .

Trump alone stands between us and these people

History has taught us how in his contempt for northern troops, Robert E. Lee referred to the Yankees simply as "those people".

Nancy Pelosi Just Delivered A Kill Shot To House Democrats’ Impeachment Hopes…For Now

. . . "So, a majority of House Democrats backs impeaching Trump. What say you, Speaker Nancy Pelosi? She isn’t budging. She knows this move will animate the GOP base. This is the declaration of nuclear political war, and she knows her side could very well lose. In fact, she knows it will; the Republicans control the Senate and they’re not going to go along with this nonsense. The Trump-Russia collusion myth has been thoroughly dissected as trash. There is no appetite to impeach among voters. As our friends at Twitchy noted, even pollsters are signaling that support for impeaching Trump has dropped." . . .



Rich Terrell




Hillary is Lurking  "Hillary Clinton, the Ma Barker of American politics, is still out hustling, still staying one step ahead of the law as she tries to weasel her way into the presidential sweepstakes. She says she isn’t running in 2020, but, as we know too well, truth is a fungible commodity to a Clinton.
"The signs don’t look good. She just announced a fundraiser for the DNC at her Washington D.C. mansion with tickets as high as $50,000 (scraps for the homeless in the dumpster out back)." . . .

Monday, August 26, 2019

"Let's Get Rid of Mount Rushmore", says our own Taliban in this country

Here's the old "white men" meme again. More racism from the left. "Now the Liberals are calling for the destruction of Mt. Rushmore."

Vice.com Home of the American Taliban


“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right“. George Orwell 1984"


‘Antifa’ professor resigns after losing class

The College Fix
Had previously suggested a desire to assault President Trump, murder Christians

"A professor who publicly expressed an identification with the controversial “antifa” movement, who appeared to threaten the president, and who intimated that he would like to murder evangelical Christians, has resigned after his school removed him from teaching a course this coming semester.

"Jeff Klinzman, an adjunct English professor at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, has generated headlines in the recent past by implying that he would like to “clock [President Donald Trump] with a bat.” He also announced that he considered himself part of “antifa,” the often-violent far-left protest movement known for assaulting journalists and taking part in street brawls.

"Perhaps most notably, as local news station KCRG reports, Klinzman had previously written a Facebook posted slamming “evangelical Christians,” in which he recited part of a poem that read: “Kill them all, and bury them deep in the ground.”

"Lori Sundberg, the president of Kirkwood, announced on Friday that Klinzman had tendered his resignation, which the school accepted, the Cedar Rapids Gazette reports." . . .

Villanova professor to give lecture justifying Antifa violence  "There’s room for one more scholar justifying the political violence of antifascists against whomever they brand a white supremacist, right?"

Trump-bashing, race-baiting, and fear-mongering. Or as they call it at the network, Tuesday.

A Week in the Life of ABC ‘News’


American Greatness  "ABC Nightly News,” televised daily across the nation at 5:30 p.m., offers what is perhaps the lowest common denominator of the mainstream media’s liberal, anti-Trump bias. But even if you compare what ABC has to say to what actually constitutes balanced reporting, as well as to what qualifies as newsworthy reporting, ABC falls short.

"By these standards—by what used to be the basic editorial criteria for good journalism—ABC “news” is a dangerous fraud. They spew propaganda, calibrated at an almost infantile level, calculated to reinforce carefully nurtured biases within their television audience.
"ABC News is anchored by the dashing metrosexual, David Muir, an actor of extraordinary skill. Muir, along with a laudably diverse collection of equally telegenic thespians masquerading as “journalists,” manages to exude convincing gravitas despite delivering, night after night, an embarrassing infotainment sham, mixing in equal parts pablum and agenda-driven propaganda. Forget about the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism, or the Edward R. Murrow Award. Give David Muir an Oscar.
"ABC’s nightly “news” is easily dissected. Their 30-minute formula, which all three legacy networks follow, consists of a prolonged opening segment, about 15 minutes in length, in which the  top national and international stories are presented (or so they tell us). An examination of what they reported on last week, during the five days from August 5 through August 9, provides ample evidence of just how far removed they are from genuine journalism." . . .

Barna: The Cradle of Christianity in the US Is Now Its Most Post-Christian Region

CBN


"The United States' northeast region was once home to the Puritans and other devout Christians who came to the New World so they could practice Christianity in freedom. "Today, it is the most "post-Christian" region in America, according to new research by the Barna Group.
"The latest Barna study reveals that northeast cities rank in the top eight out of 10 most post-Christian cities in America. 
"The top 10 include:
  • Springfield-Holyoke, MA
  • Portland-Auburn, ME 
  • Providence, RI
  • New Bedford, MA 
  • Burlington, VT 
  • Boston, MA
  • Manchester, NH 
  • Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY 
  • Hartford-New Haven, CT 
  • Rochester, NY 
  • Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-San Luis Obispo, CA 
  • Seattle-Tacoma, WA
"In the study, Barna defines "post Christian" according to 16 characteristics, including whether individuals identify as atheist, have never made a commitment to Jesus, have not attended church in the last year or have not read the Bible in the last week. " . . .