CNN is still working the Russian angle. Get a grip, for crying out loud. Trump’s actions in office have worked to Russia’s detriment.
Looks like a very old man in Minnesota may have been a henchman of the Nazis. His family still doubts it, but given where he’s from, it could well be true. He’s 98, so sending him to jail is not really a practical option. I do have a bit of sympathy for the Ukranian people as they were caught in the vise of World War Two. They were split between Poland and Stalin’s Russia before the war – and while the Poles weren’t remotely as bad as Stalin, they still carried out a lot of repression of the Ukranian people. Then the war came – Germans were fighting the Poles, and then the Russians…the temptation to throw in with the Germans must have been overwhelming. Very many Ukranians did. Stepan Bandera was the leader of those who fought alongside the Germans – but showing the bizarre realities of the time, two of his brothers were sent to Auschwitz…there to be killed by Polish patriots. Bandera, himself, wound up in Gestapo custody for a while. The Banderists, as the Russians called them, kept up the fight after the war – the last of them being rounded up in 1958. This is not to excuse any crimes the Ukrainians committed – but it is a plea for a careful understanding of the stresses people can be put under.
Britain has approved Brexit and will now start the negotiations for leaving. Scotland, meanwhile, appears to be opting to vote on secession from Great Britain and to stay in the EU. Bizarre that the Scots may opt out of governing themselves in favor of having un-elected bureaucrats in Brussels decide their fate. But, such is the pull of the welfare State…and the EU is far more welfare-y than the UK…for the UK (what remains of it), without Scotland you can expect the Labour party to be in the wilderness for quite a long time, as Scotland provides a huge number of Labour votes.
Preet Bharara is not the hero of the legal world people are making him out to be:
But — and I want to be clear here — Bharara’s refusal to resign wasn’t about principle. It was about putting himself publicly on the side of anti-Trump Democrats, no doubt in the expectation of future rewards, political or professional. It was not a brave act. It was, in fact, a species of corruption.
Do you want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump: environmentalists vandalize a Trump golf course.
Robert Stacy McCain describes feminists:
What part of crazy do I have to explain here? Feminists are berserk, bonkers, deranged, demented, delusional, irrational, non compos mentis, unhinged, wacky, psycho, off their rockers, nuttier than squirrel farts, a few fries short of a Happy Meal and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Don Surber has some words about the CBO scoring of TrumpCare. I don’t think many have kind words to say about it – personally, I think it is an opening gambit in what will be a protracted series of negotiations until we get Trump’s bare minimum (repeal; replace; cross-border insurance sales; no one loses coverage) and whatever else he can tack on there (and others who figure it out get tacked on there). It is going to be messy, folks – but whatever emerges will at least be better than ObamaCare.
Merkel apparently wants to move Trump her way. She’ll fail.
Democrats say they’ll go for a government shut down to stop Trump’s wall. Democrats have convinced themselves that opposing Trump up and down the line is the way to go – in their minds, it was GOP knee-jerk opposition to Obama which won Congress and, ultimately, the White House. They fail to note that the GOP was opposing massively unpopular Obama policies…while the border wall is not ragingly popular among the entire population, it is very popular among Trump voters…opposing it just makes certain they can’t peel off Trumpsters in 2018 and 2020. Another thing being talked up is if the Democrats will suffer electorally because of a shutdown – this on the theory that the GOP suffered when it triggered shut downs in the past…the only flaw in that theory is that the GOP never suffered at all because of government shut downs. Finally, if the Dems do shut it down, I can bet that Trump’s tactic will be the opposite of Obama’s. Obama tried to make it painful – to make people think that without government, life can’t be lived. Trump will try to minimize any effect of a shut down so that people will start to understand that a great deal of government is entirely pointless.
Blogs For Victory 
I can’t speak for the rest of the you, but I am worn out by the non stop 24 hour news cycle of angst, fear, and doom. The Democrats and their media (and yes, most of the media is firmly in their camp) have become obsessed with taking Trump down to the point of illegally disclosing tax returns on TV to do just that. They will not let the Russia story go, despite zero evidence of any wrong doing, and Nancy Pelosi among a few others have said that people will die if the ACA is repealed. MSNBC, NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NYT, LAT, etc., etc., are all in full blown, 24 hour fear mongering mode, and their poorly educated, over emotional base is lapping it all up.
I also had to laugh at the wizards of smart who stoked anxieties and predicted chaos with “snowmageddon”, but got it wrong. So they can’t accurately predict a snow storm just 3 days out, but are convinced that in 20 years the earth will be uninhabitable and anyone who disagrees with them is a science denier. And these are the people we have to live around. I need a drink.
It does get exhausting…OTOH, I think their continual attacks on Trump are reminding people that they still don’t like Obama…sales of “Worst” are still quite steady.
Just returned from a 6 day spring grandson fix in Kansas. I checked emails when we got there last Thursday and checked Google Maps once for a side trip, but otherwise abandoned the computer for the whole time, same with the TV. I know you can’t avoid the realities of life by simply ignoring them, but for a few days it works almost as well as alcohol.
We did catch some talk radio on the way home yesterday, including most of Rush’s show. Lots of discussion of repeal and replace of ObamaCare. It seems the opposing factions are just not talking to each other, as the description we heard Rand Paul give was completely out of phase with what Paul Ryan said. The more I hear the more I’m convinced that the best outcome at this point would be for the Republicans to fail to pass repeal or replace and just let ObamaCare implode, an outcome that is pretty much inevitable at this point. They can say, “we tried, but EVERY criticism was that every solution we offered would just make things worse, and the last thing we want to do is make things worse.” The Dems would have no response, because their fall-back position on virtually every one of their failed policies is, “well, at least we tried.”
Side note to Mark: your and Matt’s book is finally available for Nook, and I bought it and got through most of it while we were gone. My expectations were pretty high after all your comments about it, and it exceeded those expectations by a good margin. Exceptionally well researched and by far the most inclusive piece I’ve read on the Obama years. I thought I had followed Obama’s shredding of the Constitution and the rule of law pretty closely, but I was wrong. I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. It should be required reading in every political science class, and It should occupy a permanent place in Rush Limbaugh’s Stack of Stuff as a reference guide. If history treats him half as harshly as you and Matt did, Obama will STILL go down as the worst President in History.
It’s necessary to unplug every now and then, so good for you. About a month ago the wife and I went to Mazatlan and it felt really good to be on the beach and out of the news cycle for a few days. We also ate lunch a couple of the days at this nice little out door cafe by the beach and I jokingly asked our waiter if he still liked us Americanos, to which he laughed and said of course. I then asked him about the wall and his response kind of surprised me. He said that he hoped we would build the wall because as it is now, the open border creates chaos in his country. Valid point. I then proceeded to order another Pacifico! 🙂
Thanks, Spook – coming from you, that really means a lot. We did try very hard to make it worth reading. And we were continually astonished at what we found…plenty of e mails in the files which are generally, “can you believe that idiot did this!”. There’s more, of course – a lot wound up on the cutting room floor…either because we felt it a little bit redundant or we couldn’t source it sufficiently.
Tucker Carlson had a great observation last night when he called out NBC and their obsession with the Russia story and contention that it was an unprecedented influence and attempted sabotage of our electoral process. Yet it was NBC who leaked the TMZ Trump tapes to the WaPo just a few days before the election in a blatant attempt to take down the candidate they opposed which had much more impact than anything Russia has allegedly done.
And again, these are the people we have to live around.
More positive economic news.
Well thanks to Rachel Maddow, we now know that the rich are paying their fair share:
President Donald Trump earned $153 million and paid $36.5 million in income taxes in 2005, paying a roughly 25 percent effective tax rate…
Well at least some of the rich. Well known socialist Bernie Sanders fell short of that standard only paying 13%.
From the YCMTSU file:
Twelve Canadian church volunteers headed to New Jersey to help rebuild homes damaged by Hurricane Sandy were denied entry at the U.S. border after reportedly being told their work could take away American jobs.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Canada-Church-Volunteers-US-Border/2017/03/15/id/778859/