Thursday roundup

San Francisco hates the free market - today's edition. How's this for some nanny-state presumptiveness?

Once upon a time, I had a job with a company-owned cafeteria in the building. While I could still bring my lunch if I wanted, the cafeteria had some really great food at a really low price. As someone who prefers a real meal over a sandwich in most instances, I was a fan.

Now, however, it seems such places are a problem in San Francisco, where frankly everything can be a problem if it tries hard enough.

As the San Francisco Examiner reports: "Two city legislators on Tuesday are expected to announce legislation banning on-site workplace cafeterias in an effort to promote and support local restaurants."

Sponsored by Supervisor Ahsha Safai and Supervisor Aaron Peskin, the measure seeks to use the zoning laws to bar companies from having on-site cafeterias, because the economy or something.

"Peskin said the measure was inspired by tech companies like Twitter and Airbnb, which are widely known to have access to dining in their own buildings, depriving nearby restaurants of the dollars usually spent by nearby workers. The measure has the support of Gwyneth Borden, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association and other local merchants."

Here's an idea, you economically ignorant totalitarians: How about letting people make the lunch decisions they want to?

That agreement announced by European Commission prez Jean-Claude Juncker and the Very Stable Genius certainly got the stock market all excited, but, like the "agreement" with Kim Jong-un, it's long on broad intentions and short on concrete plans. 

This one makes my head hurt. It pits good guys with understandable points against each other - namely, Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise against Paul Ryan. Ryan doesn't support the move to impeach Rod Rosenstein. Of course, comment threads under articles about it are full of "Ryan-can't-step-down-a-minute-too-soon-the-weasly-little-RINO" type sneering. But have these folks really thought about the distraction and time-eating factors? Don't these folks want to get Kavanaugh confirmed before the midterms? I think Allahpunidt at Hot Air has the accurate take:

. . . a bit of virtue-signaling by the Freedom Caucus to Trump’s base to broadcast just how much they hate Trump’s chief inquisitor on Russiagate. Document production is window dressing for what this is really about.

Then again, Mueller, who was hired by Rosenstein, has been at this for over a year and a half and there's still not a shred of evidence of collusion.

Facebook is having a terrible, very bad, no good week.

Daren Jonescu observes how a Trump-shill site covers a North Korea development - that took place months before the Kim-Trump summit:

. . . for the cultists, who never let an opportunity to make fools of themselves go to waste, this story of Kim dismantling a defunct testing site — which he promised to do in Singapore presumably because it was a defunct site — is yet another chance to ring dem bells. Hence Monica Showalter, an editor at American Thinker, dutifully wrote a blog post entitled, “So the great Singapore summit ‘nothingburger’…has led to North Korea quietly dismantling its arsenal.”

Dismantling its arsenal! That’s quite a claim. So she has evidence that the North Koreans have begun to destroy missiles, hand over nuclear materials, and the like?

Well, no, not exactly that. Actually, not even approximately that. In fact, not even anything remotely related to that. But if you’re an ardent enough worshipper, everything looks like a Sign, so you tend to get a little ahead of yourself: “Just call him super-statesman, peaceniks,” Showalter concludes, with a gushing school-girlishness that would be embarrassing to witness were the sentiment not shared by millions of other biological adults, many of them married men.

And then there is today’s news, from Reuters:

North Korea is continuing to produce fuel for nuclear bombs in spite of its pledge to denuclearize, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday, even as he argued that the Trump administration was making progress in talks with Pyongyang. 

Asked at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing whether North Korea was still making bomb fuel, Pompeo responded to Democratic Senator Ed Markey by saying: “Yes, that’s correct … Yes, they continue to produce fissile material.”

Pompeo declined to respond when asked whether North Korea was continuing to pursue submarine-launched ballistic missiles or whether its nuclear program was advancing generally.

He said he would be happy to answer the latter question if necessary in a classified setting, but suggested public statements on the issue would not help “a complex negotiation with a difficult adversary.”

Sounds a little different from Showalter’s idolatrous visions of sugar-plums from the day before, doesn’t it? I’m not worried about her, or any of the rest of the cultists, as I’m sure none of this more realistic reporting can crack through a shell that hard, so they will all sleep peacefully, secure in their fantasy world of Trump’s super-statesmanship. Not to worry, they tell themselves: North Korea is dismantling its nuclear arsenal, Vladimir Putin is a great ally in the fight to save Christianity and traditional values, Trump is winning the trade war that isn’t happening, bailouts are a great example of the kind of business sense that only a billionaire can understand, and Hillary isn’t president. God is in his heaven, bathed in orange light.

Fox News stands in solidarity with CNN over the matter of CNN reporter Caitlan Collins being told she was not welcome at the Trump-Juncker presser.