Thursday, July 26, 2018

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.





11 comments:

  1. "Not a shred of evidence..."? You still insist on repeating, over and over again, this preposterous claim, while refusing to defend it when challenged. Exactly what would it take to move you off this credibility-destroying position? Personal viewing of the pee tape?

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    1. Putin wearing an "I Just Voted" sticker, maybe?

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  2. No, the onus is on your type to demonstrate that there was collusion.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Big explosion the other day at our embassy in Bejing! And what rough prosecutorial beast slouches towards the Hill to become a star? Benghazi sure propelled your ilk's hero Trey Gowdy to prosecutorial super-stardom. Too many lawyers, too many investigations that cost a lot of money and seem to go nowhere but never end. Then again, if it's your types doing the prosecuting....

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  5. No, to initiate an investigation is where the "shred of evidence" rule applies.

    I would strongly suggest that you spend a moment that you would have wasted on The American Thinker and spend it instead reading the unusually detailed indictments handed down last week, wherein you can peruse a whole basket full of "shreds", gathered conveniently for easy consumption. Add to that the fact that Mueller hasn't even started releasing any charges yet on whatever the five defendants who have pleaded guilty and are cooperating about. (Yeah, awkward sentence, but you get my drift.)

    No, signing on with the Regressive Knuckle-Dragging Caucus and their attempts to discredit the Mueller investigation, and especially pinning that thin reed upon the horror of a couple college educated public servants expressing a preference in an upcoming presidential election, strikes me as a foolish idea.

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  6. What do you see as the ultimate "goal" of the Russia investigation(s?), Rick?

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    1. That's an inappropriate question, because investigations are not supposed to have a predetermined "goal". What they require is "probable cause", and in the case of the FBI, they are not just charged with a criminal investigation mission. They are also responsible for national security investigations on American soil. Russian infiltration of a campaign and other activities intended to influence our elections is an example of a perfectly appropriate area open to such an investigation.

      The Trump Tower meeting between the top echelon of the campaign with a Garage Band of Russians in response to an email promising ill-gotten dirt on Hillary, would, by itself, even without the seventy-one (71) other known contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives, and without the candidate himself naming as a senior adviser, Carter Page, who had been under investigation and surveillance since 2013 as a probable Russian asset, even absent those damning "shreds" and much more, the Trump Tower meeting alone justified opening the investigation.

      Cheers.

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    2. A correction, not all 72 contacts involved "campaign officials", but includes contacts with non-payroll folks associated with the campaign...like surrogate Beauregard Sessions.

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  7. Lock em all up, as the parlance currently goes!

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  8. Investigations always have goals. If only to get the goods (aka probable cause) on someone(s). And how would you like to be referred to as only your middle name? That's Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, who allegedly recently championed the lock her up chant amongst a crowd of high schoolers.

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