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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will be participating in a drag show as a guest judge for a reality TV series later this year.

This confirms quite a few of my suspicions about Nancy Botox.

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Of course not. That was then, this is TRUMP.

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Washington Metro officials pretended to be shocked when a Red Line train derailed due to a broken rail on Monday. In fact, the break should not and probably didn’t surprise any of them.

“It’s like, God, didn’t we do all of the fixing, the bad areas, SafeTrack?” rambled Metro’s board chair, Jack Evans. “All that stuff was intended to prevent stuff like this from happening.” Actually, Evans knows perfectly well that the SafeTrack work was superficial and the system still needs $15 billion to $25 billion of maintenance and rehabilitation work.

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The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Steve Sailer explains it all to you.

Last Thursday, Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) scheduled a meeting with the president to try to trick him into supporting their politically suicidal immigration bill. To their dismay, however, when they arrived they found that Trump had also invited realist immigration experts such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and the president’s speechwriter Stephen Miller.

In the ensuing debate, Durbin and Graham were demolished. So Durbin, his plot foiled, tried the underhanded ploy of asserting to the press, perhaps inaccurately, that Trump had used the now-notorious vulgarity to characterize Haiti.

Of course, Haiti ranks 163rd on the U.N.’s Human Development Index while Norway ranks first, so, as usual, what drives the establishment most crazy about Trump is his tendency to tell the rough truth.

This situation illustrates quite nicely the Standard Operating Procedure of the D.C. political class. Senators think that if they come to a President with a ‘bipartisan’ deal, he is ipso facto required to support it. A Senator balked in that expectation is totally entitled to act like a spoiled child and have a tantrum in the press. The press are totally entitled to use anything handy to trash a politician that they don’t like or who disagrees with them. Etc.

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Lindsey Graham, the Arlen Specter of the South, has been trying to ingratiate himself with President Trump, his former adversary. By doing so, Graham hopes to achieve his longtime dream of granting amnesty to illegal aliens.

One happy byproduct of the unfortunate “S***thole” controversy is that, in all likelihood, Graham’s friendship with the president is at an end. It’s over not because of that controversy, but because of what led to it. Simply stated, Graham tried to bamboozle Trump.

As Harry Truman once famously said, ‘If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.’ One of the distinguishing characteristics of politics, not just in America but almost anywhere, is that ‘friends’ of politicians will inevitably try to use that ‘friendship’ to gain some sort of advantage through the proxy use of that politician’s authority. This is a reversion to an earlier cultural type, still nearly universal in the Third World, where someone in power is expected to use that power, not for the general good, but for the particular good of that person’s ‘friends & relations’. One of the most significant aspects of ‘American exceptionalism’ is the weakening of this ancient expectation and its replacement by the expectation that public officials will act for the general good, not just that of their personal affinities.

Democrats, of course, are the primary proponents of preserving the traditional orientation, as any examination of that hoary Democrat institution, the metropolitan political machine, makes clear. This is, I suspect, one reason why the Democratic Party was the usual object of the affection of organized crime — they both have the same approach to the use of political power. (When was the last time you heard of the Mafia trying to steal an election for a Republican?)

Republicans, on the other hand, take their cues from the classical Roman republican tradition, in which the service fo the res publica, the ‘public thing’, was paramount over la cost rostra, ‘our thing’ (sorry for mixing languages). There are recorded instances of Roman fathers having their sons executed for theft and treason, which in any other ancient civilization would be considered insane. The Founding Fathers of the American Republic were, needless to say, thoroughgoing republicans, if not Republicans.

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Can’t wait to see how the Usual Suspects will spin this one.

UPDATE: Acosta Suggests WH Doctor Could Be Withholding Information About Trump’s Health

Journos Unable To Accept Results Of Trump’s Physical Exam

But He’s Crazy! Liberal Media Embarrass Themselves, Demand Doctor Insist Trump’s Mentally Ill

Normal people believe it when they see it. Proglodytes see it when they believe it.

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Yeah, everybody and his dog calling Trump a racist really got the Democrats what they wanted, didn’t it?

I am reminder of the tale of the Scorpion and the Frog.

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Cory Booker’s problem is that he doesn’t have enough name recognition to make him a Player in the Democrat power structure. This may be an attempt to raise his profile by being Mr Outrage, a niche in which Elizabeth Warren has so successfully accomplished.

This also lets him posture about his ‘blackness’, which isn’t as obvious as it is with, say, Maxine Waters. It’s always a problem for these you’d-never-know-they’re-black-if-they-didn’t-tell you folks.

Quiz — Find the black guy in this picture:

For reference, here is a picture of an actual black guy:

I’d be willing to bet money that Cory Booker has almost as many white great-grandparents as I do.

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I’m not sure what the legal theory would be behind such a move. Certainly there would be grounds form noncompliant local officials to be impeached, but most of them have at least the support of their local political establishments.

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In the Land of Fruits and Nuts, it is not allowable that one, by one’s actions, undermine the efforts of Democrats to build a permanent underclass dependent on government handouts.

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You’d think that the government would learn from experience, but the ‘war on drugs’ proves that they don’t.

When the Crust are dedicated to hunt down Heretics and Sinners, there is no such thing as ‘fact’, there is only dogma’.

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The rent is too damn high—so each year Congress appropriates billions of dollars to address the nation’s collective housing needs. The programs vary from loans to tax credits to straight-up subsidies, but a common feature is that federal taxpayers pony up the dough and then a motley collection of state-level politicians, financing agencies, and housing authorities decide how it’s spent. Can you guess where things go wrong?

In theory, oversight is provided by bureaucrats in Washington tracking every dollar and by local leaders increasing their re-election prospects by providing housing assistance to their constituents as effectively as possible. In practice, the feds turn a blind eye to inefficient uses of the funds while local officials gleefully engage in politically advantageous graft.

When the kids at tReason magazine aren’t lecturing us on behalf of proglodyte morality, they can do some good reporting.

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he City of Seattle probably didn’t expect pushback from Costco, seen by many on the left as retail’s “anti-Walmart,” after its “sugary drink” tax of 1.75 cents per ounce went into effect January 1. But that is exactly what has happened.

In moves the national press, which largely supports such taxes, has thus far ignored, Costco is itemizing the built-in cost of the tax on its Seattle store’s shelf tags, and informing customers that they won’t pay the tax if they shop at one of two other Costco stores outside Seattle’s city limits.

The use of taxation for ‘social engineering’ purposes, rather than for purely raising government revenue, is one of the characteristics of the Progressive era. It is an indulgence in economic ignorance beloved by activist politicians who are sure and certain that they know better how the common people ought to act than the people themselves do.

Of course, they are wrong. And unfortunately, it divides consumers into two classes: those who can afford to shop outside of the jurisdiction imposing the tax, and those who can’t. Hence it is ‘regressive’ in the purest sense, targeting the poor and being merely inconvenient for the not-poor.

It also is the root of ‘black markets’, because criminals are very adept at arbitraging these situations of government-imposed market distortion. I predict that the second effect of this tax (the first being non-poor people doing their shopping outside of the Seattle jurisdiction) will be lawbreakers smuggling untaxed ‘sugar drinks’ into the very areas from which politicians are trying to exclude them, thereby (a) canceling the effect of the tax, (b) avoiding any increase in tax revenue (because people aren’t paying the tax), and (c) encouraging a scofflaw attitude toward government. The whole history of tobacco taxes is rife with examples of this behavior, which politicians make a habit of ignoring, and the ‘war on drugs’ shows what happens at the extremes of such behavior.

This can only end badly for Seattle.

Steve Sailer brings the news that you probably won’t see in your local paper.

Asians, who are as numerous as blacks in Seattle public schools, have no color, apparently. They’re invisible-colored.

‘People of Color’ ™, of course, means black people (and not just any black people, but American black people; actual black people from, say, Africa don’t count).

It’s too bad Seattle doesn’t have any philanthropic billionaires to solve this problem.

Yup, it sure is. Perhaps they could import some from Texas.

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Eminent domain abuse has reared its ugly head in East Harlem. As Ginger Adams Otis reports in the New York Daily News, city officials plan to seize a family-owned dry cleaning business and then hand the forcibly vacated land to a wealthy private developer.

Democrats talk a good fight when it comes the the poor and downtrodden, but it’s all hot air.

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Drainin’ the swamp, drainin’ the swamp….

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Yeah, that First Congressional District looks kinda suspicious. And the 12th is right behind it.

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Yet Another Crooked Black Female Politician. Seems as if there’s a lot of that going around.

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Watch the swamp drain right in front of your eyes.

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Dude, you want to live in hipster-land, you get to pay hipster prices.

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And the Trump just keeps on winning.

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But of course you have to realize that Trump has accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in his first year in office.

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The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

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Further adventures of the Horndog in Chief.

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Hey, black people, hows that voting-for-Democrats-all-the-time thing working out for you?

UPDATE: JFK’s Nephew Says Rahm Emanuel Plans To Kick Black People Out Of Chicago

That would certainly solve a lot of his problems.

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The standard political attitude of ‘Do something, even if it’s wrong!’ has repercussions.  Walter Williams is one of the most prominent free-market economists alive today, and he’s seen it all.

The Federal Reserve Board controls our money supply. Its governors are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate and serve 14-year staggered terms.

They have the power to cripple an economy, as they did during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Their inept monetary policy threw the economy into the Great Depression, during which real output in the United States fell nearly 30 percent and the unemployment rate soared as high as nearly 25 percent.

The problem with central control of the money supply is that when they get it wrong, they get it wrong for everybody.

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Great. All you illegal aliens, go to Mexifornia. Go on. Shoo.

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Hee hee hee.

Why we’re giving those genocides money has always astounded me.

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Another Democrat Blue State boondoggle bites the dust.

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God forbid we should let them reproduce.

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Back when then-president Barack Obama used to lament and lament some more that the United States no longer builds amazing infrastructure projects like the Golden Gate Bridge (setting aside for the moment that it wasn’t the federal government that created America’s finest span), buzzkills like us would point out that A) the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 included a whopping $105 billion for infrastructure, characterized by Obama at the time as “the largest new investment in our nation’s infrastructure since Eisenhower built an Interstate Highway System in the 1950s,” and B) “Every dollar that governments spend on every level gets inflated by contracting rules, social engineering, environmental aspirations, and sops to public sector unions.”

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The prize for the most wasteful post-9/11 initiative arguably should go to FirstNet—a whole new agency set up to provide a telecommunications system exclusively for firefighters, police, and other first responders. They would communicate on bandwidth worth billions of dollars in the commercial market but now reserved by the Federal Communications Commission for FirstNet.

FirstNet is in such disarray that 15 years after the problem it is supposed to solve was identified, it is years from completion—and it may never get completed at all. According to the GAO, estimates of its cost range from $12 billion to $47 billion, even as advances in digital technology seem to have eliminated the need to spend any of it.

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TOTAL — $24,485,383,599

That would be a good start.

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Thank God for those strict gun control laws in Chicago, or the place would look like Texas.

One-Third Of Increase In US Homicide Rate Because Of Chicago Neighborhoods

Being governed by Democrats will do that for you.

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Republican Sen. Rand Paul claimed Saturday that the U.S. has spent around $300,000 to fund a clown school in Argentina.

“They spent $324,015 to pay for a clown school in Argentina,” Paul, from Kentucky, tweeted as part of his annual “Airing of Grievances” to highlight what he considers wasteful government spending.

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Liz Harrington at the Washington Free Beacon finds interesting line items in the budgets at the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Even under a Trump appointee, the NEH is still funding liberal researchers.

Eric Mandelbaum, a philosophy professor at the City University of New York, will receive a $50,000 grant for “Propaganda and Belief in the Modern World,”  a book-length study on the “psychology of belief formation.”

Mandelbaum coauthored a paper in 2015 entitled, “Believing Without Reason, or: Why Liberals Shouldn’t Watch Fox News.” In his beginning section, “Believing Badly,” Mandelbaum expressed shock that about half of Americans believe in ghosts, and believing in God is another example that “people believe very odd things.”

Actually, that’s good advice. Their heads might explode. As Scott Adams says, ‘Context is the enemy of idiots everywhere.’

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The official says the US is telling the world: ‘Unless you vote with us, we’re not going to give you money’

I’m good with that.

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While the crowning achievement of the year was clearly the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, it is worth celebrating the fact that the Senate confirmed 12 Circuit Court judges this year —  the largest number of  appellate judges confirmed during the first year of any president in history (beating out John Kennedy and Richard Nixon by one).

…

Moreover, while Trump has now set the record for circuit court confirmations during a president’s first year in office, with only 19 total judges confirmed during his first year, he lags far behind other presidents  — including George W. Bush (28), Bill Clinton (28, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg), Ronald Reagan (41, including Sandra Day O’Connor), Jimmy Carter (31), and Richard Nixon (25)  —  in terms of the total number of judges confirmed.

But of course you have to remember that Trump has accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in his first year in office.

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Thank God for those strict gun control laws in Chicago, or the place would look like Texas.

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And the hits just keep on comin’.

Trump’s administration is making every previous administration looks like a bunch of slackers.

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Actions have consequences.

You mess with the bull, you get the horns every time.

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Yesterday was not a proud day for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). The agency spent close to $800 million of federal funds on a so-called high-speed rail project between Seattle and Portland–only “so-called” because top speeds would be just 79 mph, which is conventional rail. Much of the money was spent upgrading existing tracks to give passenger trains a shorter (but less scenic) route through and around Tacoma.

As you probably know, the very first train to use this route derailed on an overpass over Interstate 5, blocking half the freeway and killing at least three, and probably more, passengers. It so happens that Mayor Don Anderson of Lakewood, Washington–about 10 miles north of the crash–warned WSDOT on December 5 that it was not taking safety seriously enough. “This project was never needed and endangers our citizens,” he declared.

The fascination with which ‘urban planners’ hold collectivist forms of transportation has always puzzled me.

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Holdout Republican Sen. Bob Corker finally announced he would support the Republican tax bill in an upcoming vote — after the proposal was tweaked in a way that could personally enrich him.

Corker claims he has not read the mammoth bill being sped through the legislature and has no idea how the language, which was not in previous Senate versions of the bill, got into the plan.

Gee, however did that get in there?

The provision reduces taxes on income from real-estate LLCs, according to International Business Times, which broke the story.

Corker, a South Carolina real-estate mogul, made $7 million off such income last year, while President Trump raked in between $41 million and $68 million, according to the outlet.

Democrats have been doing this for years (yeah, I’m looking at you, Senator Reid), so it’s no surprise that Republicans are lining up for their turn at the trough.

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“I had a tier one operator, meaning a top of the top special operations guy on detail from the National Security Council … come up to me in maybe week five of the administration and say, ‘Sir, you have no idea, no idea how the morale amongst our forces have skyrocketed because we are no longer micromanaged…and we are allowed to do our job, and it is clear the president trusts us,” he said.

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Apparently the Magic Negro has some skeletons still in the closet.

This from the Politico, a fairly reliable member of the DemLegHump Media.

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I think this is what Franken was counting on by announcing his upcoming resignation but not actually, you know, doing it. Historically Democrat politicians have circled the wagons whenever any of their number have been caught with a hand in the cookie jar, and Franken knows this as well as anybody.

The real question is How Low Can They Go, upon which depends whether Franken will weasel out of it.

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Wealthy New York City elites are preparing to flee the state because the Republican tax bill is going to make them face the full brunt of Mayor Bill de Blasio and Democratic state leadership’s tax rates.

They may lose a certain percentage, but there are enough rich people who want to live in New York City no matter what that I doubt it will make a noticeable difference.

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The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reversed a former President Barack Obama-era policy Thursday, that held employers responsible for violations committed by their subcontractors.

Another nail in the coffin of Obama’s statist legacy.

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But you have to remember that Trump has accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in his first year in office.

One of my beefs with the Bushes is that they didn’t do enough with judges.