John Hinderaker at Powerline figures it up.

The two hottest commodities in the Democratic Party are Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Earlier this week, Omar exhibited stunning ignorance in her hostile questioning of Elliott Adams Abrams. Similarly, Ocasio-Cortez has often displayed a surprising lack of knowledge for someone who apparently is a college graduate. Don’t get me started on the “Green New Socialism.” But she outdid herself yesterday.

I think the best comment was by Tom Smith of the Right Coast:

Nobody seems to have made the point that AOC is not so dumb that she can’t count votes. A bunch of new voters in her district who are making about $150K per year are probably not going to vote for a far left former barista to represent them. She knows who’s putting money in her tip jar.

True dat.

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Easy to say, harder to do. Calling Jonny Ive….

Blast from the past.

The United States is in a perpetual state of national emergency.

Thirty separate emergencies, in fact.

An emergency declared by President Jimmy Carter on the 10th day of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 remains in effect almost 35 years later.

A post-9/11 state of national emergency declared by President George W. Bush — and renewed six times by President Obama — forms the legal basis for much of the war on terror.

Tuesday, President Obama informed Congress he was extending another Bush-era emergency for another year, saying “widespread violence and atrocities” in the Democratic Republic of Congo “pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.”

Those emergencies, declared by the president by proclamation or executive order, give the president extraordinary powers — to seize property, call up the National Guard and hire and fire military officers at will.

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It’s your dog, Charlie Brown. I don’t see a lot of room for a Democrat Governor, even one who can be bought, complaining about Democrat ideologues doing what Democrat ideologues do best.

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As usual, Republicans got rolled.

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Another look at the California Rail Fail.

How did California’s dream of high-speed rail turn into the nightmare “train to nowhere?” Here are five big reasons the state’s high-speed rail project failed to pick up speed.

Joel Kotkin looks at the California rail fail.

Governor Gavin Newsom has canceled the bulk of the state’s long-proposed high-speed line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, leaving only a tail of the once-grand project—a connection between the Central Valley’s Merced and Bakersfield, not exactly major metropolitan areas. “Let’s be real,” Newsom said in his first State of the State address. “The project, as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long. There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency.” The project’s cost, originally pegged at $33 billion, ballooned over the last decade to an estimated $77 billion (or maybe as high as $98 billion), with little reason to assume that the cost inflation would end there.

This effectively puts an end to former governor Jerry Brown’s “legacy” project, the lone tangible accomplishment for a second gubernatorial stint that had been far better at raising taxes and imposing draconian legislation than building things. Brown wanted to build his beloved train in a state with some of the nation’s worst roads (despite its second-highest gas taxes), a deteriorating water-delivery system, and massive pension debt. With Brown finally in retirement, Newsom took the opportunity to free up billions of dollars that his Democratic allies would like to spend in other ways.

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Democrat logic.

Perhaps Muslim logic, too.

UPDATE: Ilhan Omar in action: A sickening disgrace

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Those of us who don’t have to pay California taxes are grateful that we don’t have to pay California taxes.

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But will they learn from this? Of course not.

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I hope they enjoy watching their states’ economies tank.

Joel Kotkin points out how California is doing it wrong.

Newsom has promised to have 3.5 million homes built over the next seven years to solve the problem. That is, conservatively stated, more than 2.6 million that would be built at the current rate of construction.

This effort is doomed, though, since it fails to address the fundamental cause: regulations that block expansion of housing on the urban fringe, a housing area that serves to lower the price of both urban and suburban land. NIMBYs, who often block new projects, may contribute to the shortage, but by far the biggest problem lies in regulations, many issued from Sacramento, restricting lower-density housing construction on the urban fringe.

Former World Bank principal urban planner Alain Bertaud has pointed out that these regulations raise land prices and exacerbate housing shortages that particularly affect the poor. Before such policies were adopted, California’s housing prices relative to incomes were not far above the national average, even though the state’s population was expanding far more rapidly than today.

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I’m glad to hear it.

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Yeah, that sounds like about the most useful thing Ellison could do with his time.

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The inevitable effect of which will be to increase unemployment and destroy small business, especially in Chicago.

Plenty of room down in Texas, y’all.

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The Antiplanner has called streetcars an intelligence test: anyone who thinks they are a good idea is not smart enough to make decisions about urban transportation. Now Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has revealed a new intelligence test, this one dealing with high-speed rail.

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The problem is that Democrats ARE attempting to establish a ‘religious test’, as they have with the various ‘gay wedding cake’ cases; they just cast it in the form of ‘do you believe X’ rather than ‘are you religion X’.

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I propose that we send each Democrat member of Shit’s committee a witch’s hat.

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Bernie is a squirmer.

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You can’t make this stuff up.

I’m sure the smugglers are gearing up and rubbing their hands.

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You know, as he does.

If all of the people who were convinced that they have the right to determine how you ought to spend your money were gone, the world would be (a) far less populated and (b) far more pleasant.

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Hey, people vote there. Do they vote in Somalia? Not that I’ve ever heard.

I laugh out loud when Islam is called a ‘religion of peace’.

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Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) may shed more than $40 billion worth of power purchase agreements after the California utility was driven into bankruptcy by liabilities for sparking deadly wildfires, The Wall Street Journal reports.

PG&E wants the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco to rule whether the company must honor $42 billion worth of contracts with about 350 different energy suppliers, mostly solar and wind plants.

The court’s decision could have a major impact on California’s renewable energy industry and power makeup. Many green energy suppliers only do business with PG&E, California’s largest utility. Shedding those contracts would likely drive those companies under and cripple California’s ability to meet energy goals set by the state government.

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When I was a kid, everyone knew the unofficial motto of the U.S. Postal Service, which was inscribed on the principal New York City post office: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” I think it was true, once, too. But not any more: Wednesday mail delivery canceled:

The U.S. Postal Service announced late Tuesday afternoon that deliveries and other services in Minnesota and several other states will be suspended Wednesday in the wake of a deep freeze unmatched for nearly a quarter-century.

The National Weather Service is forecasting a high of minus-17 in the Twin Cities on Wednesday, with windchills tumbling to the minus-50s.

So I won’t get any mail tomorrow. I will, however, be in my office, like most private sector workers.

Ace of Spades dishes the dirt.

Actually this was evident before, not that Arbiter of Truth and “The National Hall-Monitor” (as I think Instapundit calls it) CNN noticed.

But now an government ethics commission officially rules he took bribes gifts, and finds that there’s probable cause of a crime.

Possibly as a result, CNN has offered him a job as a ‘political commenter’.

“And I say to you: Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity; that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.”

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Congresswoman #BitterBeerFace has her eyes on your wallet and her fingers are itching.

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Don’t think of it as selling out; think of it as buying in.

Never was an American politician more aptly named.

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Both sides can play the ‘resistance’ game.

(Do you ever ask yourself what The Guardian is guarding? I’d like to know.)

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Let’s compare another prominent case of alleged lying to Congress with Stone’s treatment.

On March 12, 2013, Gen. James R. Clapper, Jr., President Obama’s director of the Office Of National Intelligence, testified under oath before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Responding to a question from Oregon Sen. Ron Wyder on whether the U.S. government was collecting “any type of data at all” from American citizens, Clapper paused and said, “No, sir. … Not wittingly.”

Three months later, when Edward Snowden dumped millions of stolen government documents into the public domain, it became abundantly clear that Clapper lied. The U.S. government was, in fact, vacuuming up details about virtually every electronic communication by every American citizen. When asked directly about his answer to Wyden, Clapper said that his response was “the least untruthful” answer he could give.

Parse Clapper’s response. “Least untruthful” means not truthful. Not truthful means a lie.

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Foreign asylum seekers make up the vast majority of Portland, Maine’s population growth and occupy nearly all of the space in its shelters, pushing the city’s abilities to provide resources, according to reports.

Portland has seen a steady growth in population since 2010, according to the World Population Review. Much of that population growth, however, has resulted from foreign-born persons, most of African descent, traveling to the city to seek asylum, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

Between 2011 and 2016, foreign-born persons accounted for over 75 percent of the city’s growth, according to a city report, WSJ reported.

Rule by Democrats can be expensive.

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The most entertaining aspect of this kind of political activity is that the burden falls on the fools who (a) vote for these clowns and (b) stick around to have their pockets picked to pay for it.

A self-correcting problem.

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Parents from Indiana to South Carolina who expect to have a voice in what their children are taught in public schools find that more difficult, state lawmakers and policy analysts say, because the federal government has overstepped constitutional boundaries and interjected itself in state and local affairs.

The problem with pushing for national uniformity in an area by regulating it at the federal level is that of ‘capture’ by the federal regulatory bureaucracy by a single point of view that may not accord with the point of view of the general citizenry. Of course, that’s the prime motivation by most special interest groups that push for federalization of a question. Prohibition is the classic poster child for this approach, both in how it can succeed without true public support and how it will inevitably fail, as all programs fail that the people themselves refuse to follow.

If a whole lot of people break a certain law, it’s a good sign that the law itself probably ought not to be a law. Unfortunately, the self-righteous are rarely persuaded by this empirical reasoning. It is enough for them to see a certain course of action as being detrimental to those who choose it to justify their substituting their ‘obviously superior’ choice, even by force, on the ‘obviously defective’ choices of their targets. This never works except superficially. As Scott Adams pointed out in a recent Periscope episode, there is no way to break an addict of his addiction if the addict in question prefers that addiction to clean life. It just can’t be done without close incarceration of the person in question, and it will work only so long as that incarceration is maintained.

If freedom means anything, it means the freedom to fail, the freedom to screw yourself up if that’s what you choose to do. That unpleasant truth is why socialism and other forms of totalitarianism are so popular.

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In the latest example of the liberal broadcast networks burying the scandals Democratic politicians, ABC, CBS, and NBC ran away at full speed from Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who was forced to step down from key posts Wednesday following accusations she mishandled a rape allegation by a female staffer. This, after they pushed aside the breaking news last week.

“Democratic Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee, of Texas, is stepping down from two major roles as she fights off criticism of her handling of a sexual assault claimed by a former aide,” reported anchor Bret Baier during Wednesday’s Special Report on the Fox News Channel. “Jackson Lee is giving up the chairmanship of a key House Judiciary subcommittee. She is also resigning as chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.”

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The periscope itself is not the rotating tube most people think of thanks to Hollywood movies. Nowadays, the Pilot reported, subs are equipped with two photonics masts that rotate 360 degrees. High-resolution cameras send back images that are displayed on large monitors that everyone in the control room can see.

“The Navy got together and they asked a bunch of J.O.s and junior guys, ‘What can we do to make your life better?’” said Lt. j.g. Kyle Leonard, the USS John Warner’s assistant weapons officer. “And one of the things that came out is the controls for the scope. It’s kind of clunky in your hand; it’s real heavy.”

In an effort to cut costs, Lockheed Martin and Navy officials were looking at off-the-shelf technology, and for crew members who grew up playing video games, the answer was simple. The Xbox controller typically costs less than $30. The Pilot’s report said the photonic mast handgrip and imaging control panel cost about $38,000.

Rather convincing evidence that our military procurement process is horribly broken.

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The mayor of Gordon, Alabama, was removed from office last week after a jury found him guilty on two felony counts of absentee ballot fraud. Both he and his one-time constituents are learning firsthand the high price of voter fraud.

The Associated Press piece on which most news articles you can find through an internet search didn’t mention what party he belonged to, so I bet you can guess what it is.

Need another hint? Elbert Melton is black. Now can you guess?

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Gee, I wonder why?

Experts quoted in the story ascribe the flight to several reasons, not the least of which is the reduction of the local and state tax deduction. People with the kind of wealth we’re talking about often have more than one home and can go live in Florida where the taxes are more manageable. Financial advisors are recommending their high net worth clients to move out of state if possible to avoid the tax burden and many are taking their advice.

Oh, yeah.

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President Donald Trump brought up House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s multimillion-dollar vineyard Friday to criticize her for planning to travel out of the country during the shutdown after he banned her from using military aircraft for the trip Thursday.

“Why would Nancy Pelosi leave the Country with other Democrats on a seven day excursion when 800,000 great people are not getting paid,” Trump wrote on Twitter Friday. “Also, could somebody please explain to Nancy [and] her ‘big donors’ in wine country that people working on farms (grapes) will have easy access in!”

Pelosi and her husband own a California vineyard and mansion worth at least $5 million that brings in thousands of dollars in grape sales each year, according to TIME Inc.’s Money magazine. California’s “recruitment of agricultural guest workers has grown sevenfold” since 2011, and it ranks fifth among states hiring for foreign workers, reported The Los Angeles Times.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline dishes the dirt.

Sen. Kamala Harris styles herself a “progressive prosecutor.” But Harris wasn’t nearly progressive enough for Lara Bazelon, a law professor and former director of the Loyola Law School Project for the [allegedly] Innocent in Los Angeles.

In a New York Times op-ed, Bazelon rips Harris for her “regressive” conduct and positions during her time as a district attorney in San Francisco and then California’s attorney general,

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Apparently Cloud People don’t have to follow the same rules as Dirt People.

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When is a government shutdown not a shutdown? When there’s money available.

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Trump sent a letter to Pelosi informing her that she would not be allowed to use military aircraft to travel to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan for a “public relations event” during the shutdown. The president added that Pelosi would be allowed to fly commercial to make the trip if she so chooses.

Pelosi’s dick isn’t long enough to get into a pissing contest with Donald Trump.

Read it.

And then when the shut-down ends, they’ll get back pay, so what’s not to like? Get a government job!

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Congresswoman #BitterBeerFace seems to think quite highly of herself.

Somebody needs to let her know that any hedge fund manager on Wall Street could have her whacked for what he pays for Starbucks for one year, and the only reason no one has done that is because she isn’t worth it.

Read it.

Today is the third anniversary of a particularly proud moment US history in which our President Obama smashed Pablo Escobar’s personal record for most cash plastic-wrapped on shipping palettes in a single delivery. Four hundred million dollars in mixed currencies arrived in Tehran at the same time that the departure of a plane with four Americans held hostage was coincidentally delayed.

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‘Nice government job you got there. Would be a shame for anything to happen to it.’

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‘Constituent Services’ is the branch of Congressional administration designed to give the appearance that your Congresscritter cares what you think without actually bothering him/her/it with your actual opinions (unless, of course, that opinion is accompanied by a large check, the larger the better).

To cut it down to its essence:

1. The unpaid intern opens the letter; determines if it’s someone mildly important or unimportant, and just enough to know what they’re talking about.
2. Based on those two data points he routes it to the appropriate LC or LA
3. The LC or LA reads the letter just enough to know if the writer is ‘for’ or ‘against’
4. The LC or LA sends a form letter.

This piece examines how that process can be automated to make sure that no public employee is ever bothered  by the opinions of unimportant (i.e. non-donor) citizens.

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There seems to be a common thread here. The foreign policy establishment doesn’t want to strike at Iran, so (reportedly) we don’t have contingency plans to do so, and a request for such plans is deemed “mind boggling.” The foreign policy establishment doesn’t want to withdraw forces from Syria, so (reportedly) Trump’s team is caught short when Trump announces a withdrawal, and Trump is accused of being “erratic,” as the Post puts it.

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The chief functional difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats never forget which side their on, and some Republicans often lose track. Sadly, those people often wind up in the Republican ‘leadership’.

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The Department of Health and Human Services created rules allowing employers to opt out of birth control coverage due to religious or moral objections. Employers otherwise have to offer health insurance that covers a range of birth control options, from the pill to intrauterine devices to emergency contraception, at no cost to patients.

The decision to block the rules from taking effect was issued Sunday by Judge Haywood Gilliam, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama and previously blocked an interim version of the exemptions.

Stalin reputedly once said that it didn’t matter who voted, it mattered who counted the votes. Similarly one might with equal justice say that it doesn’t matter what the law is, what matters is how it is enforced.

The Deep State is everywhere. For evil to triumph it is merely necessary for judges to pick oppression over freedom.

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Of course he will. He’s falling behind in the Pander-Bear race.