♦ On Monday March 13th former president Barack Obama unexpectedly flies alone to Hawaii (link)

Obama returned to one of his regular stops for dinner, Buzz’s Original Steak House in Lanikai. The former president was seen with a much smaller entourage than his last visit, though it still includes a Secret Service detail. (link)

♦ On Tuesday March 14th Obama played golf and went to dinner:

“Tuesday evening, the former president dined with his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and friends in a private room at Noi Thai Cuisine at Royal Hawaiian Center.” (link)

♦ On Wednesday March 15th – Hawaii’s U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson issued a block of President Trump’s travel ban.  A 43-page ruling within 2 hours of hearing: (more…)

If the media is wondering why they have lost credibility with the larger U.S. electorate they only need to look at the fake news outrage du jour surrounding President Trump and a visit from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Take a look at this tweet from the Saint Louis Dispatch surrounding an article pushing a story that President Trump refused to shake the hand of Chancellor Merkel:

Literally seconds before that image was captured the following picture was taken:
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A Reuters filing en route to Asia showcases the bitterness, anger and seething rage of U.S. journalists who have been forced to fly First-Class Commercial to cover Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s Asia trip.
State Department correspondents are used to the exclusive wide-body private charters of the U.S. federal government’s airline fleet.  Previous heads of the Department of State have flown aboard Air Force 3.  Normally a Boeing 757.  At the very worst Air Force 3 would be a C17 Globemaster.
However, T-Rex is taking a smaller jet to Asia and only one journalist accompanies him.  To make matters exponentially worse, T-Rex did not select a journalist from the corporate stable of the refined and pedigreed media elites.

We can only imagine how Andrea Mitchell must be seething at having to take simple first-class commercial flight accommodations with ordinary people.  The scope of the almost unimaginable horror she has to face will soon pour from her pursed and vengeful lips.  We can predict a retaliatory report soon from the wrath of the ignored elitist within NBC.  This shall be, as they say, epic.
Secretary Tillerson has rebuked customs and norms.  The traveling correspondents will have to pass through customs and passport checks as if they are ordinary travelers.  There is a very real possibility no-one will recognize them or care diligently for their very individual and specific needs.
Can you imagine Mrs. Alan Greenspan flying all the way to Asia from the Eastern Seaboard and having to do that on a commercial flight?  My God, have we really dropped our standards of decency that far… (more…)

Taken in the abstract, the ridiculous claim of the fake documentary filmmaker Jason Pollock (unhinged version seen here) seems like the typical leftist approach at manufacturing controversy in an effort for financial gain. St Louis prosecutor Robert McCulloch responds here.  Outline article here.
Wrongful death lawsuits are often aided by public pressure, and the opinion of the public creating that pressure is frequently manipulated by the media; ergo there’s a natural connection between the professionally aggrieved and the media who sell the cause of the grievance.

However, beyond the abstract there’s a network of affiliated political interests who also stimulate the individual events in order to promote their own highly politicized endeavors.
That’s where people like George Soros and the various Democrat Organizations step in to fund the processes of the aggrieved.  The individual events become the tinder for the larger fires of national political manipulation.
So it may not be entirely disconnected that at the EXACT same time Jason Pollock is selling his fake and misleading documentary, another familiar face shows up in Dallas Texas to sell another race-based lawsuit: (more…)

In the largest measure, the basic problem is in 2009 Harry Reid passed the ObamaCare legislation in the Senate with 60 votes.  The House then passed the exact same bill, and the Democrats moved to immediate reconciliation to remove the House concerns (Gator-Aid, Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase etc.).
In 2017 the Republican congress are attempting to repeal and replace that ObamaCare legislation with only 52 Senate votes available, well, maybe.
Unfortunately for the GOP there are not even 52 votes for repeal.  Portman, Thune, Collins, Murkowski, Graham, McCain, Blunt, Cochran, Cornyn, Hatch, McConnell and others, are not necessarily on board; that’s 11. (Leaving only 41).
No amount of byzantine rule changes surrounding “reconciliation” are going to overcome that factual vote hurdle.  In 2009 Senator Reid started with 60 votes.  In 2017 Senator McConnell starts with 52.

So anything coming from the House of Representatives has to keep this reality in mind.  Even if support or opposition is based on ideological principle, it still has to pass – or it’s moot.
There’s no doubt the Paul Ryan proposal holds the worst U.S. CoC aspects demanded by Tom Donohue.  Heck, Donohue poured a lot of lobbying money into the entire architecture in ’09/’10 and he’s paid republicans in congress hundreds of millions to make sure his interests in keeping ObamaCare around are protected.  Ryan is big GOPe and he’s supported by the Big Club.
And, as much as Paul Ryan is beholden to Donohue to retain some form of ObamaCare, so too are the Rand Paul / Ted Cruz types paid by billionaires like Cary Katz (Conservative Review); who want an abject repeal without compromise. (more…)

Sketchy details. Jihadist attack possible. At least five people have been injured when two men armed with axes went on a rampage at Dusseldorf’s main train station.  (Bild Article)

(Via BBC) The attack happened at about 21:00 local time on Thursday (20:00 GMT). Two arrests were made, and police have not ruled out the possibility that more attackers are still at large. There are no reports of fatalities. Images shared on social media from the scene showed that the station had been cordoned off by police, and helicopters hovered overhead. Witnesses reported seeing injured people lying on the ground. (more from BBC)
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Credit Suisse is a stock rating entity which generates a sliding scale for future stock valuations based on evaluations of brand sentiment.  The scale runs from -100 to +100 with zero as a “hold” or “take no position” recommendation.
Back in January Starbucks announced they were going to stand in opposition to President Trump; and to display their virtuous immigration bona fides they announced their intention to hire 10,000 refugees as employees in lieu of current American applicants for employment.
An almost immediate backlash began as pro-USA consumers and President Trump supporters turned away from the Starbucks brand.   As a consequence the Starbucks business model has been severely impacted.
Prior to their virtue-signaling announcement, Starbucks held a +80 position with Credit Suisse.  Today that rating dropped to ZERO as analysts announced the latest brand rating against the back drop of significant drops in sales.
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Put this in the ‘things you won’t see on CNN’ file: Trying to retain their resistant bona fides Democrat Representatives Elijah Cummings and Peter Welch emerge from a meeting with, with, with the bad man, President Trump, seemingly infected with r-r-r-respect.
Aiieeeee… resist we much, and we much, about this, be committed.. Pelosi desperately shouting: “stay away from the light… don’t walk toward the light”… oh noes, the swamp, they’re, they’re walking the-wrong-way…  OMG.  “Curse You Villain !!”
Elijah Cummings obviously having a hard time shaking it off.  It took him a few minutes to gather back his oppositional composure:

If, if, if, if… only Trump had a magic wand or something… well, then the, the, the, the…. the Okie doke Trump brand would be “skyrocketing“:

WASHINGTON DC – Contrary to reports that shoppers are avoiding the first daughter’s fashion line to protest her father’s policies, the president of the company says recent sales are among the best in the brand’s history.
Abigail Klem, a former lawyer who has worked at Ivanka Trump HQ since 2013 and took over the role of company president in January, insisted that the brand has experienced a major boost.
“Since the beginning of February, they were some of the best performing weeks in the history of the brand,” explained Klem to Refinery29.com. “For several different retailers Ivanka Trump was a top performer online, and in some of the categories it was the [brand’s] best performance ever.”
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FACT: ObamaCare was passed, using the original legislative vehicle, at 1:38am on 12/24/09 with 60 votes in the Senate (see below).  The House then approved that Senate Bill without changes; and in February 2010 created a secondary bill which created the opportunity for the Senate to modify ObamaCare using “reconciliation” for a lower vote threshold of 51 votes.
Literally under the cloak of darkness Democrats rammed their holy grail of a socialist construct down the throat of every American. We no longer needed to imagine having usurping representation that did not represent the will of the people – we saw it.
[Understand the full construct by reading HERE]  If you do not understand how legislation is created; if you do not understand the difference between the Senate and House; if you do not understand the way ObamaCare was created, you really need to read this first.
A clean repeal bill, meaning a law to repeal the entire ObamaCare construct only, would require another 60 vote hurdle in the Senate.
Republicans, while in the majority, only control 52 seats.  Without 8 Democrats voting to approve a “repeal bill”, any House (Or Senate) bill that repeals ObamaCare cannot pass the Senate.
This is why Mark Levin is a con-man; selling snake oil as outrage to keep a listening audience angry, yet clueless and hopeless.   That’s what I don’t like.
A complete repeal of ObamaCare is currently impossible.  The House Freedom Caucus can push all the repeal bills they want, but they cannot get a clean repeal bill through the Senate because they cannot get the 60 votes needed. Period.
Additionally, despite claims to the contrary, the GOP has never passed an Obamacare “repeal bill”. Ever.  What they did previously pass was a “defund bill” using the lower vote reconciliation process. President Obama vetoed it.  A defunding bill was possible because of the financial pathway which falls under reconciliation rules.  The current Ryan bill is almost identical to the 2016 defunding bill everyone is mistakenly calling a prior “repeal bill”.
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