by Political Editors:  With President Donald Trump having just trotted out his “awards” for fake news, the mainstream media was again on the lookout for an opportunity to discredit him with his base. A seeming opportunity arose after a meeting between Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The Washington Post reported that Kelly told the CHC that Trump had not been “fully informed” on the logistics of building a literal 2,000 mile border wall, and that the Mexican government would not be paying for the wall. Later Wednesday evening in an interview on Fox News, Kelly seemed to acknowledge the accuracy of the Post’s account, while he repeatedly praised Trump for his “flexibility.”

          Thursday morning, Trump responded with a series of tweets in which he re-emphasized his commitment to building the border wall and having Mexico pay for it. Uh oh, is Trump clashing with Kelly? Is Trump changing his stance on immigration and securing the border? While the MSM would love for this to be the case, it’s far from it.
          There is no doubt that Kelly has brought much-needed order to the White House, specifically regarding messaging consistency. What Kelly is doing here is clearing up misperceptions rather than suggesting any policy changes. Regarding the wall, Trump has been pretty consistent in saying he is not looking for a literal 2,000 mile physical barrier. Trump’s wall is the promise of a serious lasting commitment to finally secure America’s southern border, via a physical wall where needed, as well as increased Border Patrol and other measures where geography prohibits an actual wall. Trump has not backed off this campaign commitment, even though the MSM would love to convince his base that he has. As columnist Salena Zito observed during the 2016 campaign, “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53570-a-literal-border-wall

by Jordan Candler:  California leftists constantly trumpet their supposedly progressive utopia, but the fact of the matter is that the state is in exceptionally critical need of reform. One of its big problem areas has to do with a systemically high poverty rate that drags California’s ranking to dead last. Believe it or not, close to one-quarter of all state residents meet the definition of poor.

          This is truly baffling, particularly when you consider, as Pacific Research Institute’s Kerry Jackson writes, that “the state’s per-capita GDP increased roughly twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5 percent, compared with 6.27 percent).” Yet in the 23-year period leading up to 2015, state and local municipalities oversaw the allocation of almost $1 trillion in welfare.
          If mitigating poverty was simply about doling out financial assistance for the needy, California should top the list. But it’s doesn’t. In fact, it sits on the very bottom of the list. This cause and effect stems from the fact that any kind of welfare program that lacks accountability inevitably results in dependence on the state. As Jackson explains:
          In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some states … initiated welfare reform, as did the federal government under President liar-Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress. The common thread of the reformed welfare programs was strong work requirements placed on aid recipients. These overhauls were widely recognized as a big success, as welfare rolls plummeted and millions of former aid recipients entered the workforce. The state and local bureaucracies that implement California’s antipoverty programs, however, have resisted pro-work reforms. In fact, California recipients of state aid receive a disproportionately large share of it in no-strings-attached cash disbursements.
          This is not how other states operate. Especially in Republican-led states, welfare is affixed with conditions, which necessitate pursuing a job. California’s plight resulted from leaders refusing to implement constraints and stipulations. There are some 883,000 public employees in California. And as Jackson explains, “A welfare bureaucracy has an incentive to expand its ‘customer’ base — to ensure that the welfare rolls remain full and, ideally, growing. … California has an enormous bureaucracy — a unionized, public-sector workforce that exercises tremendous power through voting and lobbying. Many work in social services.”
          And this is to say nothing of the state’s housing, environmental and minimum wage boondoggles that unhelpfully ballooned welfare rolls. But at least Californians will have a bullet train! (Well, maybe, if the state can ever drum up the money.) When taking into account the madness of it all, it’s no wonder the state’s more conservative-minded — or “outcasts” — are working to mobilize support for a “New California.” As for the region’s metropolises, their model is unsustainable. A reckoning is coming eventually.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53508

by Arnold Ahlert:  In the progressive-dominated bicoastal fever swamps known as New York and California, hysterical leftists are once again in search of sympathetic courts who will abet their global warming agenda.

In New York City, Bill de Blasio’s administration has filed a federal suit against a number of fossil fuel companies based on their alleged role in precipitating climate change. According to the suit, “The city seeks to shift the costs of protecting the city from climate change impacts back onto the companies that have done nearly all they could to create this existential threat.”
          BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell are the defendants in this case, and the lawsuit alleges these companies have produced more than 11% of the entire world’s industry-based methane and carbon pollution — “since the dawn of the industrial revolution,” the suit adds.
          The plaintiffs further allege that Hurricane Sandy, which hit New York in 2012, killing 53 people statewide and costing more than $19 billion in damages, was precipitated by global warming and that these companies should not only pay for that damage, but the city’s future resiliency upgrades. In a further burst of fiscal insanity given New York city’s looming  pension disaster, de Blasio, along with pension fund board members Public Advocate Letitia James and Comptroller Scott Stringer, are calling on those funds to divest from fossil fuel companies over the next five years.
          A New York Post editorial takes this effort to task, calling the suit a “ridiculous assault on the fossil-fuel industry that powers our city and whose earnings support retired city workers.” It further illuminates the depths of de Blasio’s hypocrisy, noting that while he’s suing to recoup the costs of building up the city’s defenses in areas most prone to flooding during hurricanes, he is also “encouraging more residential development all along the city’s waterfront.”
          “Then, too, it would be nice to see the mayor practicing what he preaches,” the paper adds. “Will he ever stop taking his caravan of gas-guzzling SUVs to his Park Slope gym? How about canceling his flights around the country in support of his progressive agenda?”
          As it is with most “do as I say, not as I do” progressives, the answers are no and no.
          In California, the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Imperial Beach, along with San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Marin Counties, are attempting the same gambit, based on the same ideologically driven pseudo-science. Yet New Yorkers should take note: as Wall Street Journal columnist Andrew Scurria explains, Exxon is flipping the script on this political hackery, “highlighting past bond disclosures in which its government critics suggested they couldn’t predict whether and when sea levels would rise.” In fact, “The company filed court papers in Texas on Monday seeking to force government officials to answer questions under oath about those statements.”
          Columnist Katy Grimes illuminates the implications, writing, “These greedy municipal cheaters are now caught between two significant, self-imposed frauds: Either their lawsuits are fraudulent, or their bond offerings are.”
          Scurria cites San Francisco as an example of a city trying to have it both ways, noting that the lawsuit it filed spoke to “imminent risk of catastrophic storm surge flooding,” while a general obligation bond offering made last year stated the city “is unable to predict whether sea-level or rise or other impacts of climate change … will occur.”
          Santa Cruz County was equally hypocritical. In its lawsuit it insisted it has been experiencing more frequent and severe droughts, heat waves and wildfires, while facing a 98% chance of a “devastating three-foot flood — by 2050. Yet last year’s bond offering cited as risk factors "unpredictable climatic conditions, such as flood, droughts and destructive storms.”
          Exxon believes these contradictions constitute fraud. “Each of the municipalities warned that imminent sea level rise presented a substantial threat to its jurisdiction and laid blame for this purported injury at the feet of energy companies,” Exxon stated. “Notwithstanding their claims of imminent, allegedly near-certain harm, none of the municipalities disclosed to investors such risks in their respective bond offerings.”
          Nonetheless, these progressive fraudsters have their advocates. CNN columnist Jeffrey Sachs embraces the typically tiresome “evil corporation” stance, insisting these companies “have known for decades that their product is dangerous for the planet, but they relentlessly hid the evidence, stoking confusion rather than solutions,” he writes with regard to New York’s “bold” bid for “climate safety and justice.” “Through individual company efforts to support climate denialism and confusion, and through relentless and reckless lobbying by the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, the companies launched a full-blown assault on climate science to stop or delay the shift to renewable energy.”
          Sachs also insists fossil fuels are entirely unnecessary: “New York can go green and electric by mid-century through electric vehicles, electricity-powered public transit, and electric heat pumps for buildings, powered by electricity from wind, solar and hydroelectric power.”
          In a better world, these fossil fuel companies would call Sachs’ and his ecofascist allies’ bluff. Instead of abiding by New York City’s “road map” of reducing global warming emissions as much as 80% by 2050, or California’s 2006 legislation calling for the same reduction (a target one study concluded the state would “badly miss” only seven years later), perhaps these “climate destroyers” might voluntarily agree to stop selling their products in both places far earlier. Perhaps as early as five years from now, or sooner. After all, if global warming is as critical an issue as these leftist politicians make it out to be, it only seems right to combat it as quickly as possible. Make it incumbent on those same politicians, many of whom use “shakedown lawsuits against certain politically incorrect industries and businesses, designed to force acquiescence to leftist political policies” as Grimes puts it, to explain to the public why ruining a state’s economy in California, or undermining New York City’s pension funding, is a small price to pay for “settled science” that is anything but.
          One might hazard a guess that even the most progressive New Yorkers, already reeling from a subway system in a state of emergency, or their equally progressive Californian counterparts, facing the financial collapse of Gov. Jerry Brown’s beloved “bullet train,” might be less than enthused by the consequences of such zealotry, such as skyrocketing gas prices — while gas still remains available. They might even decide it’s time for the progressive political class to “walk the global warming walk” — literally — as opposed to riding around in large carbon-spewing vehicles, or living in energy-consuming residences far larger than those of their constituents.
          “The idea that oil companies might sue public servants personally in an attempt to intimidate them from protecting their communities and environment is abhorrent but consistent with their prior behavior,” San Mateo County counsel John Beiers said. “We will not be intimidated.”
          One suspects that the companies who still provide Americans with the overwhelming majority of their energy needs won’t be intimidated either.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53518

by Political Editors:  While much of the mainstream media has been questioning the status of President Donald Trump’s mental health, it appears that it is the senator from New Jersey whose mental stability could be called into question. During a Senate hearing Tuesday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) erupted in rage at Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, over Trump’s alleged “s—thole countries” comment.

          Pounding his fists, Booker yelled, “When scum-Dick Durbin called me, I had tears of rage when I heard about this experience in that meeting. And for you not to feel that hurt and that pain and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues … when tens of millions of Americans are hurting right now because they’re worried about what happened in the White House. That’s unacceptable to me.” Wow, hello snowflake-ville.
          First off, it is flat out ridiculous to suggest that millions of Americans are hurting because of Trump’s alleged words. While Trump’s alleged words were crass, his point is valid. And if Booker is indeed “hurting,” then he needs to visit a mental health professional, pronto.
          Secondly, and more significantly, where is the outrage from that party of outrage — those “women’s rights” feminists — over the fact that Booker, a man in a position of power, just publicly dressed down and belittled a woman? Where are the charges of sexism? Where are condemnations and demands for apologies from fellow 2020 presidential contenders Sen. Elizabeth dinky-Warren (D-MA) or Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)? Recall how mere months ago Democrats blasted Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for telling Warren to “sit down and shut up,” after she refused to end a speech after her allotted time had passed.
          The truth is Democrats are the party of Hollywood. They play on emotions rather than truth and principles.  ~The Patriot Post
          Watch the spectacle below:

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzH64iwMxpk
https://patriotpost.us/articles/53497