​Does Vanna sell hyphens or just vowels?

White House Meeting on Border Security

Dude, perfect!

​May, dear, if you were not toast, you are now! 

Britain needs a hard Brexit, not serfdom! 

Prison may not work for them, but it works for us

Prison works well when it is for real crimes, but the majority of crime today is imagined. If you have a pistol magazine in some states which were made to hold ten rounds but due to wear can hold 11, you might end up going to prison for a long time. Crimes like these are so common and so unknown that we likely commit three felonies each day.

Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent

What we need is a rational rethink of what is and is not a crime. Then we need to cull the uncountable crimes on the books. I would suggest that the President, by Executive Order require that all agencies provide a comprehensive list of all crimes on their books. Any crimes not on the list cannot be enforced until Congress passes a bill specifically enacting that crime and the bill is signed by the President. I would sign another Executive Order which eliminated the power of the bureaucracy to use rulemaking to create crimes or enforce rule made crimes. Crimes should only be written by the legislature. If the bureaucracy wants something criminalized they should have the President forward such proposed crimes to the legislature for its validation. 

The good is not nice!

Agreed. I would never have raised my children by the progressive philosophy. The progressives I know do not raise their children by that tarnished philosophy. They raise their children to be responsible, not freeloaders. When it comes to the greater public, they are driven to place themselves in the position of the other. This allows them to err in what they are seeing. 

By seeing the other as identical to themselves, they believe he will act and react as they would. But most of the time he will not. They believe if they were in a position similar to the beggar, they would want to be treated like X. They would take the charity and make the best use of it. But this presumption is nearly always wrong. The beggar is not like they, he has chosen a lifestyle of begging. He will not take the charity to remove himself from his current condition, that is the condition he desires to remain in. 

I don't much care if other give money to beggars. I like the world before it was filled with filthy, dangerous beggars but I can live with it as it is. The beggars mostly inhabit the places I do not have to visit, downtown, and places where people congregate. But if these people want to solve the problem, they must stop giving to the beggar. 

Most want to help the beggar, but they only enable the beggar. They would never treat their children this way; they would demand more. 

We have become so wealthy we have created beggars in a country which has approximately zero unemployment. It is as if the wealthy progressives are creating personal penance for their sins via the creation of the beggars which they can enable. This is wrong on every level. 

Regulations Created the Affordable Housing ‘Crisis' | National Review

I have seen the enemy, and he is we! We, homeowners, want our properties to substitute for our failure to invest in our long-term needs like retirement and old age. So, housing inflation of 10% is great for homeowners but not so much for anyone who does not own a home.

Here in Portlandia, we found the elixir vitae of housing, the urban growth boundary. We limit the supply of housing first; then we limit the housing which can be built to housing which people don't want, mostly row houses, townhouses, apartments and the like. What we do not do is allow people to buy property they like and build the home they want on that property. 

The result in Portlandia is home prices shooting to the moon. Homeowners love this but get crotchety when they realize that their children cannot afford to live within 50 miles of ol' mom and dad! 

You can already see the likely outcome forming in the San Francisco Bay Area. Old people cannot afford to sell their homes because they cannot afford to buy a new home. Simply put, there is no money to be made selling a $1.4 million home if one has to go out and buy a step down $1.1 million home. They thought they could buy a $250,000 home, but nope, those are long gone. 

The enjoyable plus is when property values go to the Moon, one of the first results is for existing homeowners to lock in their current property tax rates, usually by limiting how much property taxes can rise in any single year. So, now that older homeowner in his 3,800 sq ft home who is paying $6,000 in property tax faces paying $18,000 in property tax if he sells and downsizes to a 1,500 sq ft retirement home. 

There is no reason for retirees to step down in home size, so, they don't. They hang on to the home till they die. 

The problem is the homeowner/voter who myopically sees home price inflation as a panacea but cannot see the potential conclusion. The conclusion is a malign Detroit-like effect. The young, the less than wealthy will move out. Tech businesses have lived high on the hog for decades but nothing continues forever, and when they become commodity businesses they will not be able to pay interstellar wages. Then the old who believe their homes worth the $1.4 million will not sell for less, they will hunker down, hold on and let the home slowly decompose as they follow suit. 

By Law, California High Speed Rail May Be Doomed To Fail | Newgeography.com

The problems are myriad. The comedy is gold. But the great irony is that the train to nowhere is not even scheduled to be built as a high-speed train. It will be little more than a faster than average regular passenger train, a touch of the 19th century in the 21st! 

Maybe California can call this the Skunk Train 2 and sell it as a sightseeing adventure?! But then between Bakersfield and Madera, there is little to see, no Redwoods, or cool tunnels, or bridge crossings, just high plains desert. 

Opinion | Will China Cheat American Investors?

Back in the 1980s, the Japanese had oodles of money, Tokyo property was worth more than the entire United States property value. The Japanese bought up American assets regardless of value. Then the Japanese economy imploded, and the Japanese had to sell all of those assets at huge losses. 

This is shaping up to be a Chinese reprise of the Japanese 1980s! 

Boohya!

Subway rider speaks out after being attacked by Brooklyn lawyer

This is not her first rodeo!

Wrestling team threatened to assault classmate with a broomstick: cops 

They were just following the lead of New York's finest!

Abner_Louima