No, it’s not what you think.  This piece is not about States that provide life-ending drugs to people who have decided to end their lives.  That’s bad enough.  The subject of this offering is the increasing tendency of Blue States to pursue policies that are causing millions of their citizens to flee to States which offer them a better quality of life.  These State policies are self-inflicted wounds that are driving productive residents away, and pushing the States closer to bankruptcy.

The massive population shift away from Blue States truly has been amazing.  Since 2020, a flood of Blue State residents from States like California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois have migrated to other States, principally, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada.  California leads the way in resident flight, with more than 1.3 million escapees since 2020.  New York has lost nearly 500,000, and the other States mentioned above smaller, yet significant, numbers of people.

And it’s not just residents who are fleeing.  Businesses are going elsewhere as well.  California has lost Chevron, Tesla, SpaceX, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard, to name just a few.  Many companies have relocated to Texas, notably from Wall Street.  Goldman Sachs has expanded operations in Texas, and J.P. Morgan now has more employees in Texas than in New York.  When companies and jobs are exported from a State, State revenues drop.  For instance, Wall Street employees pay half of the taxes collected by New York City.

In round numbers, the Blue State exodus has relocated more than 4 million people in the past 5 years alone.  Why are they leaving?  Remember that list of the  States most people are escaping from?  The one thing California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois have in common is that they are, by far, the most Left leaning States, led by the most rabid of the kooks who like to call themselves progressives.

The reasons for the relocations can be summed up in three words.  Safety, money, and freedom.  You know how people say that Democrats are on the wrong side of so many 80-20 issues?  One of those issues is public safety.  The Blue States have a nasty habit of coddling criminals and persecuting law enforcement.

Chicago is a war zone, where you’re much more likely to be killed than in the war with Iran.  Chicago’s Mayor, and Illinois’ Governor are unconcerned.  To hear them tell it, everything is just fine.  In New York, the DA’s won’t even prosecute people who assault police officers, preferring to prosecute the cops instead.  Businesses are closing because the City permits unrestrained shoplifting, without consequences.  CVS is shutting 5 pharmacies in the City.  Community Activists, a/k/a rabble rousers, have denounced the company, accusing it of “a first degree social crime” for abandoning their neighborhoods. Mayor Commie Mamdani sees no problem there.  Is it any wonder people are getting out?

The safety issue includes Democrats’ continued resistance to the deportation of illegal immigrants, which has caused them to support the illegals to the detriment of their own citizens who elected them, and who are financing their nonsense.  People write the immigration issue off as merely an anti-Trump reaction, but it’s more than that.

Not so long ago, even Democrats opposed illegal immigration.  In 1996, Bill Clinton said, “We oppose welfare for illegals.”  Notice he called them “illegals.”  Clearly, this was before the Democrats decided that, “No one is illegal.”  In 2006, Senators Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Il Duce Obama, and 23 other Democrats, voted to build a wall on the Southern border.  Around this time, Biden said, “No great nation can have uncontrolled borders.”

Clearly something changed, and it changed long before Donald Trump came down the escalator.  Actually, it was two things that changed.  Democrats came to the realization that they needed to expand their base with new potential voters.  Luckily, there was a vast supply of needy, would-be immigrants nearby, so voter replacement began.  At the same time, the crazy Socialists gained more power in the Democrat Party, and now control it.  The Clintons, Obama, Biden, and Schumer didn’t suddenly change their minds about immigration.  Their Party changed, and being political hucksters, they just followed along.

Flight for freedom began during the Wuhan virus pandemic.  Blue States closed down schools, businesses and churches, pushed for “vaccine passports,” and generally stifled personal freedoms, all in the name of totally made up 6 foot distancing, and a vaccine that really didn’t work.

But by far the biggest impetus for flight from the Blue States is their tax policies.  The people who flee due to ruinous taxes, unsurprisingly are the most productive and prosperous citizens.  The ones who are paying the bulk of the taxes.  The Blue States largely have replaced these productive people with needy illegal aliens, who they insist must be counted in the census.

Not coincidentally, the States from which people are fleeing are also the States with the highest State and local tax rates.  California’s top rate is 14.4%, and that’s on top of the federal 37% top rate, meaning more than half the income of its top earning residents goes to income tax alone.  New Jersey isn’t much better, with a top rate of 10.75%.  Add to this the highest property taxes, the sales tax, and the gasoline, and other taxes, and Texas and Florida keep looking better and better.

Yet despite these confiscatory tax rates, Democrats are still singing their usual song, about the rich needing to pay their fair share.  Federally, the top 1% pay almost 40% of the taxes, and the top 10% pay 70% of the taxes.  The bottom 50% of taxpayers pay 3% of the taxes.  But according to Democrats, the rich still haven’t paid their “fair share.”  And the Blue States, faced with millions of  productive refugees fleeing high taxes, haven’t learned a thing.  They’re doubling down on their “tax the rich” mantra.

In New York, Commie Mamdani wants to raise all taxes, but promises to target “white areas” of the City.  He’s even proposed a pied a terre tax, on properties valued at over $5 million, whose owners don’t live full time in the City.  Picture this.  A $5 million property already pays property tax of about $200,000 a year.  So Mamdani wants to add a surcharge of nearly $40,000, to further tax people who don’t consume City services.  What could possibly go wrong?  Maybe they’ll dump their New York second homes for a $5 million property in Miami Beach, where the tax is $41,000 a year, with no surcharge.

Perhaps the best example of State taxes causing an exodus is in the State of Washington.  Until this year, Washington didn’t tax income.  They now have imposed a 9.9% tax on earnings over $1 million.  This already has caused Jeff Bezos and the Starbucks CEO to move away.  66 other businesses have fled the State, including Meta and Oracle, taking tens of thousands of jobs with them.

The 9.9% tax is on top of a Seattle sales tax of 10.5%, plus high property taxes.  Seattle’s Socialist Mayor is unconcerned, however, telling the fleeing billionaires, “Bye.”  When she tries to close the budget hole that the loss of these billionaires and companies will cause, she may be singing a different tune.

But all these taxes are still not enough for the Left, which is also touting a “wealth tax.”  What this is, is an annual tax on what the government decides a person’s property is worth, including unrealized gains.  In other words, you bought stock for $10,000.  The stock price tripled, but you haven’t sold the stock.  Leftists want to tax your $20,000 unrealized profit.  It gets worse.  Many people are living in homes bought for $200,000, that now are worth $1 million.  But, you say, “I don’t have that money in my hand.”  The wealth tax proponents don’t care.  Like Paulie from Goodfellas, their response is, “You had a bad week, fuck you, pay me.”

On the federal level, it’s likely such a tax is unconstitutional, based on a 1920 Supreme Court opinion that decided that unrealized increases in value are not income which can be taxed.  On the State level, they will cause only more flight from the Blue States.

The bottom line is, if the Blue States don’t wise up, they will lose more Congressional seats, and thus, electoral votes due to decreased population.  In 2030, it’s expected that 8 House seats will move to Red States.  Don’t bet on the Dems wising up.  I’m not convinced that the leftist fanatics will ever decide they were wrong.

Another week, and another attempt on the life of President Trump.

For how many years have I been saying on these pages that Democrats are brain damaged; caught in the throes of what I call delusions of rectitude, the unshakable belief that whatever they believe is right, and whoever disagrees with them is wrong.  This mental disorder is the reason why telling facts to a so-called Progressive is an exercise in futility.  Because they’re always right about everything, facts are meaningless to this crowd.

This week, I was pleased to see that somebody agrees with me.  Greg Gutfeld hit two points that I’ve been making for years.   Commenting on the most recent attempt on President Trump’s life, on The Five, Gutfeld noted that Democrats have been fomenting violence against the President by calling him fascist, Hitler, and an existential threat to democracy for 10 years.  Gutfeld said, “the Left thinks it’s always right.”  It’s what I call liberal answer Number One.  Tell them a fact and they say, “That’s not true.”

Gutfeld also had it out with the two, interchangeable and irrelevant, Democrats on the show, rejecting the Democrat talking point, that I’ve been calling for years, Liberal Answer Number Two.  “Both sides do it.”  More about that later.

Democrats have said Trump should be in a bullseye, Trump should be targeted, Trump is an fascist, Trump must be taken out by any means necessary, Trump will cancel the midterm elections, Trump is a puppet of the Russians, Trump is insane, Trump is dehumanizing people, Trump is putting people in concentration camps, Trump is a pedophile, Trump is a rapist, and a racist.  According to Democrats, Trump also is both a warmonger and a coward, apparently because he both uses too much force, and fails to use enough force.

Every one of the above charges against Trump is a lie.  But as President Harry Truman, a member of what used to be a sane Democrat Party once observed of an opponent, “He’ll never tell the truth when a simple lie will do.”  And what Democrats have going for them today is that they know, whatever lie they choose to tell, the lap dog media will swear to it, spreading it 24 hours a day into the ears of people who still are under the impression that the media tells them the truth.

The fact is, for years Democrats have all but begged their lunatic followers to use violence against the president.  In addition to all the networks, MSNow, CNN, countless left wing supposed news websites, and the heifers of The View, there’s a social media (or is it anti-social media) outlet called Bluesky that’s constantly stirring the pot.  Bluesky was started by Rasputin lookalike, Jack Dorsey, when he left Twitter.  Many celebrities and pseudo-celebrities went there when Elon Musk bought Twitter and named it X.

The celebrities migrated to Bluesky because they were upset by the fact that Musk was permitting differing opinions to be shared on X.  That was painful to the Left, who have no use for dissent, since they’ve already decided they’re right.  Who are some of the most followed entities and people on Bluesky?  AOC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Brian Stelter, George Takei, Rachel Maddow, Steven King, George Conway, Il Duce Obama, The Lincoln Project, Adam Kinzinger, Bernie Sanders, Jasmine Crockett, and Mark Hamill, which is fitting, because this crowd could reenact the Bar Scene from Star Wars.

Once you’ve convinced your mindless followers that Trump is an insane second coming of Adolph Hitler, who’s to say it’s wrong to kill such an existential threat?  And we’ve seen the results.  In Butler, Pennsylvania, where an assassin shot Trump and three others.  In Palm Beach, Florida, where an armed kook lay in wait for Trump in a sniper’s nest.  At Mar a Lago, where another armed kook tried to breach the wall, carrying a can of gasoline.  And Saturday night, at the Washington Correspondents’ dinner.

Every time it’s happened, there’s been a call for Democrats to turn down the violence inciting rhetoric.  And every time, it’s fallen on deaf ears.  The response from Democrats always is, “Trump started it.”  Apparently, Democrats are content to “finish it” with rifles, pistols, knives, and arson.”

In the immediate aftermath of a crazed gunman, storming the Washington Hilton ballroom, shooting a Secret Service agent before being captured, forcing more than 2,000 people to take cover under tables, forcing Melania Trump to crawl to safety behind the dais, and forcing the evacuation of the room and cancellation of the event, it was hoped that, having shared such a harrowing experience, members of the media might moderate their coverage of the President.  You know, maybe cut back from 95% lies and attacks, to 50 or 60%.  No such luck.

They instead exhibited the same conduct I see day in and day out practicing criminal law.  In the excitement of the moment, they tell the truth, but then, when the excitement wears off, they revert to, “What crime?”  “I didn’t see anything.”  And the ever popular, “That’s not true, you’re making it up.”

The incident happened Saturday night.  By Sunday, Bluesky had the talking points ready to go.  “What crime?”  “The whole thing was staged,  just like that time in Butler.”  “It was a publicity stunt.”  “The Mossad did it.” And my personal favorite, “It was done just to distract from Epstein.” (They didn’t say if they meant Jeffrey Epstein or Juan Epstein from Welcome Back Kotter).  And the leftist nuts took this crap and began spreading it.  They even sobered up Rosie O’Donnell long enough to have her call it “a fake assassination attempt.”

As I keep telling you, it’s brain damage.  Even after having been subjected to the treatment the President’s been getting for years, the media still isn’t convinced.  And there’s no need for them to moderate their tone.  Jamie Raskin was asked about the Democrats’ “heated rhetoric” on Sunday.  His response, “What heated rhetoric did you have in mind?”

Well, how about these, from the likes of Hakeem Jeffries, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, members of the Squad, and others? “We need maximum warfare against Trump;” “There should be uprisings all over the country;” “He’s an enemy of the State;” “We’re still gonna have to go out and put a bullet in Trump;” “He’s a domestic enemy;” “I will go and take out Trump tonight.”  Nah, that’s not heated.  After all, we’re always right and he’s always wrong.

Gutfeld also laid to rest the use of liberal answer Number Two, “Both sides do it.”  Gutfeld pointed out that violence is far more prevalent on the left than it is on the right.  Polling shows that more than 25% of those calling themselves, very liberal say that political violence is justified to get what you want.  And what they want is Trump gone.

But Jessica Tarlov and Harold Ford, Jr., the two unnecessary Democrats on The Five, tried the “both sides” excuse.  Gutfeld wasn’t having it. “DON’T PLAY THAT BULLSHIT WITH ME!” “We don’t care about your ‘both sides’ argument. That shit is DEAD!”  “On your side, your beliefs do not match reality so you’re coming up with these rationalizations.  What about this, what about that?  We are NOT doing that because we saw it happen.  We saw a young bright man ASSASSINATED and we know who did it.  The media is DEAD to us on this story.  They built this thing up.  We are dealing with it, we are going to act.  We don’t care what the what about is anymore, that SHIT is dead!”  Amen, brother.

It certainly looks like the calls for violence against the President are not going to stop.  Even when the leftist provocateurs themselves are put in harms way by their own rhetoric, the trauma can’t rouse them into a lucid interval.  Sadly, they’re still crazy after all these years.

There’s been much in the news the past few weeks about a feud between President Trump and Pope Leo.  As normally is the case, the so called feud has been overblown, and much of the tumult stems from President Trump’s habit of picking fights that he shouldn’t waste his time on.

The war with Iran began February 28.  Pope Leo, being both a Pope and a leftist buttinsky, weighed in on Palm Sunday.  “Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.”

The Pope at first claimed he had no particular government leader in mind when he made his remarks.  “The things that I say are certainly not meant as attacks on anyone, and the message of the Gospel is very clear: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ Then he later said, “I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the Church is here to do.”

Now, it’s altogether proper and expected for a Pope to champion the cause of peace.  Preaching for peace and salvation is all in a day’s work for a Pope.  And if I thought it would do any good for the Pope to denounce the war with Iran, if, for instance, there was a chance that the Vatican could become an intermediary to bring about a peaceful resolution, I’d say, “Bravo, stay in there Leo, and keep pitching.”

But there’s no chance of anything like that in this case.  And to tell the truth, achieving peace for the world isn’t what Pope Leo is up to here.  There’s about as much chance that Catholic Pope Leo can convince the Iranians to seek peace, as there is that I will be named Pope Frank I.

The people running Iran, however many of them are still alive, are Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, who still think they’re living in the 10th Century.  And of all the people in the world who they consider to be infidels who are not worthy of living, the Pope is at the head of that list.  Nothing personal, you understand.  It’s just that no one holds a grudge like an Islamic fundamentalist.

Christian Crusades against Muslims may have ended about 600 years ago, but the crazy fundamentalists haven’t forgotten, and certainly haven’t forgiven.  And remember, it’s not just infidel Christians that they hate.  The also hate Jews, Hindus, people of all other faiths, and even other Muslims who they have deemed unworthy of being considered “true believers.”

So if the Pope’s message about peace wasn’t intended for the Iranians, then who else could it have been aimed at than President Trump.  Surely, “Blessed are the peacemakers” is a Gospel message.  But that other part of the Pope’s admonition, “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” isn’t from the Gospel.  That’s from Isaiah 1:15, and it could be interpreted as a condemnation of Israel.

In Isaiah 1:15, the Lord says He won’t listen to the prayers of the people of Israel.  He does not want to see or hear any of their communication if their hearts are far from Him.  He will close His eyes.  But, then again, the Old Testament God tended to be a bit more wrathful than the Gospel writers.

St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 13:4, is part of the New Testament.  That section seems to sanction just wars. as it describes the government as an avenger carrying out God’s wrath on wrongdoers.  And who better than a Pope to be able to distinguish between the righteous and the wrongdoers?

Except, that this Pope seems to have trouble in that regard.  Until President Trump intervened in the situation in Iran. Pope Leo barely took notice.  The Pope never condemned Iran for exporting terrorism all over the Mideast.  He never condemned them for killing soldiers with roadside bombs.  When Iran’s government slaughtered 42,000 of its own people in the streets for the sin of dissenting to its rule, I didn’t hear Pope Leo speak out to denounce that.

Popes have many times spoken out in attempts to save cold-blooded convicted killers from execution, to oppose the death penalty.  And yet, as Iran almost daily executes protestors, including teenage girls, for daring to appear in public without face coverings, has Pope Leo raised his voice in protest?  If he did, I must have missed it.

So what is the Pope up to?  Is it a coincidence that, right after he met with Il Duce Obama’s henchman, David Axelrod, the Vatican began to bash Donald Trump?  If you think I’m off base tying a political motive to the Pope’s actions, think again.

First of all, consider his background.  He’s from Chicago.  Strike One.  He’s a champion of climate change, immigrants’ rights, and human rights (except in Iran).  Strike Two.  And he got a lot of his doctrine from a priest he met in Peru, one Gustavo Guitierrez, who spouts liberation theology, which is derived from Marxist doctrine.  Strike Three, he’s out.

Leo’s an American, right?  He wouldn’t lightly oppose his own country.  Don’t bet on it.  He’s also quite ambitious.  He became a Peruvian citizen in order to be promoted to Bishop in Peru.  What wouldn’t he do be become Pope?  Yet even that’s not the motivation for Leo’s attack on Trump.

What’s it all about?  Remember the advice given to Woodward and Bernstein.  “Follow the money.”  Because in the end, money is what just about everything comes down to.  And money is behind this so called feud as well.

Under Corrupt Demented Imbecile Catholic Joe Biden, Catholic Charities, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and other church-related entities grew very rich.  The Conference of Bishops was paid hundreds of millions of dollars by the U.S. government to handle “refugees,” a/k/a illegal aliens, admitted by Biden in the tens of millions.  Catholic Charities was paid $2 billion for these services.  And who was the warmonger with blood on his hands who shut off the money spigot that was funding these church entities?  None other than one John Donald Trump.

You may have noticed that, no matter how much money, property, and accumulated wealth the Catholic Church has, it somehow is always in need of more.  Much like all the other parasites, feeding off of borrowed government billions and trillions, such as California phony hospice companies, and Minnesota day cares run by Somali pirates, the Church became used to and dependent on the income from Uncle Sucker.

And since the Catholic Church doesn’t seem to be good at much, other than driving away its own parishioners, the loss of the government windfall had to hurt.  How much do you want to bet that Axelrod enlisted Leo’s help to get rid of Trump, with a promise to put the illegal alien gravy train back on the tracks once Trump is gone?  I wouldn’t bet against it.  Leo is more politician than Pope, and business is business.

As this is posted, Pope Leo is calling for the U.S. to return to peace talks with Iran.  Hey, Leo!  We showed up.  The Iranians didn’t.  They’re still trying to build ballistic missiles, which, by the way can reach Rome.  You might want to put down the Gospels and pick up the Book of Revelation.  There’s something in there about Armageddon.

It’s that time again.  Time to celebrate, or is it ridicule, another Earth Day.  Yes, it’s that annual bacchanal, when the climate crazies, treehuggers, Green radicals, Eco-terrorists, No Kings idiots who are through soaking their feet after the last protest, Marxists and Communists of all stripes, get together in an open field to denounce capitalism and howl at the moon.

And it’s a big Earth Day this year.  The participants in this folly will have the chance to mourn the passing of Paul Erlich, one of the founders of this nonsense.  Erlich died last month.  The second founder, Ira Einhorn, died in prison, having been convicted of murdering his girlfriend and hiding her body in a trunk.

I’ve long maintained that the whole environmental movement that spawned Earth Day is less about saving the planet, and more about global elites finding a better way to control the masses than through the spread of Communism.  It’s simply a fact that, when the Berlin Wall came down over 25 years ago, many of the proponents of Communism turned from Red to Green.  But, then again, for Leftists, facts don’t matter.

If facts mattered to the Left, they would have abandoned the Earth Day/Dooms Day charade long ago.  The whole canard stems from Paul Erlich’s 1968 book, The Population Bomb.  In it, Erlich, who had traveled to India, predicted that “the battle to feed humanity is over.”  He predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve, and recommended cutting the world’s population in half.

Erlich favored forced sterilization, food rationing, and other limits on reproduction, warning that, between 1980 and 1989, famine would kill 65 million Americans.  Erlich prophesied that, “America’s economic joyride is coming to an end, no more cheap and abundant food and energy.”

Unless I missed it, Erlich was dead wrong about everything he predicted. (I guess now that he’s dead, it sort of evens out).  The population of India has doubled since 1970.  During that time, Indians not only have not starved, but India is a net exporter of wheat.  In fact, worldwide population has increased 400% since 1900, while average crop yields are also up 400%, and total crop harvests have increased 600%.

More to the point, not only did 65 million Americans not starve to death by 1989, but as our population rose by 130 million since 1970, more than 40% of Americans are obese, and 12% of the population is on GLP-1 weight loss medication.

So, if the reasons for starting Earth Day were false, and have been proven to be false, why do leftists keep it going?  It’s very simple.  It’s a convenient way for  leftists to control people and stay in power.  TV and radio host Chris Plante says it best.  “Leftists don’t care what you do, as long as it’s mandatory.”  They know best what’s good for you and they’re determined to impose it on you whether you like it or not.

This is a principle they learned from none other than the late Paul Erlich.  When he was spreading his false prediction of widespread famine in India and elsewhere, Erlich’s solution was iron-fisted totalitarian repression, designed to forcibly reduce the population by half.  In his own words, “The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions, and the pain may be intense.”  But it would be “coercion in a good cause.”

Remember those words.  “Coercion in a good cause” could be the motto of today’s Democrat Party.  The trouble is that, by “good cause,” Democrats mean what’s good for them, not what’s good for you.  If they truly were interested in the public good, why would they ignore the truth, to continue pushing extreme climate change restrictions that do nothing other than cost jobs and make life harder and more expensive for their constituents?

The Climate Change alarmist, “The World Ends in Twelve Years” claims are pure bullshit.  Consider the opinion of Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel laureate in physics.  He’s not buying the man-made global warming claims. In 2015, Dr. Giaever announced, “I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem.” “The facts are that in the last 100 years we have measured the temperatures it has gone up .8 degrees and everything in the world has gotten better.  So how can they say it’s going to get worse when we have the evidence? It must be politics.”

He’s not the only one.  At the same time that Il Duce Obama was telling the uninformed that global warming was “settled science,” thousands of climatologists were refusing to buy into the notion of man-made climate change.  The authors of the British study, that famously, or infamously relied on the “hockey stick” graph that predicted rises in temperature, have confessed that their data was false.

Yet our leftist elected officials persist in pushing the climate change hysteria.  Why?  Dr. Giaever said it.  “It must be politics.”  The U.S. leads the world in the production of cheap and abundant, clean burning natural gas.  Yet politicians like the Governors of New York and New Jersey persist in imposing the so called REGI mandates to abandon fossil fuels in favor of so-called renewable energy.

The fact that we can’t run our power grids on wind, solar and pond scum is lost on these morons.  Because New Jersey is just a pale replica of the leftist craziness of New York, the REGI nonsense has only resulted in a needless 20% increase in our electric rates, while New York rates are predicted to double.  And all in the name of what?  Not cleaner air or water.  Just politics.

If you doubt me, just consider the craziest of all crazy places, California.  When gasoline was $2.50 a gallon in America, it was $5.00 in California, due to ruinous environmental regulations, and confiscatory taxes that have resulted in 2 million people leaving the State.  California has oil and gas that it won’t allow to be exploited.  California has a man-made drought because it dumps fresh water into the ocean to save a supposedly endangered fish.  And California is nearly bankrupt.  No surprise.

California also has a wildfire problem.  Its Governor, Gavin Newsome, predictably blames the fires on climate change, reciting the now familiar, and long debunked notion that climate change’s role “cannot be denied,” the science is “absolute,” and the data “self-evident.”

As we have learned, climate change can be denied, the science is flawed, and the data was admittedly falsified.  But no matter.  Newsome knows a good lie when he hears one.  Hoover Institute Fellow Bjorn Lomborg recently reported in The Wall Street Journal that, while heat-related deaths from increased temperatures rose by nearly 100 a year, corresponding cold-related deaths are down by 5,000 a year.  But I guess Democrats think those 4,900 people who remain alive should be sacrificed on the altar of their climate change hoax.

Moreover, while Newsome blames climate change for more wildfires, the fact is that worldwide statistics show that, in the past 20 years, annual acreage consumed by fires has been reduced more than 25%, resulting in 400,000 fewer deaths from fire-related pollution.

More damaging fires in California are due to poor government management, not climate change.  Oh yes, and the claim that wildfires are increasing CO2 in the atmosphere also is false.  A hundred years ago, wildfires burned 4% of the world’s acreage per year.  Now, it’s 2%.  And the reduction in fire damage has reduced CO2 emissions into the atmosphere by 3 billion tons.

Even the UN admits that, if the world adopted the ruinous restrictions used in California, temperatures might be reduced by 0.2 degrees, at a cost of untold millions of lives from the poverty and starvation that Paul Erlich so long ago predicted.

So we’ve come full circle.  If the world did what Erlich demanded, his prophecies might have been self-fulfilling.  The fault lay not in the population, but in the politics.  Luckily we ignored Erlich, and he’s now been consigned to the dustbin of history.

It was a momentous week for the Iran conflict, culminating in the decision by President Trump, Tuesday evening, to agree to a two week ceasefire to permit further talks about ending the war, with the Pakistani President as the intermediary.

The ceasefire came in the wake of Trump’s announcement that, come 8 pm Tuesday, the U.S. was prepared to destroy all bridges and power stations in the country.  Unsurprisingly, Trump couched his announcement in rather pungent terms.

On Sunday, Trump posted, “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran.  There will be nothing like it!!!  Open the Fucking Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.  JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”  On Tuesday, Trump warned that new attacks would “end the Iranian civilization.”

Predictably, Trump opponents among elected Democrats, and their lap dog media, cringed at the President’s “tone.”  “How dare he use such language?”  “Why was he so impolite to the Iranians?”

Keep in mind, these are the same people who have been calling the war with Iran illegal and unprovoked since March 1, when it began.  They even got 100 alleged “international law experts” to sign a letter claiming that attacks on Iran’s infrastructure would be war crimes.

This was, of course, bullshit.  During World War II, the Allies bombed every bridge and power plant in Europe, and no one claimed it was a war crime.  We don’t want to do that in Iran if at all possible because if we break it, we have to fix it, or else expose 90 million Iranians, who are not our enemies, to starvation, disease and death.

Settling the war with Iran was going to be difficult enough, without having to fight domestic enemies, as well as our foreign enemy.  Elected Democrats, now numbering some 70 Congressmen and Senators, are crying that Trump has lost his mind, and are calling for his removal via the 25th Amendment.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.,”The House and Senate must return to session.  The House must pass articles of impeachment, and then the Senate must vote to convict and remove the President.  Or, the cabinet and Vice President, with congressional concurrence, must invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump.”  He’s not at all interested in reconvening  Congress to reopen the Department of Homeland Security during a war.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., “No President in control of his senses would publicly promise to eradicate an entire civilization.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., “We need to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump.”  “Threatening war crimes is a blatant violation of our constitution and the Geneva Conventions.”  Khanna has promised that if they regain power, the Democrats’ first order of business will be to impeach Trump yet again.

The Democrats may be stupid, but their memories can’t be so deficient that they have forgotten that all of our presidents since Jimmy Carter have labeled the Iranian Islamic Republic a rogue actor, bent on obtaining nuclear weapons with which to threaten the world.  Hillary Clinton even promised to attack Iran if elected in 2016.

As usual with the Democrats, it’s all about politics.  I now that politics is a dirty business, but I was put in mind of a line from Gore Vidal’s play, The Best Man.  In it, a former president tells a presidential candidate, “It’s not that you’re a bastard that I object to.  It’s that you’re such a stupid bastard.”

Today’s Democrats are certainly bastards, but they’re not stupid enough to really believe the shit they’re spewing.  Surely, they’ve had enough experience with Trump comments to understand that everything he says is part of a negotiation.  And, why must his tone be so impolite?  It’s very simple.  He’s not dealing with reasonable people who are used to making arms-length agreements, and then sticking to them.  He’s negotiating with lying, cheating, blood thirsty terrorists, who think nothing of killing their own people.

But facts don’t matter to Democrats.  They can’t even decide what they’re angry about.  When Iran murdered 45,000 of its own citizens, they blasted Trump for doing nothing.  When Trump intervened in Iran, they called the war illegal, and Trump a war criminal.  When Trump threatened complete destruction, they called him a madman.  And when Trump agreed to the ceasefire, they said he was Chicken.  There’s just no pleasing these pricks.

Adding to the problem, we seem to be the victims of our own success in this war.  So many of the top Iranian leaders have been killed that it’s hard to know whether the people we’re talking to over there are the people who actually can make enforceable decisions.

And as if dealing with lying terrorists wasn’t enough, Trump has to deal with the latter day Quislings in the Democrat Party.  Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian Army officer who started supporting Fascists in 1933.  When Hitler invaded Norway, Quisling set up a Fascist government in Norway, and he became a convenient puppet for Hitler, even sending Norwegian Jews to the death camps.  After the war, Quisling was executed by the Norwegian government for treason.

Obsessed as they are with opposing anything Trump does, the Democrats have managed to position themselves as the allies of any group or cause that Trump policies have affected.  This mania has Democrats supporting the sexual mutilation of children, criminal illegal aliens, and now they’re rooting for Iranian terrorists, with the U.S. military in harms way.  It’s shameful and downright traitorous.

As for the alleged ceasefire, I wouldn’t bet on a two week lull in the war.  First of all, in a real ceasefire, the belligerents stop firing.  Iran is still firing missiles into Israel and other countries. Iran claims it’s a communications problem.

Trump representatives are to meet Iranians in Pakistan tomorrow.  Given the 10 point plan proposed by Iran, which Trump said is a worthy starting point for  discussion, the war may start back up as soon as Monday.

Here’s what the Iranians demand: The lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions on Iran; Continued Iranian control over the strait of Hormuz; US military withdrawal from the Middle East; An end to attacks on Iran and its allies; The release of frozen Iranian assets; A UN security council resolution making any deal binding; and try this one on – In the version released in Farsi, Iran also included the phrase “acceptance of enrichment” for its nuclear program.

As ending Iranian nuclear ambitions was the only reason for the war, that’s not going to fly.  Moreover, Trump spelled out the immediate opening of the Straight as a condition of the ceasefire.  Iran says ships must get its permission to transit.  This is a non-starter.  First of all, Iran never had legal control over the Straight of Hormuz.  Secondly, having lost the war, Iran is in no position to demand something it never had before the war.  Most importantly, even if we wanted to, the U.S. has no authority to grant to any nation, let alone a terrorist nation, the right to control an international waterway.

The right of free transit on the high seas is an age old tenet of international law that even the 100 international law experts should understand.  The right to travel the high seas is guaranteed under international law, specifically the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.  Only these Iranian pricks could have balls big enough to make such a demand after having their asses handed to them in a war that they lost.

Simply put, either the Iranians fold and surrender or the war starts back up  five minutes later.  Where will that leave the Democrats’ refrain?  Let’s see, Trump failed to act, Trump is a warmonger, we’re losing the war, Trump is a crazy war criminal, Trump Always Chickens Out; okay, I’ve got it, Trump is a warmonger.