Wondering Which States Americans Hate to Live In? Ask U-Haul.

Wondering Which States Americans Hate to Live In? Ask U-Haul.
"Americans are dynamic people.  
...In fact, the U.S. is a federal republic of independent states, each with many laws, many customs, and a unique political climate.
Does the changing political climate affect population migration between states?  
Of course, it does, but how?  
What if we were to express the movement of intra-American migration, not in words, but in the language of numbers?  
A convenient measure of internal migration could be the U-Haul Index.
...What causes people to leave San Francisco and New York and to make a move to Dallas and Orlando?
San Francisco is in the state of California, and New York City in the state of New York.  
Both states for decades have been bastions of left-wing politicians – former Democrats, and now socialists and communists.
Dallas is in Texas, and Orlando is in Florida.  
Both states for decades have been bastions of right-wing politicians – Republicans and conservatives.
Perhaps the question should be posed differently: what forces people to leave those states where the government is pursuing a left socialist policy and move to states where the government is pursuing a pragmatic right-wing policy?...
Read on!

Why did Mueller's indictments skip over the most obvious and pertinent statute that was violated?

Why did Mueller's indictments skip over the most obvious and pertinent statute that was violated?:

"Robert Mueller’s indictments announced Friday are most notable for what Sherlock Holmes famously called “The dog that didn’t bark.” There was a clear, obvious, and pertinent statute that could have been applied to the alleged crimes but wasn’t.  Fortunately, the blogosphere has our own Sherlock Holmes on the case, Powerline’s John Hinderaker, who noticed the charge that was not made:"

Trump polls better than Obama at the same point presidency | Daily Mail Online

Trump polls better than Obama at the same point presidency | Daily Mail Online
"Russia? 
What Russia? 
Trump is polling BETTER than Obama at the same point in his presidency despite scandals, staff turnover and a special counsel

• Trump's approval rating is 48 per cent, according to Rasmussen Reports, better than his 46.1 per cent showing in the 2016 election
• The same poll had Obama at 45 per cent on February 21, 2010 – the same point in his tenure as commander-in-chief
• Remarkable numbers come despite the special counsel's Russia probe, women's allegations of sexual misconduct and a crowded West Wing departure lounge
• Obama lost 6 points during his second February, which saw Obamacare dominating the news and the beginnings of the Tea Party movement 
• He only achieved 50 per cent (or better) approval ratings 27 per cent of the time...

Read on!

Harvard did a study that asked "Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide?"----Fans of Best of the Web Today

Fans of Best of the Web Today:
Michael Smith--"Once upon a time, Harvard did a study that asked "Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide?"

"To their surprise, they found the answer was "no".

Obviously there are certain people who should not be allowed to own any deadly instrument. 

Reasonable as such prohibitions are, it is unrealistic to think those people will comply with such restrictions any more readily than they do with laws against violent crime. 

In any event, studies analyzing acquaintance homicide suggest there is no reason for laws prohibiting gun possession by ordinary, law‐abiding responsible adults because such people virtually never murder. 
If one accepts that such adults are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than to commit it, disarming them becomes not just unproductive but counter‐productive...
Thus both sides of the gun prohibition debate are likely wrong in viewing the availability of guns as a major factor in the incidence of murder in any particular society. 

Though many people may still cling to that belief, the historical, geographic, and demographic evidence explored in this Article provides a clear admonishment. 

Whether gun availability is viewed as a cause or as a mere coincidence, the long term macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlates with stable or declining murder rates. 

Whether causative or not, the consistent international pattern is that more guns equal less murder and other violent crime. 

Even if one is inclined to think that gun availability is an important factor, the available international data cannot be squared with the mantra that more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death. Rather, if firearms availability does matter, the data consistently show that the way it matters is that more guns equal less violent crime.

Sounds logical to me…but then, I am a crazy gun-owning nut.

Most people didn't see this study because CNN didn't hold a "fair" debate among people who were saved or spared violence due to some "good guy" with a gun."

http://www.law.harvard.edu/…/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

Lunch video-----Ami Presents: Communist Manifesto or Democratic Party Platform?

Noon-toon-----Wondermark » Archive » #1380; In which a Pitch is pitched

Wondermark » Archive » #1380; In which a Pitch is pitched:

ABC Pays the Price After Joy Behar Attacks Christianity on ’The View’

ABC Pays the Price After Joy Behar Attacks Christianity on ’The View’:

"“The View” co-host Joy Behar’s comparison of Christianity to a mental illness on last Tuesday’s program has prompted over 25,000 calls to flood into the ABC network in protest.

The Media Research Center watchdog group reported that this tally had come in as of Monday morning.

TRANSCEND MEDIA SERVICE » The Making of a Sociopathic Killer: A List of Risk Factors for School Shooters

TRANSCEND MEDIA SERVICE » The Making of a Sociopathic Killer: A List of Risk Factors for School Shooters:

"And the FBI’s Deadly, Deceptive Blind Spot

Ho hum, there was another mass shooting at another school a few days ago.

This one was at an Oregon junior college. 

It happens to be the 142^nd school shooting since Sandy Hook (see: http://everytown.org/article/schoolshootings/ for the entire list), and no mainstream journalist is asking (or, if he knows, his editors are not allowing him to reveal the answer to) the pertinent question that people who truly want to understand the epidemic need to know: “What brain-damaging, addictive psych drug(s) was this brain-altered shooter taking or withdrawing from?”

There is an immense amount of evidence that legally prescribed psychiatric drugs are major contributors to acts of violence. 

This evidence has been gathered (and even published [in peer reviewed journals and alternative media outlets that don’t take advertising revenue from Big Pharma]) by a number of science writers, pharmaceutical industry whistle-blowers, courageous neuroscientists, good investigative journalists and a multitude of silenced psychiatric drug survivors. 

The range of acts of violence by Drug-intoxicated psych patients range from self-harm to suicidal thinking to suicidal attempts to homicidal thinking to mass murder, and the media is silent on the psych drug connection. 

(For more on the large variety of aberrant behaviors strongly linked to the so-called SSRI antidepressants, go to www.ssristories.net.)..."

Much more here, read it all!

8 killed, 30 wounded in Presidents Day weekend shootings across Chicago | Chicago Sun-Times

8 killed, 30 wounded in Presidents Day weekend shootings across Chicago | Chicago Sun-Times: "Eight people were killed and at least 30 others were wounded in Presidents Day weekend shootings across Chicago.
The last fatal shooting of the weekend happened early Tuesday in Englewood. Maurice D. Hutson, 24, was involved in a fight with a group of males about 12:25 a.m. in the 6800 block of South Normal when one of the males pulled out a handgun and fired a shot, according to Chicago Police and the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Hutson suffered a gunshot wound to the back and was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead at 1:06 a.m.
He lived in the Roseland neighborhood.
On Monday evening, a boy was shot and killed in the South Side Chatham neighborhood. 
About 5:20 p.m., 15-year-old Larenzo Smith and a 19-year-old woman were walking in the 7600 block of South Champlain when someone approached them and fired shots, authorities said. Smith, who lived in the same block as the shooting, was shot in the chest and taken to Comer Children’s Hospital, where he died at 6:04 p.m.
The woman suffered a gunshot wound to her hip and was taken to Christ, where her condition stabilized.
Another 24-year-old man was killed in a shooting Monday morning..."
And on and on...

#1 This day 1973-----Killing Me Softly (Roberta Flack)

Did the Progressive 'Broward County Solution' Cost 17 Student Lives?

Did the Progressive 'Broward County Solution' Cost 17 Student Lives?:
""We're not compromising school safety.  We're really saving the lives of kids," boasted Michaelle Valbrun-Pope, executive director of Student Support Initiatives for Broward County Public Schools, in August 2017.
Valbrun-Pope was referring to what an article by Jeffrey Benzing in Public Source calls the "Broward County Solution."  
As Benzing relates, Broward County used to lead the state of Florida in sending students to the state's juvenile justice system. 
County leaders responded with a perfectly progressive solution: "lower arrests by not making arrests."
Authorities agreed to treat twelve different misdemeanor offenses as school-related issues, not criminal ones.  
The results impressed the people who initiated the program. 
Arrests dropped from more than a thousand in 2011-2012 to less than four hundred just four years later.
One particular motivation behind programs like Broward County's was the pressure from multiple sources to reduce the statistical disparity between black and Hispanic student arrests on one hand and white and Asian student arrests on the other..."
Read on!

You ought to know!

Nancy Pelosi ignores net worth inquiry after lecturing on 'inordinate wealth' - Washington Times

Nancy Pelosi ignores net worth inquiry after lecturing on 'inordinate wealth' - Washington Times:

"The Washington Free Beacon noted in January that Mrs. Pelosi’s 2016 financial-disclosure statement places her “in the top one-tenth of the 1 percent of Americans.”
“Pelosi’s annual property tax bill alone on three luxury homes last year— $137,000 — is more than twice the 2016 U.S. median household income of $59,039, which the U.S. Census reported last fall,” the website reported Jan. 25."

Taxpayers May Lose On High-Balance Student Loans

Taxpayers May Lose On High-Balance Student Loans:
"The Brookings Institution has released a new research report by Adam Looney and Constantine Yannelis looking at student borrowers with very high balances. 
The research provides a good reminder that borrowers with high balances, who often feature prominently in media coverage of student debt, are the exception. 
Just 14% of all federal student loan borrowers have balances above $50,000, and the majority of those individuals borrowed to pursue expensive graduate degrees.

Despite their relative rarity, high-balance borrowers deserve our attention for the risk they pose to the federal government’s finances. While high-balance borrowers represent just a small share of the individuals with outstanding student loans, they owe over half the outstanding balances...

Preston Cooper/Forbes

Source: Looney and Yannelis (2018). https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/es_20180209_looneylargebalances.pdf

But looking at balances rather than borrowers tells the exact opposite story. 
While just 5% of borrowers in default owe more than $50,000, these borrowers also owe over 25% of the dollars in default. 
Though high-balance borrowers default at a relatively low rate, the risk they pose to taxpayers is substantial..."
Read on!

AM Fruitcake

History for February 22

History for February 22 - On-This-Day.com:
George Washington (U.S.) 1732 - First President of the United States., James Russell Lowell 1819, Robert Baden-Powell 1857


Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892, Robert Young 1907, Edward M. Kennedy 1932  Lea Salonga 1971


1630 - Quadequine introduced popcorn to English colonists at their first Thanksgiving dinner.


1819 - Spain ceded Florida to the United States.


1855 - The U.S. Congress voted to appropriate $200,000 for continuance of the work on the Washington Monument. The next morning the resolution was tabled and it would be 21 years before the Congress would vote on funds again. Work was continued by the Know-Nothing Party in charge of the project.


1879 - In Utica, NY, Frank W. Woolworth opened his first 5 and 10-cent store.


1885 - The Washington Monument was officially dedicated in Washington, DC. It opened to the public in 1889.


1923 - The first successful chinchilla farm opened in Los Angeles, CA. It was the first farm of its kind in the U.S.


1924 - U.S. President Calvin Coolidge delivered the first presidential radio broadcast from the White House.


1997 - Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut and colleagues announced that an adult sheep had been successfully cloned. Dolly was actually born on July 5, 1996. Dolly was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell.

LIBERTY REVIEW

LIBERTY REVIEW:

https://libertyreview76.blogspot.com/2018/02/manipulation-and-suppression-by-tammy.html

Manipulation and Suppression

By Tammy Derouin

The United States of America is in crisis. We are supposed to be the land of the free where the government not only acknowledges our God-given rights but protects them. Once again, more evidence is making its way to the surface that the Obama administration was full of corruption and scandal.

Our government, under the destructive desire of the Obama administration, launched non-stop attacks on the American people and our founding principles. The desire of his administration to inflict harm, irreversible harm, on our country has become more and more transparently clear with each passing day.

The list of scandals is long and sordid. So many were listed during the years of darkness. The Left, however, not only denies them but has turned manipulation and suppression of the truth into an art form. Their spin doctors have attempted to blame others or make up their own reality, twisting and turning facts into fiction and fiction into facts. The press, well we know by now, that our once free press betrayed the American people. The press could have been heroes had they done their job. Instead, they will probably fare much worse than the actual players of the anti-American Obama administration. They could have informed America of so many wrong doings had they not given up their right of freedom of speech.......

The way we were-----Van McCoy - "The Hustle"

Boob-tube-----"Rocky King; Detective" ~ "The Hermit's Cat" (1950's TV crime show)

Where Are the Indictments of Obama’s Foreign Colluders? | Frontpage Mag

Where Are the Indictments of Obama’s Foreign Colluders? | Frontpage Mag:

"The Clinton campaign employed a British foreign agent who used Russian intelligence sources to put together opposition research meant to interfere with the results of a United States election. Collusion between the Clinton campaign, Steele and the Russians doesn’t require an endless fishing expedition.
Foreigners interfering in United States elections are not a new phenomenon. Muslims in Gaza famously ran a phone bank for Obama. A Hamas political adviser had declared that he hoped Obama would win.
There was no investigation. Nor did anyone indict the Gazans running the phone bank.
The indictment states that, “the Federal Election Campaign Act… prohibits foreign nationals from making any contributions, expenditures, independent expenditures, or disbursements for electioneering communications.” But Obama had chosen to accept untraceable donations from abroad. He had failed to ask for proof of citizenship and his website had even allowed donations from Iran and North Korea.
The chair of Nigeria’s stock exchange had organized an “Africans for Obama” fundraiser. The Albanian Socialist Prime Minister had been accused of a scheme to transfer $80,000 to an Obama fundraising committee. Gazans bought and resold Obama t-shirts from the campaign website. And no indictments.
None of that counts as election interference. And none of it generated an investigation of Obama."

Four Liberal PACs Outspent the NRA in 2016 Campaign

Four Liberal PACs Outspent the NRA in 2016 Campaign:
"If the National Rifle Association is powerful because it gives so much money to Republican politicos, what about these left-wing groups that give far more to Democrats?--by Mark Tapscott
Four liberal political action committees (PACs) that support only Democrats gave more than $393 million in independent campaign contributions during the 2016 election cycle, an amount that collectively was seven times more than that reported by the NRA.
Even the average for the four liberal groups — $98.25 million – exceeded the $54.4 million total spent by the gun rights group, according to an examination of Federal Election Commission (FEC) campaign funding data compiled by opensecrets.org.
The campaign spending data provide a marked contrast to a familiar narrative that always dominates mainstream media reporting following tragedies like the horrendous events last week in Broward County, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left 16 students and one football coach dead.
Typical of the narrative is the “‘Thoughts and Prayers’ and Fistfuls of NRA Money: Why America Can’t Control Guns (A Grim Update),” which appeared in the Los Angeles Times...
...“You know how the argument goes.
The ‘conventional wisdom’ is the NRA’s heavy spending stops hundreds of politicians from enacting the “common sense” gun control laws they and everyone else would otherwise support …
“There’s only one problem with that theory. It’s all wrong.”
Read it all!

Taxing Innovators To Pay For Universal Welfare Is A Terrible Idea | Stock News & Stock Market Analysis - IBD

Taxing Innovators To Pay For Universal Welfare Is A Terrible Idea | Stock News & Stock Market Analysis - IBD:

"A new "study" in Britain suggests that by raising taxes sharply on Facebook, Amazon and Apple, the government could pay for a universal basic income (UBI) for all Britons. It's an absurd idea, which is why it can't be counted out.

The so-called FANG companies — the above-mentioned three, plus Google and Netflix — have been vilified now for years in Europe and in the U.S. as "monopolies" and, worse, "predators." When such strident rhetoric is used by politicians, you know they're going in for the kill. There's money to be made in taking down big, successful companies."

Catch and release?-----Teen accused of threat to 'shoot up' school charged, released on bond | MLive.com

Teen accused of threat to 'shoot up' school charged, released on bond | MLive.com:
"MANISTEE COUNTY, MI -- A 17-year-old Wellston resident accused of threatening to "shoot up" a school in Manistee County was arraigned Tuesday, Feb. 20.
Cullen Shafer was charged with a felony threat of terrorism, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
He is out of jail on bond, which was set at $100,000.
Shafer is accused of making a verbal threat to shoot up Brethren High School...
The alleged threat was reported Monday, but police said it was made last week. 
That same week, a 19-year-old Florida man shot and killed 17 people, and injured another 14, at a school shooting in Parkland, Florida..."
Read on!

Judicial Watch: Documents Reveal Obama State Department Provided Classified Records to Sen. Ben Cardin to Undermine President Trump - Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch: Documents Reveal Obama State Department Provided Classified Records to Sen. Ben Cardin to Undermine President Trump - Judicial Watch:

"Judicial Watch today released 42 pages of heavily redacted State Department documents containing classified information that was provided to Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and outspoken critic of President Donald Trump. The documents show Russian political interference in elections and politics in countries across Europe.

According to a March 2017 report in the Baltimore Sun: “Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin received classified information about Russia’s involvement in elections when the Obama administration was attempting to disseminate that material widely across the government in order to aid in future investigations, according to a report Wednesday … Obama officials were concerned, according to the report [in The New York Times, below], that the Trump administration would cover up intelligence once power changed hands.”"

Lunch video-----Presidents Day 2018

Noon-toon

What if there were serious gun controls? | TheHill

What if there were serious gun controls? | TheHill:

"After the Las Vegas murders, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) urged Congress to “take a stand against gun violence by passing common-sense gun safety laws.” On Monday, after the mass murder in Texas, he wrote, “A simple idea: Anyone convicted of domestic abuse should see their rights under the 2nd Amendment severely curtailed.” On Tuesday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) announced that he and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) are writing a bill “to prevent anyone convicted of domestic violence — be it in criminal or military court — from buying a gun.

In the spirit of these proposals, here are some ideas for tough federal gun laws — most of which should have been enacted years ago."

Time to push back against the global warming Nazis « Roy Spencer, PhD

Time to push back against the global warming Nazis « Roy Spencer, PhD: 
"Yeah, somebody pushed my button.
When politicians and scientists started calling people like me “deniers”, they crossed the line. 
They are still doing it.
They indirectly equate (1) the skeptics’ view that global warming is not necessarily all manmade nor a serious problem, with (2) the denial that the Nazi’s extermination of millions of Jews ever happened.
Too many of us for too long have ignored the repulsive, extremist nature of the comparison. 
It’s time to push back.
I’m now going to start calling these people “global warming Nazis”.
The pseudo-scientific ramblings by their leaders have falsely warned of mass starvation, ecological collapse, agricultural collapse, overpopulation…all so that the masses would support their radical policies. 
...Dissenting scientific views are now jack-booted through tactics like pressuring scientific journals to not publish papers with which they disagree…even getting journal editors to resign.
Like the Nazis, they are anti-capitalist. 
They are willing to sacrifice millions of lives of poor people at the altar of radical environmentalism, advocating expensive energy policies that increase poverty. 
And if there is a historically demonstrable threat to humanity, it is poverty.
...This authoritarianism tends to happen with an over-educated elite class…I have read that Nazi Germany had more PhDs per capita than any other country...
So, as long as they continue to call people like me “deniers”, I will call them “global warming Nazis”..."
Read on!

Supreme Court Case Could Spell End of Mandatory Public Sector Union Dues - Reason.com

Supreme Court Case Could Spell End of Mandatory Public Sector Union Dues - Reason.com: "Would extend "right to work" principles to government employment.--John Stossel
If your workplace is a union shop, are you forced to pay union dues?
This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about that.
When I worked at CBS and ABC, I was ordered to join the American Federation of Radio and TV Artists.
That union had won a vote that gave them the right to speak for all reporters.
I said, "I'm no 'artist.' I'm a reporter! I won't join!"
But my bosses said they couldn't pay me unless I did.
In right-to-work states, unions can't force people to join.
But only 28 states are right to work.
Aging socialist bureaucracies like New York state are not among them.
But now the Supreme Court may say that no government worker, in any state, can be forced to pay a union.
"If we lose this case, the entire public sector will be right to work," warns Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME, the big government employees union..."
Read on!

#1 This day 1960-----Percy Faith - Theme From A Summer Place