Observations: The Qando Podcast

Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement announcement continued the Left's exploding head syndrome. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth among Progressives at the thought of another conservative justice. The #4 House Democrat lost a primary to a young commie. Hey, here's a question for progressives: If you're weeping because a justice retires, does it ever occur to you that the Court may have to much power over your life? LOL, no, of course not. The california Supreme Court ruled that, just because it's impossible to comply with the law, doesn't mean the law can be overturned. Rod Rosenstein testified before a testy congress this week.

Note: The first 30 seconds or so of the show is missing. This week, the Trump Adminstration was castagated for an immigration policy that's been in place since 1997. When Obama was running it, Democrats cautioned us not to polticize this difficult issue. Now, it's the equvalent of Nazi concentration camps. The media is a simply a propaganda outfit. Melania Trump, though, wore a tone-deaf jacket, which Trump turned against the media. The Supreme Court released a couple of interesting rulings concerning the 4th Amendment and Internet taxation. Nobody knows tech like 70 year-old lawyers. The long-expected Civil War II seems to be inching closer. The SPLC settled a British libel suit for $3.5 million, money they deserved to lose.

The US/North Korea Summit went off without a hitch. Depending on who you listen to, it was a diplomatic feat of world-historical dimensions, or waste of time that accomplished nothing. The DoJ released the IG report on the Hillary Clinton email investigation. We didn't really learn anything new, but it confirmed that the FBI's headquarters personnel are both troublesome and arrogant. California has decided that 55 gallons of water per day per person is more than enough water than you need. Unless you need to, you know, shower and do laundry on the same day. In addition to a trade war with Europe and Canada, Donald Trump is kicking off one with China, as well. Two words: Smoot-Hawley. Two more words: Great Depression. The ANC-led government of South Africa appears keen to follow exactly the same path of policy failure that has turned large swathes of the African continent into poverty-stricken hell-holes.

Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade committed suicide this week, and suicide is on the increase nationally. Why are we unhappy? Has the Internet destroyed community? If so, how do we fix it. The culture has also changed our politics. We're harsher and less forgiving of others with whom we disagree. We don't have any answers to this, of course, but we do engage in a long discussion about it.

Roseanne Barr got herself fired for an intemperate personal tweet. Meanwhile, Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a c*nt on national TV, but she's fine. Black voters seem to be more well-disposed towards the Trump Administration, while the Democrats' lead in the generic congressional polling has turned negative. Maybe the voters don't like Liberal busybodies telling them how to live any more than they like it when conservative busybodies do. We've let tariff restrictions expire for Canada, Mexico, and the EU. Welcome back Smoot-Hawley! At least, this time, Japan doesn't have a navy. The on-off-on again summit with Kim Jong-Un is back on. Trump made some pardons that seem to be a bit politically...pointed. Finally, the EPA was rocked by another financial scandal when it was revealed that the agency bought a dozen fountain pens at the going market price.

Someone forgot to record the first minute of the podcast. It was frickin' brilliant, too. Just because someone is covertly gathering intelligence on the Trump campaign on behalf of a government agency, that's no reason to call him a "spy". Spy is such a loaded term. We have moved, by the way, from "Asserting someone spied on the rump campaign is insane," to "The spying was for Trump's own good!" Um...OK. The DOJ has released the secret draft of the DoJ IG report on the FBI's Clinton Email investigation. Can't wait to read it. Trump canceled the NoKo summit with Kim Jong-Un. Like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expected it. Cops are not racists who just want to shoot black people. They're shooting whites, they're shooting Asians, they're shooting indiscriminately. And that should be applauded. A federal judge ruled that it is unconstitutional for Donald Trump to block people on Twitter, because reasons.

There was another school shooting today, which is super depressing. There may or may not be a summit with North Korea. The DOJs IG report on the election seems to be drawing to a close. The Dems seem to have decided t0 make a midterm election run on raising taxes, confiscating guns, harboring illegal immigrants, and impeaching the president. We'll see how that works, I guess. Pro tip: If you're going to commit armed robery on a group of moms, be sure that one of them isn't a 20-year veteran of the national police.

The Iran Nuclear deal is dead. This what happens when a presidential administration makes a unilateral decision not backed by Congress, then leaves office. Pro Tip: Senate ratification is important. The North Korean Summit is set to go ahead in Neutral Singapore. Iranian-supported Hezbollah units ineffectually attacked Israel from Syria. Israel's response was...less ineffectual. The FBI is still refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas. Also, "subpoena" is spelled really strangely. A group of police chiefs says that if marijuana is legalized, they'll have to kill all their police dogs, because reasons.

A federal judge looked askance at Robert Mueller's invstigation of Paul Manafort. We discussed allowing you people to call int the show...but probably won't. It looks like there'll be a summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un. This is the best of all possible times to be alive. Some poor teenage girl wore an Chinese dress to prom and exposed herself to twitter rage from idiots.

We're back, after a hiatus last week, trying to catch up on everything that's happened. The DNC is suing Trump for winning the election, under a tort theory called "I'm butthurt!". Jim Comey's book tour and memo releases reveal him to have the character and decisiveness of the 13 year-old girl. A Fresno state professor declared that she was glad Barbara Bush is dead, and may lose her job over it. At what point to do we stop just tut-tutting about Progressive lunacy, and enforcing their own rules on them? Also, why does education in general suck in this country?

A Chicago suburb has banned all high-capacity firearms on pain of a $1,000 per day fine, while a Federal court in Massachussetts upheld the state's 'Assault Weapons' ban. This is a worrying trend. Kevin Williamson was hired, then fired by the Atlantic based on his pro-life stance. Progressives want you silent and cowed. Wierd things are happening in the Middle East. Could we we be seeing the start of an Islamic Reformation?

Congress passed an Omnibus spending bill for the next six months that funds everything the government does, except for what Republicans and Donald Trump said it should. But Trump will sign it anyway. John Bolton is going back into government is National Security Advisor. The Blue Check Mark crowd is having a cow about it. There's going to be a big gun control march in Washington this weekend. Out political culture continues to decline.

As the podcast got going, the Justice Department announced that Andrew McCabe had been fired from the FBI. At least someone in DC is being held accountable for something. Hillary Clinton said women are useless and weak. Then she fell down and broke her wrist. Republicans lost a House seat in Pennsylvania to a Democrat who loves God, guns, and guts...so, basically a Republican. Teenagers continued to expound on their deep wisdom. The 2018 election seems to be a lock for Democrats to take back the House, so they've decided to run on banning guns, raising taxes, and open borders. We'll see if that's what the electorate actually wants.

Donald Trump will reportedly meet with Kim Jong-Un in a summit meeting, the first Meeting between a US President and NoKo dictater in history. We'll see how that goes. Posing for pictures with Louis Farrakhan seems to be a relatively normal obligation for Democrats, in precisely the same way the Republicans posing with David Duke is not. Meanwhile, the Nation of Islam's newspaper is quick to point out that accusations that Farrakhan is anti-semitic are just "Jewish lies". California's new high-speed train from LA to Frisco will now cost about $100 million. Not that it'll ever be built. Also, California is in more or less open insurrection against the Federal government on immigration. Millennials are awful, and don't know how to debate.

This week has been all about gun control, and the House Democrats introduced a bill that would ban all semi-automatic firearms. Meanwhile, we've been deluged with a mass of misinformation about the deadliness of the AR-15 by people who know literally nothing about it. The president decided that consumers, apparently, aren't paying enough for goods made with steel and aluminum, so he announced a 25% tariff on them. Google, Facebook and Twitter are very powerful, but maybe we want to think before trying to regulate them as common carriers. If we do, we'll NEVER get rid of them. Georgia punished Delta Airlines for discontinuing the NRA discount that only 13 customers have ever used. Not the government of Georgia's business, really. Though one of us seems to disagree.

There were, apparently, 4 Broward County Sheriff's Deputies on scene at the Parkland shooting who did nothing but take cover. They were still taking cover when Coral Gables PD arrived and went into the shooting scene. The BCSO Deputies just waited for...something...while they listened to 17 kids get shot and killed. Unbelievable. CNN had a town hall--more of an anti-gun hatefest really, where BCSO Sherrif Israel--who must have already known about his deputies doing nothing on scene--blamed gun owners. It's all so tragic and depressing. So is the anti-gun crowd's insisence that guns be banned or confiscated. So depressing that Bruce and Dale just switched over to telling humorous war stories.

There was another mass shooting at a school. All of the usual one-line "solutions" are bing offered. But, the problem is much too deep and cultural for any of them to work. The Mueller investigation resulted in 13 indictments of Russians who will never be arraigned, so, we got that going for us. The Obamas had their oddicial portraits painted. They're very...arty.

The super-important intelligence committee memo was released today. We learned, more or less, nothing we didn't already know or suspect. The FBI did use the Steele Dossier to get a FISA surveillance warrant, as we suspected. Which is no small deal, but also isn't Watergate. Trump gave a well-received SOTU address, during which Democrats mainly sat on their hands, and refused to applaud soldiers, cops, jobs, or America. Sure, Trump may be a narcissistic buffoon that they don't like, but shouldn't they at least pretend to be happy the country isn't descending into some sort of post-apocalyptic hell? Guess not. Congress seems cmpletely incapable of doing what is arguably their primary job. The FBI's activity--and that of the Federal Bureaucracy as a whole--can be explained without resort to conspiracy by remembering that its leadership is composed mainly of butt-covering bureaucrats who are marginally competent.

The FBI is under ivestigation. The president is under investigation. What if they're both guilty? There are about 7 billion peple in the world. How many of them should be allowed to come to the US? Millenials are, by and large, entitled little tools. Also,they can't debate their way out of a paper sack. Progressives in general can't, as Jordan Peterson proved this week.

We seem to be at the edge of a Federal government shutdown, which means that the vast majority of us will go to work as usual Monday morning. Republicans say that there is a memo addressing horrific abuses of the FISA surveillance system, but, we haven't actually seen it, so it's probably mainly hype. Still, there's always hope that someone will go to jail, if any of the hype is true. There are 7 billion people on the planet who are candidates to immigrate to America. Opposing a single one of them from coming here makes you a virulent racist. Former FBI Director James Comey is about to embark on an exciting new career. California wants to secede from the union, except for the part of California that wants to secede from California. But, the important question is who is going to pay for the $67 billion bullet train from Bakersfield to Fresno?