Yeah, what does an old dead white man have to do with a state named after George Washington Carver?

/

Washington Democrats introduce legislation to remove George Washington from state flag

'While George Washington is an important national figure, he has limited historical connection to the state itself,' lawmakers said in their proposal

Because when you live in paradise and there are no serious problems left to address, there’s time to turn one’s attention to neglected issues, such as designing a flag that depicts a true historical perspective of the state; Like when the founding pioneer received the Salmon to the Territory from the indigenous people whose land he’d just stolen.

Or something like that.

Trump deals directly with Putin, and the Europeans whine: “What about us? Why can’t we come too?”

/

Powerline tells them why they’re not invited: they have nothing to offer.

The Daily Chart: Europe’s Weakness

The European, especially the German government that is about to get tossed out on its keister next weekend, is mightily upset at Vice President Vance’s Munich speech, not to mention other statements that a Europe that is worried about Russian aggression needs to step up. This is a stark depiction of how weak Europe has become:

France's Macron to host emergency European summit on Ukraine

Summary

  • Meeting comes with Trump administration suggesting it may keep Europe out of any talks on ending Russia-Ukraine war

  • UK PM Starmer, German Chancellor Scholz, NATO chief Rutte and EU Commission president von der Leyen to be present

MUNICH, Feb 16 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron will host European leaders, including Britain's prime minister on Monday for an emergency summit on the Ukraine war after U.S. officials suggested Europe would have no role in any talks on ending the conflict.

The French presidency said on Sunday Macron had called for the "consultation talks" and that they would address the tumultuous change in the U.S. approach to Ukraine and the attendant risks to the security of the European continent.

Others at the summit meeting will be German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa from the European Union.

U.S. President Donald Trump stunned European allies in NATO and Ukraine last week when he announced he had held a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin without consulting with them and would start a peace process.

Trump's Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg jolted Europe further on Saturday when he said it would not have a seat at the table for Ukraine peace talks, even after Washington sent a questionnaire to European capitals to ask what they could contribute to security guarantees for Kyiv.

The U.S. has also asked European allies in NATO what they would need from Washington to participate in Ukraine security arrangements, according to a document seen by Reuters on Sunday.

Dozens of similar summits have shown the 27-nation EU to be dithering, disunited and struggling to come up with a cohesive plan to end the Ukraine war on its doorstep and dealing with Russia, three years into Moscow's invasion of its neighbour.

Some countries were unhappy that the meeting was only for selected leaders and not a full EU summit, EU officials said.

The French presidency sought to assuage those misgivings saying Monday's meeting could lead to other formats "with the objective of gathering all partners interested in peace and European security".

Naturally, our own pet moron has previously weighed in with his usual perspicacity and wisdom:

They aren't listening; neither is (western) Europe

/

I hope the Muslims they’re turning their country over to will enjoy the cold

US Energy Secretary attacks 'sinister' net zero goals, singling out Britain

LONDON, Feb 17 (Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Monday called a pledge to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 a "sinister goal", and criticised the British government's attempts to hit clean energy targets.

[snip]

"Net Zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It's a terrible goal," Wright said, speaking via videolink at a conference being held in London.

"The aggressive pursuit of it - and you're sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal - has not delivered any benefits, but it's delivered tremendous costs."

Wright also used a question and answer session at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event to say his number one priority was for the government to "get out of the way" of the production of oil, gas and coal.

President Donald Trump's administration said on Friday it had granted a liquefied natural gas export license to the Commonwealth LNG project in Louisiana, the first approval of LNG exports after Biden paused them early last year.

"We ended the pause and approved the Commonwealth LNG export terminal last Friday, and many more in the queue," he said.

"The world simply runs on hydrocarbons and for most of their uses we don't have replacements."

On net zero, he took particular aim at Britain, saying its pursuit of a decarbonised energy system - which the current UK government wants to reach by 2030 - had damaged living standards and exported emissions elsewhere in the world.

"No one's going to make an energy-intensive product in the United Kingdom any more. It's just been displaced somewhere else," he said.

"This is not energy transition. This is lunacy. This is impoverishing your own citizens in a delusion that this is somehow going to make the world a better place."

[snip]

Dan Rather, call your office (Updated)

/

Oh, the Humanity!

Matt Vespa: Not Many Americans Are Going to Tolerate What These Federal Workers Had to Say Last Night.

You’d think these people had witnessed a murder. Also, we don’t care. It’s not because they’re government workers, though I’m also numb to that aspect—anything that sets DC on fire is fine by me. But tens of millions of other workers have endured these hardships and challenges many times over. It’s this ‘we’re special’ nonsense that the liberal media slaps onto these people that’s beyond tone-deaf, and no one wants to hear it.

As it turns out, things were even worse than Vespa imagined when he posted his article: Lots of problems with the aired episode, including a stirring lack of sympathy for the lil’ darlin’s, but here’s the most glaring one: they were never actually employed by USAID.

Heck, he/she/it can just reapply for a new job, or perhaps just a new assignment with his employer XLA:

XLA is an award-winning government services provider with more than 300 employees both domestically and internationally. Our core competencies are Program Lifecycle Management, Financial Management, Engineering & Technical Solutions, and International Program Support services.

Or Jefferson:

Of course, because the business’s “services” sound exactly like the gobbledygook federal bureaucracies are, per DOGE, no longer buying, these poor dears may want to look into other employment opportunities, like fry-chefs at McDonald’s.*

At Jefferson, we are problem solvers at heart; dedicated to delivering exceptional outcomes for challenges faced by federal agencies and commercial clients. With a focus on excellence, integrity, and enduring relationships, we help our valued clients achieve essential goals and improve the delivery and effectiveness of services.

Our team is uniquely positioned to help federal agencies deliver on the mission at hand and support commercial businesses seeking to enter into or grow their business within the federal market. There is no challenge too complex for us to solve.

Our Vision

We strive to be the premier global partner for organizations seeking transformative and sustainable success; to be recognized for our unparalleled expertise, innovative solutions, and unwavering commitment to our clients; to provide a merit-based work environment that fosters professional growth, cultivates outside the box thinking, and values individual and team contributions.

Our Mission

We are the trusted partner for helping our clients navigate complex challenges to achieve their goals, and delivering value through our dedicated experts and superior solutions.

*But, contra to the advice these people so happily gave the 42,000-60,000 laid-off Keystone XL pipeline workers ('I literally cried': Former Keystone XL workers still reeling two years after Biden axed pipeline) back before Trump 2.0, they definitely do not want to learn coding:

On this President Day, honoring two of our greatest leaders, we'd be remiss if we didn't show the woman who could have joined them were it not for racist, white males (you're welcome)

/

Bonus Material. Cemetery Commentary: Three Turkeys Perform a Perfect Reenactment of Today’s Democrat Party

It happened in Oregon, but these dreadful people can be found in most blue cities, so beware

/

Madwoman confronts a polite man, gains internet fame - for a few hours, at least.

(Wait til the part where she drops the pretense that she’s defending the honor of her veteran mother and father and turns it into all about Trump, where it was all along. Such fun!)

Is there something in the water today?

/

upholding the honor of the state: “Hold my beer!”

White House scorches 'moron' left-wing senator for seething over 'obvious' Trump family parody account

'It is obvious this page is not affiliated with President Trump, his family, or the administration,' the White House's rapid response account said to Sen. Murphy

This moron beat her fellow activists by three years!

/

At least she didn’t buy a Porsche! (That would be him on the left — he designed the people’s car)

Way back in 2022 Alyssa Milano (no, I’ve never heard of her either, but someone must have) made a bold move to speak truth to power, and gave up one coal burner for another: where was Sheryl Crow all this time, jetting off around the globe to preach “environmentalism?

Elon Musk points to Volkswagen's Nazi links after Alyssa Milano swaps her Tesla for a VW over 'hate and white supremacy' on Twitter

Actress and political activist Alyssa Milano has been slammed online after she boasted Saturday about trading in her Tesla for a Volkswagen electric vehicle.

She claimed she made the switch to defy "hate and white supremacy" and businesses buying ads on Twitter.

"I gave back my Tesla," Milano tweeted on Musk's platform. "I bought the VW ev. I love it. I'm not sure how advertisers can buy space on Twitter. Publicly traded company's products being pushed in alignment with hate and white supremacy doesn't seem to be a winning business model."

Still on patrol ...

/

Mr.President, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul

David Strom’s point man on this one

It has been less than a month since Donald Trump was inaugurated. Yet so much has happened that it seems the Biden administration is a distant memory. 

Sure, we are still dealing with all the problems Biden left behind. As government statistics get revised from pre-election numbers, employment numbers have been revised downward, and inflation upward. Trump appointees are having to scramble to recover billions of dollars that the Biden administration tossed out the door to fund all the leftist grifts and the Justice Department is bogged down with fighting leftist lawfare. 

But despite all the potholes and roadblocks, Trump is making huge progress. 

Because he didn't hire morons like Jared Bernstein:

For some reason, I was reminded of this clip, so I dug it up. Here is Biden's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors--the most influential "economist" in the administration. This man, as much as anyone, created Bidenomics. And he is an ignorant fool. He doesn't understand the most basic of economic concepts, and he was in charge of economic policy. 

You almost never saw an interview with Bernstein because even Pravda Media couldn't pass him off as anything but a fool. Rather than reporting that the most economically ignorant man in America was designing Biden's economic policies, they buried the lede and told us that the numbers showed that Biden had the Best Economy Ever™. 

Even Chuck Todd would know that Bernstein looks like a fool here. Rachel Maddow would probably wince watching this. Jake Tapper wouldn't be able to hold back his trademark confused scowl at an answer like that. Chances are that even Katilin Collins would hear that answer and conclude that Bernstein was a fool. 

The solution? Hide Bernstein and repeat propaganda endlessly. Government statistics say everything is great! Ignore the man behind the curtain!

There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.

While we're on Idiot Patrol ...

/


Marco Rubio Leaves CBS News’ Margaret Brennan Speechless After She Claimed Nazis ‘Weaponized’ Free Speech.

Brennan interrupted Rubio with the claim that Vance was “standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.” She then went on to criticize the vice president for meeting with Germany’s “far right” Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, despite the fact that he also met with leaders of other major German political parties. There is also the fact that Europeans consider any party that doesn’t want to invite the entire world “far right.” Even more disturbing, Brennan defended the censorship by claiming it was “specifically about the right.”

Rubio not only vehemently disagreed with the CBS anchor, but countered with facts:

“I have to disagree with you,” he responded. “Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities … There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were the sole and only party that governed that country, and so that’s not an accurate reflection of history.”

Rubio defended Vance’s point about the “erosion in free speech and intolerance for opposing points of view” in Europe.

When the secretary of state was finished, Brennan had nothing to say except that they were out of time. How convenient.

Whether you love or hate what is being said, if you don’t believe in their right to say it you are a totalitarian. Counter speech you dislike with facts, but don’t try to suppress it. Else you become the very thing you think you’re fighting against. It’s great to see the highest levels of American government defending THESE values in places that increasingly need it the most.

We’ve reached the moment in Mel Brooks’ The Producers when Max Bialystock asks his would-be director Roger De Bris if he’s read Springtime for Hitler, and De Bris responds, “Remarkable, remarkable! A stunning piece of work…I never knew that the Third Reich meant Germany. I mean it’s just drenched with historical goodies like that” [Video]