From The “Well, Duh” Desk: After larding taxes onto everything, especially gasoline, California officials launch an investigation to find out why California has the highest gas prices in America.

They bet it's those evil oil companies!  Yeah, that's gotta be it!

https://reason.com/2019/04/24/california-politicians-hiked-gas-tax-now-demand-investigation-into-states-4-per-gallon-gas-prices/

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It was announced today that in the first quarter of 2019, the economy grew by 3.2%.  That far exceeds the 2.5% predicted by economists.  That’s the fastest first-quarter growth in six years.  There’s more good economic news at the link.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/26/gdp-q1-2019-first-read.html

But sure, let’s impeach the President because he allegedly thought about firing the guy who was endlessly investigating him for something he knew he didn’t do.

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Last night, President Trump called in to Sean Hannity’s Fox News show for an exclusive interview.  If you missed it, the video is here:

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“As The Swamp Drains”: Here’s something I’ll bet you never expected to see. Embattled Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein blasting the Obama White House and former FBI Director James Comey.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rosenstein-slams-obama-administration-for-choosing-not-to-publicize-full-story-of-russia-hacking

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Welcome to the Presidential race, Joe!  Here’s what you have to look forward to, and this is just from your own side.

https://www.westernjournal.com/powerful-progressive-group-hammers-joe-biden-2020-announcement/

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Cartoon of the Day: One picture is worth 1,000 very bitter words…

https://www.westernjournal.com/glass-housewife/

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If much of the news media had not abandoned their integrity to become the left’s PR agency, they would be up in arms over California politicians conspiring with Planned Parenthood (a major donor to many of their reelection campaigns) to weaponize the legal system against pro-life undercover reporters who dared to expose alleged trafficking in baby body parts by Planned Parenthood clinics.  Instead, there was mostly silence or tacit support as the defendants, who did nothing but practice the investigative methods that all undercover reporters use, were persecuted with multiple felony charges and barred by a liberal judge from having access to exculpatory evidence.

Then last week, a Good Friday miracle occurred: California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye sent out an order indefinitely suspending "all further proceedings" in the criminal prosecution against the two defendants.  That means preliminary hearings at which all the evidence was to be presented – including the undercover videos that officials have tried to suppress – were canceled. 

http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2019/april/ca-supreme-court-halts-abortion-case-about-baby-body-parts-trafficking-by-planned-parenthood

(As a hint to how bogus these charges are, note that a similar case filed in Texas has already been thrown out of court, and the California charges include an absurd 15 felony counts for breaking the state’s “anti-eavesdropping law” plus a “conspiracy” charge.  This in a state where prosecutors let illegal aliens with violent criminal records go free into the streets.  But then, we’ve recently seen numerous examples of how Planned Parenthood and its supporters will go to any lengths to keep the public from learning the truth about what they actually do.)

The Thomas Moore Society, which is representing the pro-life reporters, was grateful for the win, but still hopes to get the state Supreme Court to “hear and decide the extremely critical issue raised in this appeal, namely, whether a prosecutor may exercise his or her powers to enforce the criminal laws on a selective, politically discriminatory basis."  One could draw a parallel between this and the “Russian collusion” case: leftist officials make false accusations against someone of opposing political views, and it comes back to bite them when it becomes apparent that the real wrongdoing was their own abuse of power. 

One other thing worth pointing out: while this kangaroo court case has been pressed largely by the incredibly biased and compromised California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, it was originally filed by his predecessor: Now-Senator and would-be US President Kamala Harris.  We recently had a White House that allowed federal law enforcement agencies to be weaponized against political enemies.  We don’t need another one.

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As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, the left can’t win arguments with reason, facts or history, so they use emotional appeals and redefine terms.  For instance, if you simply want to enforce existing laws to stop the flood of illegal aliens into the US, then you “hate” (emotion) “immigrants” (redefining a term to mean something it was never meant to mean.)

Well, that works among their friends in the elite bubbles of politics and the media, but it appears that most Americans still have the good sense to understand that words mean things and that policy decisions should be based on thoughts, not emotions.  So after years of browbeating people into being afraid to say what they really think about illegal immigration, it appears that most Americans still think the same way even if they don’t say it out loud for fear of setting off tantrums and Twitter mobs.

A new poll by Monmouth University – which, by the way, was slightly skewed in favor of Democrats – found that by 51 to 41 percent, Americans think that asylum seekers should have to wait in Mexico rather than being let into the US while they are vetted.

https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/americans-hand-pro-sanctuary-dems-big-defeat-support-sending-illegals-sanctuary-cities/

Forty-six percent think asylum claimants are just trying to get around the immigration system, while only 37% think they’re legitimate and 17% aren’t sure.  And here’s the kicker: by 46 to 43%, Americans approve of President Trump’s suggestion of shipping detained illegal entrants to “sanctuary cities” that claim they welcome them.   

That’s the policy that (between the two of them) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have sputtered was “cruel,” “cynical,” “despicable,” “criminal,”  "unserious," "illegal," "asinine," "sophomoric," “ludicrous,” “petulant,” “insulting,” “immoral,” “pathetic,” “demoralizing,” “un-American” and “illegal.” 

And a plurality of Americans favor it. As do 31% of Democrats!

Also, a new Rasmussen poll found that only 36% of Americans favor the community where they live declaring itself a “sanctuary city,” and just 31% oppose Trump’s plan to send illegal aliens to those cities.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/immigration/april_2019/just_31_oppose_plan_to_send_illegals_to_sanctuary_communities

I notice one of the few pejoratives Pelosi and Newsom didn’t use was “out of touch.”  Maybe they were reserving that one for themselves.

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No Viewpoint Variety in Variety, or Anyplace Else in Hollywood”  

From “Huckabee” writer and resident pop culture guru, Pat Reeder

As a longtime radio comedy and news commentary writer, writer/guest researcher for the “Huckabee” TV show, author, and head of the indie label that releases my wife and fellow writer, Laura Ainsworth’s, award-winning retro jazz albums (you should definitely support a rare outspoken conservative in music by buying them all at the only site that guarantees she’ll be paid a royalty:  https://store.cdbaby.com/Artist/LauraAinsworth ), I work in what I call a “showbiz-related field.”  Consequently, I get a lot of offers of very cheap insider subscription rates for showbiz and news publications.

I usually stick to the Internet, but last year, I got one too good to refuse: a year of Variety, the “Bible of show business,” for only five bucks.  Variety is a very swanky publication: 10x13 inches, stiff cover, high quality paper, color photos, etc.  At $5 for 52 issues, that wasn’t even a down payment on the postage.  I figured I might glean something useful for our record label or the TV show, so I gambled the cost of a McDonald’s lunch.

But I soon discovered that aside from the occasional interesting review or historical feature, the magazine mostly consisted of insider L.A. studio news of no interest to me and a lot of anti-Trump editorializing.  Just as with Entertainment Weekly (and as Laura has written, women’s magazines), Variety never misses an opportunity to slip leftwing political comments and insults about Republicans into the most inappropriate places (seriously, I don’t need to hear your thoughts on gun control when I’m just trying to find out if “The Lego Movie 2” is worth more than a matinee ticket price.)

I began to refer to arrivals of new issues of Variety as the “weekly dispatch from the world’s richest socialists.”  Eventually, they started piling up unread. When the subscription automatically renewed for $5, I called and canceled it and got a refund.  I thought of Mr. Burns on “The Simpsons,” who saw an ad promising the secret to happiness for one dollar, and he said, “I’d rather have the dollar.”  That was in January.  Indeed, the mailing label says my subscription ran out in January.

Yet, here it is nearly May, and I’m still getting Variety!  Someone is losing money (and Hollywood environmentalists are killing a lot of trees) still sending me this slick, heavy magazine for free.  Maybe it boosts their ad rates to keep sending it even to people who no longer want it.  That has to be their business model, because I can’t imagine anyone paying for stuff like this (and here we come to the crux of why I futilely canceled my subscription.)

A couple of weeks ago, Gov. Huckabee referenced a review I pointed out to him by critic Owen Glieberman of the movie “Unplanned” which read more like a Planned Parenthood PR release.  Well, last week, Variety let him review the new faith-based film, “Breakthrough.”  What he wrote is a lab specimen-worthy example of Trump Derangement Syndrome.  You know that elderly relative at family reunions who can’t talk about any subject for more than two minutes without launching into an angry rant about Richard Nixon?  Well, this is that experience in print.  To save you having to spend five dollars and throw away a copy of Variety every week for the rest of your life, here it is online:

https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/breakthrough-review-chrissy-metz-1203182735/

“Breakthrough” is a true-life story of a mother’s faith that her son will recover from a seemingly terminal coma following an accident.  It’s about hope, faith, adversity, miracles, medicine and lots of other things -- but definitely not Donald Trump.  Yet check out the last three paragraphs, where Glieberman steers his review so sharply to the left that he drives it into the ditch. 

He veers from the Affordable Care Act to climate change to an anti-Trump rant (“…given that the current leader of American conservative politics, Donald Trump, is a rage-fueled narcissistic demagogue who, measured by his words and deeds, is no more a Christian than he is a Martian…”).  He calls it a “movie of the Trump age” (this is a close relative of the annoying cliché, “Trump’s America,” which pops up in these magazines more often than semi-colons.)  He also defensively claims that dragging all these attacks on Republican policies into a review of a movie about faith is “fair game, and hardly irrelevant.”  For the record: no, it isn’t; and yes, it is.    

I don’t know whether it’s the coastal bubble effect (i.e., the legend about New Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael not understanding how Nixon could’ve been reelected when nobody she knew voted for him) or a sincere belief that anyone who disagrees with Hollywood’s approved political views must be a knuckle-dragging deplorable so they don’t care about those people’s patronage.  But it does explain why all those leftist last night shows bring in a fraction of Johnny Carson or Jay Leno’s ratings, yet no network ever thinks to grab 50% of the potential audience and bring back the millions who’ve tuned out simply by putting a funny conservative on the air. 

If you would like to have a source for conservative-oriented show biz news and reviews, try Hollywood In Toto, which pretty much has the market to itself.  In this article, Christian Toto explains that it’s not enough for Hollywood liberals to dominate pop culture, they must also destroy anything, such as the movie “Unplanned,” that presents an alternative viewpoint.  

https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/left-pop-culture-unplanned/

I figure there must be tens of millions of Americans who are just as weary as I am of this endless, inappropriate interjection of politics into entertainment writing.  It’s no wonder they have to sell this stuff at a loss or give it away for free.  If Variety's editors don’t tell their writers to climb down off their soapboxes, I might demand that they start paying me $5 an issue just to allow it into my mailbox.

Oh, and by way, I wasn’t kidding about buying Laura’s albums.  They really are fantastic, and you have my guarantee: you won’t find a single word about politics on any of them. 

 LEAVE ME A COMMENT BY CLICKING HERE. I READ THEM!