<  -------------- " I LOVE YOU ALL !!!!!   "   :

<  ------------ Some Guy   ... ?!  .... !!!!!   :




https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-deregulation-project-1492470927



" Trump’s Deregulation Project   "

" Thirteen Obama rules are gone so far, but there’s much more to do.  "


" Health reform may be on life support and tax reform uncertain, but one part of the Donald Trump economic growth project is succeeding: deregulation. The question is whether the President will now rev up the effort.

President Trump last week signed the 13th bill repealing regulations through a potent tool called the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Congress to reject rules in a majority vote within 60 legislative days of publication. The 1996 law had previously been used only once, when Congress and George W. Bush nixed an ergonomics directive from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Two other repeal resolutions have passed the House and are pending in the Senate.

The list of rejects includes the Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule, which would have eliminated a third of coal-industry jobs and usurped state authority over mining, for little environmental improvement. Awaiting Senate repeal is the Bureau of Land Management’s venting and flaring rule for natural-gas fracking. That aimed to reduce methane emissions, though they have already dropped more than 15% since 1990 even as U.S. energy exploration has doubled in a decade.

Other worthy targets: A Federal Communications Commission regulation that would have forced Comcast to abide by consumer privacy standards that Amazon and Google could ignore. Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) moved a bill to deep-six a teacher training mandate that features incentives for teachers to avoid struggling schools that need talented instruction most. The left is spreading panic about potential sludge rivers or killer toys, but these reversals merely restore the status quo of six months ago.

Congressional Review actions do not include Mr. Trump’s executive orders, which have directed agencies to reconsider the trillion-dollar Clean Power Plan, the Labor Department’s financial advice diktat known as the fiduciary rule, among many others.

Then there are the rules that agencies have delayed and may eventually scrap, from micromanaging ceiling fan efficiency to organic farming standards. Sam Batkins at the American Action Forum estimates that 15 delayed rules alone would require 10 million hours of paperwork. That time could be devoted to activities that produce wealth and innovation, and the main losers would be compliance lawyers.

The White House and Senate Republicans have said the 60-day review period for Congressional Review Act measures will end next month. But our colleague Kimberley Strassel has explained how the law applies to past rules that agencies failed to report to Congress as required. The same is true for “guidance” letters, such as the Education Department’s sexual assault “Dear Colleague,” that were imposed with the force of law without having to go through a public comment period.

The Administration could require agencies to work up lists of rules that were not properly reported, and send them up for rejection. Bonus: If Congress disproves a rule, the CRA stipulates that an agency cannot issue the same regulation again. That is much more powerful than perennial blue-ribbon regulatory commissions or a pledge to identify two old regulations to replace for every new one, which usually achieve less than advertised.

The minds behind this interpretation are the Heritage Foundation’s Paul Larkin and the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Todd Gaziano, who helped write the CRA. They are combing federal records for potential candidates. There appear to be hundreds, and here’s an example: The EPA’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s Rapanos opinion in its waters of the U.S. rule, which has let the agency pummel property owners with tenuous claims about drainage into navigable waters.

Some Republicans may want to move on to other legislative priorities, and floor time is limited. But agencies could report a handful of rules at a time so as not to swamp the House and Senate as they consider the budget or Mr. Trump’s nominees.


Democrats will inevitably protest, but the point of the review act was to create an accountability mechanism for agencies that refuse to follow the law. And as with so much lately, Democrats can thank former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who helped create the law and took credit for its passage in his farewell remarks last year.

Many Republicans campaign against regulations but then merely pump out rules at a slightly slower pace. So far the Trump Administration is a welcome improvement, rolling back more regulations than any President in history. Now we will see if he’s willing to deploy the full power of the law.  "

SCL ?

Joey wrote on Apr 20^th, 2017 at 8:58pm:


Caribou Barbie finally made it to the White House...shucks..looks like she picked up a posse at Waffle House too.

<  --------------   I must admit  ..............   forty - two years later and that center shot of those two Meaty , Beaty , Big & Bouncy Victoria's Principals coming RIGHT at you STILL get me chubbin' after all these decades .

... I am Chubbin' ! 

<  --------------------      *********** " STONES IS STONES BABY !!!!!!!   "   .. WAIT !!!!!   WHERE IS KEITH ?!  ...........................!!!!!!!   "   ***************




Developing .............................


Shiver ........................

<  ------  Edith  , How Come Nicolle Wallace is no longer on Morning Joe ?






I sense ' tension ' between Mika ( otherwise known as  ' HomeGirl  ' ) and Nicolle  .


Developing ..................


http://www.tv.com/shows/morning-joe/reviews/

Joey wrote on Apr 25^th, 2017 at 9:28pm:

Thanx Joey, never saw that before, used to love Morcombe & Wise as a kid in the UK.

gypsymofo60 wrote on Apr 25^th, 2017 at 9:59pm:




My Pleasure   ---- Obviously The Queen is / was a Fan of Morcombe & Wise   .



 

sweetcharmedlife wrote on Apr 21^st, 2017 at 9:26pm:



.......and here's something else that makes us great.

Betcha don't read all the way to the end. 

Editorial: The Alice Cooper you don't know

One of the nation’s best-known Republicans appears tonight in Salem. The 68-year-old millionaire businessman from Arizona has golfed with Donald Trump, but also has questioned the president’s morals.

The son of a minister, this particular conservative professes to be a born-again Christian who says that throughout his career, he has been warning against the temptations of Satan. His primary charity is a Christian-based teen center. He believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible; he questions evolution, and supports a strong national defense.

He also has a thing for snakes, guillotines and wearing mascara, at least during his public appearances.

We refer, of course, to Vincent Damon Furnier, better known by his stage name of Alice Cooper.

Yes, that Alice Cooper. The one who plays tonight at the Salem Civic Center.

Conservative rock stars are about as hard to find as, umm, well, liberal country music stars. The list of conservative rock stars starts with Kid Rock and Ted Nugent, who were recent guests at the White House. And then there’s Alice Cooper, who probably won’t be. To be fair, Cooper is not exactly a Republican activist, and over the years, he’s often said that rock stars should stay away from politics. He told one interviewer last year that rock stars talking about politics is “the worst idea ever.”

“First of all, why do people think rock stars know more than they do? That is the biggest fallacy in the world — if anything, we’re dumber. We’re not smarter than anybody else. I mean, why do you think we’re rock stars?

“Trust me, we don’t read magazines you don’t read,” Cooper told the interview show “Metal Hammer” on Spotify. “Nobody calls us up and gives us as inside information on politics. We know less than you do. If I watch TV, it’s ‘Family Guy’.

“Rock ‘n’ roll was built to go as far away from politics as you could get. When my mom and dad talked about who to vote for, I’d go in the other room and put on The Beatles or Rolling Stones — and I’m still like that.”

On the other hand, from time to time, Cooper has offered his opinions — usually when someone has asked, and he hasn’t been shy about answering. “I’ll be honest, I go from Democrat to Republican,” he told a Canadian interviewer in 2008. “I vote for the person, not the party.” That doesn’t sound particularly Republican, but Cooper did go on to praise Sarah Palin that year as “totally a breath of fresh air.” When it comes to national security, Cooper said that “in a shooting war, I want a pit bull, not a poodle. I’m gonna go for the hawk.” Pollsters would probably categorize Cooper as “leans Republican.”

As early as fall 2015 —when even many political pundits were still discounting Trump — Cooper suggested that the idea of a Trump presidency wasn’t all that crazy. “I know Donald and I know he’s doer; he’s not a sayer; he’s a doer,” Cooper told a Canadian radio program. “I think that’s what the American public are looking at. The American public always votes with their wallets. They’re looking at a guy and going, ‘Why don’t we put a billionaire in there that knows how to run a business?’ ”

That’s not to say that Cooper thought Trump was the best choice. Cooper — an avid golfer who often hits the links at 6 a.m. to avoid the Arizona heat — was asked in 2012 who was the “worst celebrity golf cheat” he’d ever met. “I played with Donald Trump one time,” Cooper replied. “That’s all I’m going to say.” For his part, Trump has denied ever playing golf with Cooper. You can decide for yourself who’s more likely telling the truth — Cooper in 2012 when Trump was still just a businessman in New York, or Trump in the midst of a political campaign when the Washington Post was putting together a story on all the celebrities who have accused him of playing fast and loose with the rules.

Google “Alice Cooper” and “golf” and you won’t find any pictures of him golfing with Trump but you will find one of Cooper golfing with former Vice President Dan Quayle.

Perhaps most interestingly, given the often grotesque nature of Cooper’s elaborate shows, is his religiosity. Cooper’s father was a minister in an offshoot of the Mormon church; Cooper has said that as a child he spent seven days a week in church and was regarded as “a religious whiz kid” because of his ability to memorize scripture.


Cooper shot to fame in the 1970s with shows that weren’t exactly Biblical in nature, unless you count song titles like “Prince of Darkness,” “Devil’s Food” and “Alice Cooper Goes To Hell.” He also became addicted to alcohol and other rock’n’roll-related vices. Cooper has credited two things with helping him break those habits: Golf, and God – and not necessarily in that order.

Today, Cooper occasionally teaches Sunday School at his home church. Cooper once told a British newspaper: “You should see the look on people’s faces. ‘Alice Cooper teaching Bible class? But he’s the spawn of the devil!’ Surely people get it by now ... Alice is just a character. Alice hates going to church, but I go every Sunday.”

He’s also been known to attend church or Bible studies when he’s on the road. Baptist News Global has an entertaining story of the time Cooper stunned parishioners when he showed up unannounced at First Baptist Pensacola in Florida and “joined his voice with others in singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.”

In 2006, Cooper opened the Solid Rock Teen Center, a $3 million facility in Phoenix billed as “a creative sanctuary for troubled teens” that encourages kids to “embrace artistic excellence and avoid drugs, guns and gangs.” The logo blends the letter “R” into the Christian cross.

How does Cooper square all this with his songs and stage persona? In an interview on The Harvest Show, an evangelical Christian program, Cooper once insisted that many of his songs actually carry religious themes. “Almost everything I wrote was ‘good and evil, don’t pick evil,’ ” Cooper said. He says his early songs, in particular, “have totally got all kinds of Christian bywords going all the way through it, because it comes out of you what’s in you. So songs like ‘Second Coming’ and things like that were all pretty much always warning about Satan.”

He just had, shall we say, an interesting way of saying it. Decades later, he still does.


http://www.roanoke.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-the-alice-cooper-you-don-t-k...

<  ----------- Shiver  :



http://www.omaha.com/opinion/craig-snyder-two-choices-both-bad-on-n-korea/articl...



" Craig Snyder: Two choices, both bad, on N. Korea  "




The writer is the president of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia. He wrote this for the Philadelphia Inquirer.




" The Trump administration’s approach to the deadly serious problem of North Korea is the worst of all possible formulations. It is Teddy Roosevelt, turned upside down — “Speak loudly, and pretend to carry a big stick.”

What the administration wants is absolutely the ideal objective, to prevent North Korea from acquiring the capability to launch nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missiles at the United States. This has been the “red line” objective of the last several administrations. And they have all wished to do this without using force.

But the means being discussed, such as putting North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, banning the North Korean airline from flying places it will never fly anyway and banning the import of North Korean seafood (seriously?) are almost comically insufficient to the problem.

Then there’s the “armada,” 3,500 miles away, but, maybe, on the way. These things, and other non-military options which might be considered, all pale by comparison to both the carrots and sticks that have already been used by prior presidents.

The hope that President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson can persuade China to exercise maximum leverage against North Korea — perhaps shutting off energy supplies, or stopping the regime from reaching nuclear ICBM capability through sanctions-backed diplomacy, while also preventing it from “going out with a bang” if it thought it would be stopped — is almost certainly a mirage. Likewise, even the best offensive cyber-wafare operations can do little more than slow down the march toward nuclear capability against us.

Even limited preemptive military action won’t work. How could merely wounding and cornering a fierce animal not lead to a rageful last gasp of dreadful retaliation?


There is a good reason none of these are viable options. It’s because, from the North Korean point of view, only achieving that most fearsome military capability can provide reasonable assurance of this regime’s long-term existence. The North Korean leader wants there to be a parade for him, like the one we recently saw for his elders, on the 105th anniversary of his birth, and he must have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them against the United States to maximize the chance of that happening. Under any scenario in which his, and his regime’s, survival is in doubt, he can be counted on to take with him as many of his enemies as he has any means to do.

So here is the truly horrible truth about North Korea: There are only two choices.

The first is that we acknowledge and accept, as we have done with Russian and Chinese ICBM capabilities for decades, and then try to deter and contain, and to defend against, a North Korea able to strike us with nuclear weapons.

If this is, however, unacceptable — because we believe these weapons to be far more likely to be used offensively by the North Koreans than we have ever feared their use by the Russians and Chinese — then the alternative, the only alternative, is war.

War waged to victory, not stalemate. War waged and won before the North Koreans achieve their weapons development goal. War waged with both sufficient force and tactical surprise, so as to not leave the opponent wounded, cornered, and still able to lash out.

This means the World War II notion of war, one aimed at toppling the enemy regime and destroying its capacity for harm, not limited “surgical strikes” aimed to send messages or merely degrade the other side. In the case of North Korea, limited war would almost certainly lead to total war, which would likely include the North’s use of nuclear weapons. So if any use of force will very probably lead to total war, it needs to be total war from the outset, on the most advantageous terms from our perspective.

There are very many, right across our otherwise highly polarized polity, who, if they believe this description of the real alternatives is correct, would opt for the acceptance of a long-term North Korean nuclear threat to the United States, rather than the undoubtedly terrible costs and consequences of war.

There are others who argue that a sincerely believed American commitment to as decisive a war as we waged in World War II, including all necessary preparations and all necessary sacrifices to fulfill that commitment, would cause the Chinese and Russians to ally with us, as indeed they both did in WWII.

Better, as powers craving space in the global sun, to be part of a world police force, than bystanders to the reemergence of American hegemony, or to start World War III, seeking to stop American hegemony.

Such a course of events, with the world’s three leading military powers joining together to preempt aggression by a rogue state, would amount to the more than 70-year delayed birth of the U.N. Security Council, as it was intended to work.

Frightful though it surely is, there is a clock ticking on this decision, and sound judgments cannot be made on the basis of false premises.

Our choices are both bad and difficult. Our choices are acceptance or war.  "

Factory Girl wrote on Apr 5^th, 2017 at 7:08pm:



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