Full of gas
It's bad enough for Democrats that they have been lampooned for their new Papa John's-like "better" slogan, but even their Senate leader, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., steered off into Neverland when he brought up the subject of gas prices in a recent interview on ABC's "This Week."
With the wider use of fracking, gasoline prices came down under the administration of President Barack Obama, who opposed the fossil fuel extraction method. And gas prices, according to AAA, recently were tabbed "the cheapest the country has seen all year."
But Schumer had a different agenda, saying "huge companies buying up other companies" is the reason gas prices are going up.
"Gas prices are sticky - you know, when the domestic price goes uh when the uh price for oil goes up on the markets, it goes right up but it never goes down," he said. "How the heck did we let Exxon and Mobil merge?"
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve, in the economic theory of "sticky prices," cites gasoline as an example of something that isn't "sticky." But never mind.
But Schumer wasn't through, nonsensically saying, "The old Adam Smith idea of competition is gone. It's gone. People hate it when their fees go up."
Perhaps it's something about the minority leader position. He's beginning to sound like the now-retired, tangle-tongued former Democratic minority leader, Harry Reid.
When they go low, they go lower
When left-leaning media mavens criticize President Donald Trump by attempting to make sport of his wives, we've reached a pretty low bar. When the media maven, MSNBC's Joy Reid, can't even get her facts straight, it points up the desperation of the attack.
Out of the blue recently, Reid tweeted, "Trump married one American (his second wife) and two women from what used to be Soviet Yugoslavia: Ivana-Slovakia, Melania-Slovenia."
Perhaps, she was trying to say that two of his wives were Soviet spies, that perhaps one or more have turned him. It makes about as much sense as anything else being alleged at the moment.
But Reid evidently wasn't aware that Yugoslavia was communist but not part of the Soviet bloc. Indeed, the two countries were often at odds with each other.
In addition, Trump's first wife, Ivana, was from Czechoslovakia, not Yugoslavia.
Respondents to Reid's tweets touched on her "xenophobia," her lack of interest in facts, her apparently failure in geography class and her lack of understanding of world history.
The most clever one was this: "So immigrants are good, unless they're successful, beautiful, don't hate America, and marry a Republican?"
Booking her future
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been working on a book about the 2016 presidential race tentatively called "What Happened?" It is expected to give her thoughts on the campaign. No date has been given for its release.
Of course, she's already been quite vocal about what happened, blaming her loss on, among other things, misogyny, Russia, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the assumption she would win, fake news, the FBI and WikiLeaks.
Not surprisingly, Twitter users went to work coming up with alternate titles, with the hashtag "Better Names for Hillary's Book." Here are eight on the Daily Caller's list:
1. "I Got the Most Votes & Still Lost: The Rigged Election"
2. "How To Set Up a Secure Mail Server"
3. "Seth Rich Died Tryin'" (Rich was a former DNC employee whose 2016 murder in Washington, D.C., spawned conspiracy theories that suggested he was involved in leaked DNC emails.)
4. "All Quiet on the Wisconsin Front."
5. $1 Billion Spent On My Campaign and All I Get Is This Lousy Book"
6. "Struggling With Acceptance: The Hillary Clinton Story"
7. "How to Lose n Election in 10 Days"
8. "I Came, I Saw, I Lost"
The good guys win one
A settlement on behalf of two pro-life teenagers who were protesting in April outside STEM Academy in Downingtown, Pa., before being verbally abused by a school official was announced last week by the Alliance for Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group.
The teens were attempting to talk to students and the public along the street outside the high school when Zach Ruff, the school's dean of academics and student life, came out to confront them. After threatening to call police if they didn't leave, he began standing in front of them to shield their signs from other students.
One of the teens, Conner Haines, told Ruff the photos of an aborted fetus on his sign were "image bearers if God." Ruff responded, "You can go to (expletive), where they are, too."
Haines suggested Ruff turn to Jesus Christ for salvation, which enraged the administrator. "Listen here son, all right?" he said, inches from the teen's face. "I'm as gay as the day is long and twice as sunny. I don't give a (expletive) what you think Jesus tells me and what I should and should not be doing." He added that the Bible was a "book of fiction," and said he "and Trump can go to (expletive)."
Eventually, the administrator was placed on administrative leave, and he later resigned.
The legal group said a letter from the school district admitted "you had every right under our Constitution's First Amendment to speak and display signs like you did " It said the school district has agreed to clarify its policies to ensure public sidewalks surrounding its schools are open to free speech.