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Ayup – the wonders of Capitalism (the marketplace governed by you) vs the dreariness of a Government directed economy (even if it is just lunch):

Students, Faculty Rejoice as PA School Drops Federally-Regulated School Lunch Program

A Pennsylvania high school is no longer bound by federal food regulations after the district decided to do away with the National School Lunch Program. Penn-Trafford High School had been struggling to comply with federal regulations as cafeteria revenues and student lunch participation took a dive, the Tribune-Review reported. The school’s lunch program is now free from restrictions on calories, fat, sugar, salt, and other elements, but lost federal funding to help cover free and reduced-priced lunches for some students. However, district business manager Brett Lago said the district has still been able to provide free and reduced-price lunches to students eligible for the school lunch program.

“We’ve lost, to date, about $40,000 worth of reimbursement, but our sales are up about $50,000 over last year,” he said. “Participation has gone from about 25 percent to 45 percent, and we’re still providing free lunches to all those students who would have been eligible under the school lunch program.”

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Heh!  For years, OPEC has been an energy bully as well as funding Middle Eastern spawned Islamism. It seems, however, that their days of exclusively using an oil club to get their way is fading:

Chinese independent, or teapot, refiners are bringing in rare cargoes of North American heavy crude in a new long-distance flow that traders say has only been made possible by OPEC’s output cuts and ample supplies in Canada and the United States.

In April, at least 1 million barrels of the heavy crude Mars, pumped from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, are expected to land in China’s Shandong province and 1 million barrels of a second unidentified heavy grade will arrive in China, trade and shipping sources said last week. This follows the arrival in January of 600,000 barrels of U.S. Gulf Blend, a heavy crude made up of a blend of various U.S. and Canadian grades loaded onto ships on the U.S. Gulf Coast, according to the sources and shipping data.

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Heh!

Jeffrey Medford, a small-business owner in South Carolina, voted reluctantly for Donald Trump. As a conservative, he felt the need to choose the Republican. But some things are making him feel uncomfortable — parts of Mr. Trump’s travel ban, for example, and the recurring theme of his apparent affinity for Russia.

Mr. Medford should be a natural ally for liberals trying to convince the country that Mr. Trump was a bad choice. But it is not working out that way. Every time Mr. Medford dips into the political debate — either with strangers on Facebook or friends in New York and Los Angeles — he comes away feeling battered by contempt and an attitude of moral superiority.

“We’re backed into a corner,” said Mr. Medford, 46, whose business teaches people to be filmmakers. “There are at least some things about Trump I find to be defensible. But they are saying: ‘Agree with us 100 percent or you are morally bankrupt. You’re an idiot if you support any part of Trump.’ ”

He added: “I didn’t choose a side. They put me on one.”

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A bubble that is BEGGING for a pin (any pin, any size, from anywhere, to pop these windbag harpies).

SHOT (heh!):

“When somebody says a (good) guy with a gun can stop a (bad) guy with a gun, we remind them that’s there’s absolutely no evidence that supports that theory and that all of the evidence is actually contrary to that.” – Moms Demand Action Florida director Michelle Gajda, in Group fights gun proposals with two opposing sides in documentary [via wtsp.com]

CHASER: Really?

I know that I, as well as other Groksters have posts speaking exactly to that lie.  However, to be fair, here’s what I picked up in a just a few minutes elsewhere:

Defensive Gun Use of the Day: Chicago CCW Holder Stops Robbery With His Equalizer

Three armed robbers (above) stormed into a store in the 7400 block of North Western Street in Chicago Sunday. One employee, with a valid Illinois concealed carry license, drew his equalizer and dispensed some ballistic deterrence toward the offending trio. Two of the three bad guys sprung leaks. All of the offenders made a hasty retreat, leaving a trail of blood that came in handy for police to follow.

Ashley Mundy is Every Gun Hater’s Nightmare

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Given that NH has one of the worst outbreaks of this in the country, this “Morning Jolt” from National Review caught my eye.  Reproduced here in its entirety with emphasis mine:

How You Helped Pay for America’s Opioid Addiction Crisis

A stunning detail from Nicholas Eberstadt’s opus in Commentary, revealing how the national opioid addiction crisis was largely fueled by Medicaid:

How did so many millions of un-working men, whose incomes are limited, manage en masse to afford a constant supply of pain medication? Oxycontin is not cheap. As Dreamland carefully explains, one main mechanism today has been the welfare state: more specifically, Medicaid, Uncle Sam’s means-tested health-benefits program. Here is how it works (we are with Quinones in Portsmouth, Ohio):

[The Medicaid card] pays for medicine—whatever pills a doctor deems that the insured patient needs. Among those who receive Medicaid cards are people on state welfare or on a federal disability program known as SSI.?.?.?.?If you could get a prescription from a willing doctor—and Portsmouth had plenty of them—Medicaid health-insurance cards paid for that prescription every month. For a three-dollar Medicaid co-pay, therefore, addicts got pills priced at thousands of dollars, with the difference paid for by U.S. and state taxpayers. A user could turn around and sell those pills, obtained for that three-dollar co-pay, for as much as ten thousand dollars on the street.

Retirement money?

In 21st-century America, “dependence on government” has thus come to take on an entirely new meaning.

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It just seems that for this issue, if you aren’t willing to look for it, you’re not going to find it.  Methinks that this story out of Texas mirrors that what we’ve seen here in NH (re: how many affidavits are piled up in boxes in the NH AG’s office, just sitting there?).  As a software engineer, I have learned that 20% of my time is spent writing code to actually make “it work” and the rest of it is often spent “moron/idiot-proofing” it. Yeah, I said it because dollars to donuts, somebody is going to hit the wrong thing or enter a “nonsense” value at the wrong time.  And that isn’t even those that have a malicious intent.  Pretty much, NO system is not hackable be it automated or manual.  And here from Texas is yet another example of a voting system that is being gamed (re: fraud) from Fox News (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Officials in Texas acknowledge that hundreds of people were able to bypass voter ID laws and improperly cast ballots in the presidential election. Voters were able to sign a sworn statement instead of showing ID. The chief election officers in two of Texas’ largest counties are considering whether to refer cases to prosecutors for possible charges.

Which is how it should be.  Then, however, we have the flip side (sorta analagous to our “NH Not Working”):

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The Environmental Protection Agency still exists—though House Republicans have introduced a bill that would seek to change that, and President Trump is reportedly ready to sign executive orders to hamstring the agency’s climate change-related efforts—and it just released its annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions report. The published information only runs through 2015, owing to the lag associated with such large data sets, but what we do know is, well, encouraging. . . .

A 2.2 percent annual decrease in overall GHG emissions is no small feat, and it will obviously be received as good news by environmentalists around the country. But before those greens despair that now, without Obama, those emissions are going to spike again, let’s consider that it was a shift in fossil fuels—not renewables—that was responsible for the majority of these reductions. Specifically, it was the ongoing displacement of coal-fired power plants by natural gas-fired ones that did the heavy lifting for American climate change mitigation in 2015.

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This is just great!  I saw this earlier that the National Organization for Nags Women decided that Wegmans (a grocery store chain) had to be taught a lesson because (horrors!) they gave consumers choices when it came to wines – including Trump Wine (reformatted emphasis mine):

Wegmans grocery stores in Virginia selling Trump Winery products became the site of the latest anti-Trump boycotts this week — but the protest seems to have only bolstered the wines’ sales. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, five different wines have sold out at two Wegmans in the Richmond area. And in the other eight grocery stores across the state, the wines have either sold out entirely or almost sold out.

…The Prince William County’s National Organization for Women chapter called for a boycott of the popular grocery store chain because it sold a variety of Trump Winery wines in its Virginia stores. “Certainly if Wegmans is carrying Trump wines, I personally will not shop there,” National Organization for Women President Terry O’Neill said.

Ah, where do you live, again?

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That’s all we’ve heard since Obamacare started the wind up to become legislation: “look at Canada’s medical system – it’s socialized!”.  Nitwits all – they kept on ignoring the more than anecdotal evidence that many Canadians came here for care (including a government Minister who took advantage of our cardiac expertise).  Thus, I’m not surprised by this (reformatted, emphasis mine):

A new survey of 11 developed countries shows that Canada was in last place for wait times (tied with Norway) and also scored quite poorly on the availability of doctors during nights and weekends. This means that Canadians have the highest rate of emergency room usage out of the 11 countries surveyed.

As it turns out, these numbers are actually an improvement since the last time the survey was conducted.

The survey found that only 43 per cent of Canadians were able to secure same-day or next-day appointments with their primary-care physicians, a tie for last place. Still, that figure was an improvement over the last time the Commonwealth Fund asked the question in 2013, when only 38 per cent of Canadian patients said they could see their doctors right away.

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disinformation plot to find leakers?

BREAKING: Trump administration considers mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants.

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 17, 2017

Who the heck knows but certainly the Associated Press looks like a fool: AP Exclusive: DHS weighed Nat Guard for immigration roundups

Sidenote: it is obvious that the AP has rewritten their story as it clashes with the scrape that RedState has, so I’ll go with that:

The Trump administration is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border, according to a draft memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The 11-page document calls for the unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Oregon, and as far east as New Orleans, Louisiana.

You know something, this doesn’t even pass the smell test:

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