Dowd: Her Little Basket of Deplorables

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/election-therapy-from-my-basket-of-deplorables.html?ref=opinion

Apparently Maureen's family is largely conservative -- poor woman. She lets her conservative brother write her column every T-Day, it is usually the best one of the year. It is largely a repeat of things I've written or posed already, but I include it largely for the "poor me" sympathy plea that a NY Times columnist that meets with the incoming president and obviously gets teased is willing to make. Kevin's column is good though if you want to go give it a read.

First I had to deal with the president-elect scolding. 

During his interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Donald Trump chided me twice for being too tough on him. 

Sitting next to our publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Trump invited everyone around the table to call him if they saw anything “where you feel that I’m wrong.” 

“You can call me, Arthur can call me, I would love to hear,” he said. “The only one who can’t call me is Maureen. She treats me too rough.”

Then I had to go home for Thanksgiving and deal with my family scolding me about the media misreading the country. I went cold turkey to eat hot turkey: no therapy dog, no weaving therapy, no yoga, no acupuncture, no meditation, no cry-in. 

The minute I saw my sister’s Trump champagne and a Cersei figurine as the centerpiece — my brother, Kevin, nicknamed Hillary “Cersei” during this year’s brutal game of thrones — I knew I wasn’t in a safe space. 

My little basket of deplorables, as I call my conservative family, gloated with Trump toasts galore, and Kevin presented me with his annual holiday column with an extra flourish. 

My colleague Paul Krugman tweeted Friday that “affluent, educated suburbanites” who voted for Trump are “fools.” What else is there to say, he asked. 

Well, here is what Kevin, an affluent, educated suburbanite, has to say in his column, titled an “Election Therapy Guide for Liberals”:

The Washington Post Oct 25, No Path To Trump Victory

There is no possible way Donald Trump’s team actually believes this is their path to 270 - The Washington Post: 

"But on Trump TV, viewers didn't get any of this “spin.” They just got the unvarnished truth, straight from the people responsible for getting Trump into striking distance: Trump’s in striking distance. On Nov. 8, I fully expect Trump TV to say that Trump actually won. After all, Conway said they would. Unequivocally."

For 38 years now, since I began to question the MSM, I've been mystified by why people still listen to them -- now, given Trump, I believe I finally understand.

ALWAYS CERTAIN, FREQUENTLY WRONG!

That is the key, but the element that Trump brings is that HE IS HIS OWN MEDIA.

When the WaPo is horrendously and totally wrong -- or BO is, or any part of "The Party" (TP-D), they simply "move on".  The linked column snarkly points out how "stupid" and "misleading" Trump's media is -- while they are naturally "completely truthful" and RIGHT!

But they were completely and totally WRONG! Never mind -- the readers of the WaPo still read and trust their reporting. The WaPo committed the same level of figurative outrage for an informations source as Trump would have were he to shoot someone in broad daylight in Times Square -- and as he said he would with his followers, the WaPo has gotten away with it!

So the total magic spell is "Always certain, and when wrong, LOOK AT THAT SQUIRREL!".

Both the MSM and Trump play this game constatntly. Today's media is built on !!!!!! BREAKING NEWS !!!!! .... !!!! THIS JUST IN !!!! .... the actual content is completely unimportant next to the shouting. Trump announces white supremacist for DHS!!! (Ben Carson) ;-) !!!!!

Since I've read both sides of news since '78, and believe that this life is only the pre-season for eternity, the MSM is "full of sound and fury signifying nothing". I'm firmly convinced that in order for our nation to return to greatness, we MUST build leadership with classical education that understands what the educated have understood for thousands of years:

• It's not about me or even us  (The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God)
• Both everything and nothing are about this moment. (right now is all we have, and it is a tiny piece of the always is, always was and always will be loaf of time) 
• Both I and we have a purpose, and the strengths to achieve that purpose. That is meaning. 

I stand by this being the Russian Roulette election -- we chose to take a shot with the Trump revolver rather than the Hillary semi-auto. At least there is some doubt in our future -- that was the best we could hope for given the 216 "moment".

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Identity Politics To Blame?

The End of Identity Liberalism - The New York Times: 

The recriminations on the left continue, this article focuses on "divide and conquer" not working as well as they hoped.

"But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing."

"Distorted liberalism's message"?  I searched for any sense of what that message was supposed to be, and I believe I found the authors view here:

By the time they reach college many assume that diversity discourse exhausts political discourse, and have shockingly little to say about such perennial questions as class, war, the economy and the common good.

"Class, war, the economy and the common good". We've come a long way from "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness (purpose)". The "pursuit of happiness" is a HUGE mistake ... happiness is a SIDE EFFECT of doing what you were meant to do! I HIGHLY recommend Dennis Praeger's book, "Happiness Is A Serious Problem" on this topic.

The column is longer than it needs to be. It is human nature to want to be "moral" (or at least more moral than the next guy), and the main "morality" that the left thought they discovered was diversity -- feminists, blacks, hispanics, muslims, gays and most recently, the 58 genders of Facebook, became the heroes, replacing the founding fathers, religious saints, the successful, etc.

The basic liberal argument is "more free stuff" -- Bernie was certainly on that theme, and had Hillary and the DNC not cooked the books, he might well have beat her using the old standard lefty theme. Maybe not -- the last big dump of "free stuff", BOcare had shown itself to be VERY expensive to the us poor schmucks that had to PAY for the 20 million who got the BOcare for "free".

Given the number of people that I've personally been made aware of that are as MAD AS HELL that their insurance costs went up by thousands of dollars a year due to BOcare, I'd guess that for the 20 million votes BO bought with BOcare, he probably lost 20 million at least in people that had to pay dearly to purchase those votes.

BOcare broke one of the BIG Democrat rules -- rob from the UPPER quintile! Convince the bottom 4 quintiles that they really can get lots of free stuff and SOMEONE ELSE will pay. It's ok to try to make that sound as "moral" as you can ... "It's not FAIR that those people have all that money, so taking it at gunpoint is very "moral""-- but you don't want to get too detailed about that sort of moral posturing.

The nice thing about fake focus group "morality" is that you can change it with a memo -- the bad thing is that sometimes people catch on that it is just a bit shallow.

Probably better to return to the old standards of FREE STUFF, envy and OTHERS being responsible for everything bad / perceived inadequacies of the Democrat chosen group. Class warfare and envy are the staples of "liberalism" for a very good reason -- they work!

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An Alternative 12-Step Response to Trump | PJ Media

An Alternative 12-Step Response to Trump | PJ Media:



Just go read it, short and worthy.



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3rd Party Recount, The Candidate You Most Oppose

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/us/politics/vote-count-hillary-clinton-trump.html?_r=0&referer=

The linked article in the NY Times talks of the need for re-counts and possible "voting irregularities" now that Trump has won. I'm quite sure that the election was "rigged" in the same way it usually is -- but sometimes in a storm, even the rigging fails.

But that has not quieted Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, who see the inequity of her growing lead in the national popular vote, which is now more than two million votes, or 1.5 percent of all ballots cast, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which regularly updates its count as states continue to tally and to certify votes.

The popular vote discussion is like the Vikings arguing that it is unfair they lost to the Kitties on T-Day because they had the ball 31 min vs the Kitties 28 (time of possession). You can bet your bottom dollar that if football was played for time of possession vs points, it would be PLAYED DIFFERENTLY ... same with elections.

Isn't it just a TINY bit funny though to hear Democrats who were telling us that any sort of claim that US elections could be anything but completely fair was "crazy, dangerous, etc" -- and who typically, while fighting off the idea that people need IDs to vote claim that "there is no such thing as voter fraud"? Their only accidental act of consistency is to be consistently inconsistent! Favorite standard media/Democrat pre-election or voter ID quote "There is no voter fraud!".

EVERY human system has some level of corruption ("bezzle") in in it, I wrote one of my most read blogs on it was called "Tiger And The Bezzle". Since the entire election apparatus is mostly operated by government workers, and the "system" is tilted to allow fraud (no ID, mail in voting, etc), the highest percentage of the "bezzle" tilts left. It's always there, so it tends to be like "inflation / gravity / taxes" -- it just "IS", and has to be dealt with in every election.

Unsurprisingly, we see "Hillary's popular vote margin" rising. In the areas where she won, the bezzle is strongest -- they are working feverishly to "make every vote count". In the vast areas where Trump won, the election is over -- absentee, provisionals, etc are of no interest. When there are less "possible votes" in the stack than the margin of victory -- the election is over, no need to count them.

Which brings me to "libertarians", for which I use scare quotes because they are basically "None Of The Above" voters -- they have even less specific agreed to policies than Trump -- which is REALLY saying something! Had the "Big Johnson" vote gone for Trump (as most of it would have), we would not be having this "whole popular vote sideshow".

Libertarians had HIGH hopes this year -- maybe they would approach Ross Perot sorts of numbers around "20%".  I could have imagined them breaking 5%, but they didn't ... 4 million measly votes nationwide. Possibly because I worked in computers for over 3 decades, the "number of choices" doesn't resonate with me at all. Computers do everything with two, on and off -- nobody is out there pushing for 3 or 4 -- although quantum computers collapse a superposition from like 10 to the 400 options so there is that to consider. Since there are only like 10 to the 80th atoms in the universe, representing truly significant higher numbers of candidates could be difficult -- but I digress.

I don't believe that most libertarians are the sorts of people that do "sober postmortems", but if they were, they might want to do one.

1. Until a known party platform is created, accepted and understood by millions of voters, there really isn't a "party", only a protest vote. ACTUAL positions on taxes, roads and bridges, defense, laws (or repeal thereof), borders (yes/no/ ??), foreign policy yes/no/??, etc. 
2. Once that is done, CANDIDATES need to be ELECTED on the basis of a KNOWN PLATFORM ... at least a few hundred in state houses, mayorships, governors, US house of representatives, etc. There needs to be actual known Libertarians that have GOVERNED AS LIBERTARIANS (and a platform so you can tell!). 
3. Form a solid NATIONAL party that has a MESSAGE ...  "Make whores legal again!"? (it has to be a simple message).

I could go on, but it isn't worth the time -- perhaps they could come up with "libertarian values" to appeal to the "values voter" ... I'll offer "Whatever" as the most recognizable libertarian value. 

Note, I didn't say they would WIN ... only that those are some of the steps if they ever want to be taken as anything than people that just vote "NOTA" and complain a lot.

Addendum: As PowerLine points out here, if Jill Stein had not run and all her voters turned out for Hillary,  Hillary would have won Wisconsin and Michigan (on the college and elderly hippy vote no doubt). So there you have it from the left and the right! Third parties DO matter, they allow the candidate you most oppose to be elected! 

Democrats Officially The Party of Money?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/22/donald-trump-lost-most-of-the-american-economy-in-this-election/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_economy-1125a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

The divide is economic, and it is massive. According to the Brookings analysis, the less-than-500 counties that Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America's economic activity in 2015. The more-than-2,600 counties that Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the country's economic activity last year. 

Clinton, in other words, carried nearly two-thirds of the American economy.

I can tell by their headline, "Trump Lost Most of the Economy In This Election", that they think this is bad for Trump and good for Hillary.

So is their point:

a). Democrats ARE the party of wealth and privilege and proud of it.

b). The wealth in the country is concentrated already, if we can concentrate it more, we can COMPLETELY ignore the rest of the country!

c). We're still feeling REALLY bad, so we don't much care what we say as long as it sounds like Hillary ought to have won.

I'm not really sure, but they at least seem to realize that the people with all the wealth are much more likely to vote for the status quo and candidate of "stay the course", while the "have nots" are much more likely to vote for a candidate who promises change.

The one point they don't make is that many of the areas that voted for Clinton are BOTH the poorest and the wealthiest -- yes, the big urban areas have most of the money -- because it is in finance, government, professions and knowledge workers, but they ALSO have most of the worst poverty and crime. NY has Manhattan, but also has Brooklyn, Queens, Harlem, Staten Island, The Bronx, etc ... Likewise LA, San Fran, Chicago, etc. While there is a lot of wealth in Chicago for example, it is also in the running for murder capital of the nation most years.

Democrat policies concentrate wealth and spread POVERTY. The government can only "give" you hopelessness in the form of tiny checks and aid as you supplicate yourself to a myriad of government functionaries. You trade your self respect for the "largesse" of the government, and that is a VERY high price indeed!

Strange Document Discovered In Archives Since Election

Had to run over and get coffee filters at Wally this AM and was shocked to hear NPR discussing some ancient document. I believe it was a called a "Constitution", and they were VERY interested in some interpretations and "intent of the founders" relative to the president of some former nation -- "America" I believe it was, and his business interests, etc.

I'm not quite sure they are really talking about the "Constitution", because even left leaning PolitiFact says that the president is exempt from the conflict of interest laws. It is sure obvious they don't like Trump however, welcome back journalists! They DO still remember how to oppose a president, what a shock!

If only they could have found that dusty old document when BO decided to appropriate his own funds for BOcare!

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), 1980 Again!

Brace Yourself for Four Years of Nonstop Freakoutrage - Kurt Schlichter:

"Freakoutrage" doesn't seem like a moniker that will stick. For now I'll go with TDS, a derivative of "Bush Derangement Syndrome" (BDS) that I already detected in the anti-Trump sentiment last March.

The linked column is pure conservative post election porn ... one sided, easy, mildly entertaining.

For example:

It’s important to understand why liberals are so angry and so scared. They are angry because they believe they have a moral right to command us, apparently bestowed by Gaia or #Science or having gone to Yale, and we are irredeemably deplorable for not submitting to their benevolent dictatorship. 

They are scared because they fear we will wage the same kind of campaign of petty (and not so petty) oppression, intimidation, and bullying that they intended to wage upon us. 

And their fear tastes like sunshine puked up by a unicorn.

The biggest problem with the way the left tends to handle a political loss is the MASSIVE over reaction which sets the bar for the new president so low that if he doesn't immediately send a couple 100K brown children to the gas chamber, he looks like a reasonable guy!

Non-political people are watching, and when no one goosesteps over to their houses to throw them into Jesus camp with all the other people whose ancestors didn’t hail from Dusseldorf, they’re going to figure out that your endless freakoutrages are all lies. When everybody’s terrible, nobody is. Especially when the people you say are terrible really aren’t.

To anyone not hyperventilating so bad they can't open their eyes, this is a learning opportunity not experienced since the election of Reagan in '80!
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Peace or Victory?

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/american-society/does-the-left-want-peace-donald-trump/

The article is largely forgettable -- violent left wing anti-Trump protest-riots getting very little coverage, many staged to effect "racist attacks" somehow "caused by" Trump's election getting tons of coverage. Pretty much the standard media bias.

One thing "liberals" and Muslims agree on is they DO want peace -- right after TOTAL victory by their side! Unless you are going to let them have that total victory, they want war!

So expect a lot of it for the next four years.

Making A New Bogeyman

Dear Media: Please Stop Normalizing The Alt-Right:

The web, social media and Public Radio are loaded with references to "White Supremacists" Alt-right, antisemitism, etc -- all Trumps fault don't ya know!

If anyone ever cared to look on the left, they could cover Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, some fo the seamier parts of Black Lives Matter ("Pigs in a blanket, frey em like bacon!"), Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, and on and on -- finding all manner of rancid screeds against Jews, whites, America, Christians, etc -- hell, you can pretty much go to a Democrat convention and get the screeds against America and the Christians!

While the MSM attempt to smear Trump by association here is absolutely transparent (smearing Trump will be an ongoing media theme), what might not be as patently obvious is the degree to which this attention normalizes / legitimizes these groups. Which, I'd have to guess is absolutely FINE with the MSM and the left at this point. They hope against hope that some of these groups do some NASTY things that they can promptly blame Trump for!

They have been pining away for years hoping for "right wing gun violence" -- if anything comes close to it they go prematurely ape over it -- when the gay nightclub shooter turned out to be MUSLIM of all things their depression was extreme.

If ONLY they could incite some "white supremacists" covered in acne and living in their parents basements to do SOMETHING violent! Damn, they might have to cut off their video games to get them out of the house!

I remember back after BO was elected, the many columns that needed to be written about how brave he was and the near certainty that he would be assassinated by the "racists".  Back then, the nation had just elected a black president, but many had NOT voted for him, so were obviously RACIST!! How else could you disagree with closing Gitmo on day 1, stopping the wars, saving everyone $2,500 on health insurance each year with no loss of service, and powering the country on unicorn farts?

While the Federalist thinks they are giving all this attention to the fringe groups and not realizing that they are the ones strengthening them, my guess is that they know EXACTLY what they are doing.

They hope against hope that they can instigate major growth in racist groups and blame it on Trump -- they would see some good old fashioned violence as sauce for the goose.

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I'm Not A Hater, No Thanksgiving For You

After the election, break up: You voted for Trump? You're off my list. - StarTribune.com:



When I read an article like this, I tend to read to the bottom hoping to find some lame sort of "I'm just angry, I'm not serious". I hope such is the case here, but no such message.

"I sent an e-mail to an in-law, telling him that his genial hockey buddy and Trump supporter friend Johnny was no longer welcome on Thanksgiving. 

I’m not a hater."

I grew up around Mennonites, later Amish, and have experienced other churches that believe in "shunning". If you fail to follow the dictates of the congregation and fall into sin, there comes a point where you are "out". I don't agree with this practice relative to religion, but I can understand it -- these groups are VERY serious about their following of doctrine, so at some point it is just too painful for them to be around someone that claims to be "part of their group", yet refuses to behave as a member of the group.



But politics? Unless we are talking true communist party politics where associating with errant people can lose you your party position or even your life, SERIOUSLY? I always thought I was treating "The Party" (TP-D) as a FUTURE danger, I never really thought were were already there in full, but with this guy, we certainly are.



I won't break bread on a holiday with a Trump voter because doing so would make ME a "hater"???



We aren't talking about allowing the Trump voter to go to his holy TP meeting,  or even be seen with him at a bar. We are talking about allowing a shoestring "relation" to break bread in his home on Thanksgiving!



I know I'm going way out on a limb here, but I'm thinking that the author of the column might find a person not allowing a gay, transgender, black, american indian, muslim, homeless person, one with tattoos and/or body piercings, etc, etc. into their home on Thanksgiving because they "didn't feel comfortable with them" might not be to his liking? Is it REMOTELY possible that since he feels as strongly about a Trump voter as he does that he now at least has some understanding of how an Amish family may feel about a relation who has a green mohawk, bones in the nose and a bunch of tattoos showing up for Thanksgiving?



I'm guessing not, because this sort of sanctimony tends to be so blind as to defy any sort of reason.



The article is hard and depressing to read. To see another human so blinded by politics that they are unable to even operate as a human anymore is a sad thing.



When you find yourself saying "I'm not a hater", or "I'm not a crook" (Nixon) or "Ive never lied and I never will" (Hillary) more than a few bells should be going off in your soul!

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Associational Freedom

Fashion Designers Are Boycotting Melania Trump. Shouldn't Bakers and Florists Have the Same Right? - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

I covered this here ... but this article names it with more specifics.

Both are examples of associational freedom—the right to make decisions for yourself about how and with whom you spend your time and energy. This includes the right not to take on a client or project that elevates, in your view, a value you disagree with.

Typically the left is all about this freedom -- as in they will avoid family members, fire employees, boycott, etc anyone that fails to agree with them. As in the case of gay "marriage", when they have state power, they use it to force compliance, thus denying freedom to those they disagree with.

Left = Control, Right = Chaos. Couple that with the fact that for the left, the ONLY consistency is that "what they say goes", and this is easy to understand. Associational Freedom for me (left), not for thee (right). Got that?





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SNL NAILS IT With "The Bubble"!

The Bubble - SNL - YouTube:

OK, I abuse them when they find Trump's election worse than 9-11, but they REALLY hit the nail on this one!

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BO Still Wagging Finger

Obama Is Warning America About Trump’s Presidency. Are You Listening? | New Republic:

If the 60 million that voted for Hillary could just imagine for a second a headline about W "warning" about BO in '08, they would have just a tiny inkling of how those of us that voted for Trump think of BO's "warnings" and "advice".

On NPR, concern can alternate between the complexity of Trump's 500 world wide businesses and the horror of conflict of interest that entails, and his glaring lack of experience.

 Even the left leaning Politifact knows that the laws they are all thinking about do not apply to the president.  Apparently Google is broken over at NPR, or this is one more case where facts are just less convenient for their propaganda. The most amusing part though, is that a couple minutes later they can lament Trumps "total lack of experience".

In '08, BO had never run anything, not even a lemonade stand as far as we know. He had been a "Community Organizer", a fancy name for a leftist agitator. Then he had a couple junior legislative rolls including junior US Senator. In 2008 we were assured that "running a successful presidential campaign is MORE than enough experience for the job of president!".  My how times have changed.

If we ever decide to become a country again rather than warring tribal factions, the ability to at least mildly attempt to think how the other 60 million might think, or to put on our "history hats" and think WAY BACK to 8 years ago, would really be helpful!

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What Would A Real Racist Have to Be Now?

You Are Still Crying Wolf | Slate Star Codex:

The boy who cried wolf is a story that pretty much every child hears and understands. On the left though, I guess it is part of "tradition", and therefore ignored. So every Republican since at least Goldwater is "Hitler", "Racist", "White Supremacist", etc, etc.

But they really pulled the stops out on Trump. At this point, if someone showed up that actually WAS a racist -- eg. went to KKK meetings (with the entire membership of like 6K), embraced the "fringe white supremacists" (maybe 50K), and who knows what ... maybe courted the actual Satanists as well? Another 20K or so. Pretty much everyone could say "well, I'm pretty sure Trump did all those things already".

Which of course he didn't. I'm probably wrong on the Satanists ... courting them might well be a boost with the lefty vote.

The column is OK, but I got tired of reading all the detail. The point is that Trump is clearly not a "racist" ... and his voters were not racist. He did BETTER with blacks and hispanics than that rancid white supremacist Romney.

Not that reading or listening to the MSM would tell you any of this, but then what the MSM doesn't tell you is WAY too much to try to read!

Losing the sense of what is "crisis", bad words like "racist", "emergency", etc has MANY bad effects on us -- it keeps the sensitive in constant high alert, and it makes the rest of the population hardened to cries of "wolf" that someday may be valid. Just not today.

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