Governor Goofy Has A History Fit

Dayton’s stormy Tuesday | Power Line:

Looking at Dayton's eyes makes one glad that a governor has very little authority to do violence to others. Storming out of a meeting over Civil War paintings is indicative of the kind of "leadership" that at least managed to put both the MN House and Senate in Republican hands.  We can thank him for that.

He doesn't like Civil War paintings in "his" ceremonial governors office at the capital because they don't represent "all Minnesotans",  and when his hand picked "commission" voted against him, he stormed out to make his level of maturing clear.

The left generally hates history. It shows "heritage", it gives a sense that everything might not be about today, and the promised future "progressive" utopia. Civil War history is even worse -- it seems to document hundreds of thousands of white people giving their lives to abolish slavery while preserving a nation that was the precursor to BOistan. Best to forget both the war and that old flawed nation.

I covered Gettysburg by Sears here, and by Coddington here. I also read Pale Horse at Plum Run but failed to blog on it -- the story of the 1st MN at Gettysburg. Without the 1st MN, it is very likely the South would have won -- it could be the reason Dayton is pissed, the South was Democrat after all!

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Attack By Racist Trump Supporter Injures Ten

Attack by Somali immigrant puts 10 in hospital | Power Line:

We all understand that had the Ohio attacker been even marginally a Trump supporter we would be besieged with media reports of a horrible "hate crime", and how Trump has caused a rise in hatred in the nation,  no matter the mental state or history of such an attacker.

Any possible "incident" of obnoxious Trump support gets in the headlines, like this guy, filmed on a flight using profanity and claiming that "Trump was the president of everyone on the plane". He was banned from flying Delta for life for making such outrageous claims.

Or this woman, who got irate in a store and happened to be a Trump voter. I understand that anybody that is not in an approved discriminated against group -- blacks, hispanics, women (oops, LIBERAL women), gays, trans, Muslims ..., MAY NOT feel "discriminated against". Everyone knows that all human feelings spring entirely from reason, so the idea that some Trump voter could possibly feel like they are being discriminated against beggars the imagination.

Trump voters clearly need to accept that they are an irredeemable basket of deploreables and keep very still. The woman that won the popular vote gave them that label to simplify their lives -- it is pretty hard to wear a button that says "racist, homophobe, denier, misogynist, poorly educated, Islamophobe, Transphobe ..." The print just gets too small, and it takes too long to explain who you are.

I'm not going to go back and point out lists of anti-Bush or pro-Obama / anti-Republican rants from all sorts of sources -- stages of award shows, athletic fields, etc that have gone by the boards in the past 16 years. Do I "like"  obnoxious Trump supporters? Of course not, they are EXACTLY like obnoxious Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Code Pink, kneeling NFL players, anti-Trump college demonstrators ... etc, etc? No,  they come with living in a free country -- one which, at least for now, seems to have obnoxious people on both sides of the political spectrum. I tolerate them.

The point is that the Ohio attacker turned out to be Somali with a long Muslim name, so his motive is a complete mystery. "Workplace violence" seems likely. Oh sure, in some backwater conservative source we may find out in a few weeks or months that he was "radicalized", but the story is already gone. It is COMPLETELY wrong to draw any conclusions about any Muslims because they are Muslim.

OTOH, the MSM is chomping at the bit to get any story it possibly can to can on "violent and dangerous Trump supporters" -- and if they can't actual violence, they will put up drunks on planes or disgruntled customers and call them "dangerous". They have already stereotyped and labeled appropriately. All that is needed now is for a deplorable to step forward and REALLY do something seriously evil!

Hopefully the Ohio officer doesn't end up prosecuted for shooting a black man who was ONLY armed with a knife!



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Politics That Makes Me Cry

10 Reasons Left-Wingers Cut Trump Voters From Their Lives - Dennis Prager:

I don't think there is a Christian or conservative parent that doesn't live in fear of the contents of this article if they have non-Christian children. In America, the nation I grew up in, the idea that children would keep their parents from their grandchildren over politics was unthinkable. In BOistan, it is very real.

In my current line of work I deal with people who were abused by parents with mental illness, substance abuse, and other issues. Forgiveness is not always possible -- but it is recommended, and with a lot more scientific backing than even global warming. If you don't forgive, you are letting the person who you don't forgive live rent free in your brain -- as bad as you may hurt them, you are hurting yourself worse. We live in a broken world, and we all know it has gotten FAR more broken in the last eight years (look at suicides, addiction and crime numbers).

For a Christian, we know it is a hurt that will live on for the prodigal in eternity if they cannot heed the yearning to come home. I know God will wipe my tears away some day, and I also know that I will continue to cry and pray a lot in this vale of tears.

Just go and read it ... it makes me weep for how we allowed our schools to be totally destroyed and created a system that indoctrinates fragile minds rather than building them into mature lifelong learners eager to be independent, caring,  discerning adults. A sample ...

9. The left tends toward the totalitarian. And every totalitarian ideology seeks to weaken the bonds between children and parents. The left seeks to dilute parental authority and replace it with school authority and government authority. So when your children sever their bond with you because you voted for Trump, they are acting like the good totalitarians the left has molded.

Prager happens to be Jewish, conservative, and a model of erudite intellect. Anything he writes is well worth the time to read. This one is way short and WAY worth it!

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Replace Manly With Mature

Trump Apologies: Why the Media Goes Crazy | National Review:

The linked article needs to do a "replace all" of "manly" with "mature". One of the items sadly lacking in modern discourse is the idea of "maturity'. I used to hate that word -- because I was immature.

Maturity has a lot of aspects that used to be understood. The ability to recognize and deal with emotion, while at the same time being able to moderate it with reason and logic.

Perspective is another critical aspect. It isn't all about "me", or even "my group/tribe" -- there are ALWAYS larger issues. One of those issues is time. "The good" and "the moral" is timeless -- they apply a hundred years (or even a thousand) years in the past or in the future, and they apply NOW.

Trump seems to understand this, but the media don’t like forgiveness. It has that icky association with traditional morality, and it leaves the dirt, the most sensational parts of the story, in the past.

It brings to mind a quote from Mahatma Ghandi: “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

The dominant elite is built on weakness -- so they desire to use force to achieve their means. It is very dangerous for the weak to use force, but they tend to not understand that until it is too late.

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Setting The Clear Election Victory Bar

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/442503/hillary-clinton-2020-because-america-hasnt-suffered-enough

Other than giving Jill Stein the most media coverage she has ever had, the biggest thing the recount effort does is set a new bar for "honoring a clear victory". It used to be that an electoral college landslide like what Trump pulled off would silence the most obtuse of election critics.

For a little history:

Recounts also typically don’t change the margin by an amount that would be large enough to affect the result of this year’s presidential election. The mean swing between the top two candidates in the 27 recounts was 282 votes, with a median of 219. The biggest swing came in Florida’s 2000 presidential election recount, when Al Gore cut 1,247 votes off George W. Bush’s lead, ultimately not enough to flip the state to his column.

So if these recounts were to have an effect, they would need to flip multiple states, all won by at least ten thousand votes -- more like 70K in Pennsylvania.

Trump was roundly chastised for saying that he wold "recognize a clear victory". Formerly, that would be something like a couple K votes in one state based on the Gore precedent.

No longer. What is a "clear victory" now? Clinton (or Stein, or Soros, or whomever) would need to flip MULTIPLE states, each with margins well outside the old high water mark.

But never mind. There is now a new bar for "honoring an election".

Oh, and which side is it that claimed prior to losing that "fraud is not a factor in US elections"?

There is NOTHING but politics and "spin" for "standards" in BOistan, and the wages of that is Trump.

Imagine how much the Democrats are going to enjoy the precedents they set by passing BOcare with "reconciliation" so they only needed 51 votes and establishing "The nuclear option" in the Senate for everything but SCOTUS during the reign of Harry Reid.

What goes around does indeed come around. Since Trump's margin was not a "clear victory", there really is no future standard for what a candidate can legitimately cry foul on.

Sailing The SS Mondale

Officials Behind $500 Million Vikings' Stadium Subsidy Get Free Luxury Box Tickets for Family and Friends - Hit & Run : Reason.com:

The only thing surprising here is that the Star Trib actually did an article on this little boondoggle.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that the six members of the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority (MSFA), the quasi-government agency created in 2012 to oversee the public subsidies for the building of U.S. Bank Stadium, get free tickets to two lower-level luxury suites for all events held there. Even though taxpayers covered more than half of the cost of the $1.1 billion stadium, which opened earlier this year, the public is being kept in the dark about who occupies those 36 seats and the adjoining luxury suites during Vikings home games and other events.

We are all rent seekers, and we ALL like to get paid. Nothing unusual there -- most of us don't get Vikings luxury boxes in payment, but then very few of us are named "Mondale" or descent from Wendy Anderson!

There is zero surprise that Ted Mondale would figure that a $20K+ a year benefit is highly deserved -- as he says, "he works hard on game days", and so it is important to have some of his family and friends share in those difficult times. I know my family and friends always enjoyed coming into IBM to help me work on a severity 1 problem! My brother in law pumps 50 million gallons of hog manure a year -- the family and friends are always fighting for a better spot to help out when a ripe new shed is all set to go!

The Vikes stadium us a glass $1.1 billion representation of a Viking ship. Glass is a good metaphor -- it is a lot like an NFL offense with no O-line.

The Star-Tribune says they were given the names of 12 current and former public officials who attended and paid for suite tickets to NFL games. After the initial request for information was made, several other officials—including the mayor of Minneapolis and her husband, several state commissioners, Minneapolis' city attorney, and city council members—also wrote checks reimbursing the board for the tickets they had apparently used.

I wonder why they wrote those checks? No doubt they had just "forgot" and finally got around to it.

The article is well worth the read -- one can only imagine how hard Ted worked on getting the multiple billion dollar light rail that covers a full third of it's OPERATING cost each year!

It's really all OK ... he's a MONDALE!

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A Real Terrorist Exposes George W Bush (WaPo)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-horrifying-look-into-the-mind-of-911s-mastermind-in-his-own-words/2016/11/28/bf5827a8-b575-11e6-b8df-600bd9d38a02_story.html?utm_term=.50a741a7b9c3

Hee we have it right from the mouth of KSM, one of the honorable muslims falsely tortured by the Bush administration.

“Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.”

America certainly had more coming that just 9-11, and there you have it! W and his violent measures prevented the "justice" that KSM and his Muslim brothers were intent to carry out. Thank goodness the left and our media rose up against W, or the whole justifiable terrorism industry might have been wiped out entirely like the USSR. Who knows what horrors a strong America might be capable of! Heck, they might even be able to put in a pipeline on their own land!

Nothing very new at all here for readers of my blog, just corroboration that when Islamic terrorists say "We want to convert you to Islam or kill you", what they mean is that they want to convert us to Islam or kill us. I understand that is hard for leftists who keep saying "we want freedom", but keep trying to jail people for trying to be free to bake a cake or not bake a cake to understand, but sometimes people DO actually mean what they say. (another hard to understand concept for the left)

But perhaps the most riveting part of the book is what KSM told Mitchell about what inspired al-Qaeda to attack the United States — and the U.S. response he expected. Today, some on both the left and the right argue that al-Qaeda wanted to draw us into a quagmire in Afghanistan — and now the Islamic State wants to do the same in Iraq and Syria. KSM said this is dead wrong. Far from trying to draw us in, KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut — when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States “turned tail and ran.” He also said he thought we would treat 9/11 as a law enforcement matter, just as we had the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the USS Cole in Yemen — arresting some operatives and firing a few missiles into empty tents, but otherwise leaving him free to plan the next attack.

Strange, al-Qaeda expected the US to behave has they had behaved before.

KSM explained that large-scale attacks such as 9/11 were “nice, but not necessary” and that a series of “low-tech attacks could bring down America the same way ‘enough disease-infected fleas can fell an elephant.’ ” KSM “said jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate into the United States” and “wrap themselves in America’s rights and laws” until they were strong enough to rise up and attack us. “He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people would eventually become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end.”
“Eventually,” KSM said, “America will expose her neck for us to slaughter.”

Did the Russians hack the CIA and tell Donald Trump that Islamic refugees were a danger to America or something? Well, no -- anyone that talked to a few Muslims from the middle east would know that KSM is just being honest. Just because Hillary is evil and lies all the time doesn't mean that everyone who is evil always lies. Many Muslims honestly believe in what they are doing and believe it should be done openly. They are proud of what they are doing. It would be like the 5 or ten proud Hillary supporters (if you could find them).

Are there any "liberals" that think like that? It seems obvious that "liberals" don't actually believe in "freedom" nor "democracy" since they are doing crazy recounts and talking about the Electoral College voting in someone other than Trump.

It's a shame that W and company waterboarded KSM, broke his resistance, and got him to work with us ... otherwise there could have been some more really exciting attacks like 9-11 that folks like BO's old pastor Wright could point to and let us know how much we deserved them!

KSM also described for Mitchell many of his as yet unconsummated ideas for future attacks, the terrifying details of which Mitchell does not reveal for fear they might be implemented. “If we ever allow him to communicate unmonitored with the outside world,” Mitchell writes, “he could easily spread his deviously simple but potentially deadly ideas.”

Trump The Sociopath

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/opinion/the-sociopaths-diary.html?WT.mc_id=2016-KWP-AUD_DEV&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVREMARK&kwp_0=198245&kwp_4=773630&kwp_1=388657

During the BO administration I speculated on wether BO may be a psychopath, the author of the column seems to think that Trump is a sociopath, but I'm pretty sure he is just mixed up.

Sociopaths have a hard time hiding their sociopathy from those around them -- they have a hard time having an inner circle of people that really like and admire them. Like BO and Hillary for example. From what we know about Trump, he isn't a sociopath, if he is anything, he would be a psychopath.

My speculation on BO was in 2014 after he had been president for 6 years. It is nice to see the NY Times being fair minded and diagnosing Trump prior to him taking office. Campaigning and governing are often different (they weren't for BO), campaigning always looks a little psychopathic.

The standard psychopath would be "smooth, no drama, very cool, always the smartest guy in the room". That sounds like someone we have had experience with -- but not so much like Trump.

But Trump certainly COULD be a psychopath -- anyone that wants to be president (or brain surgeon, or NFL QB, or fighter pilot ...) certainly has many characteristics that are going to at least border on narcissism and even psychopathy. Both pathologies lack empathy for others, lack much emotion at all, see themselves as "all there is" and lack any sense of conscience". One of the huge markers of the psychopath is that they are ALWAYS going to "get even", and they ESPECIALLY like it if it is in a way where only THEY know that they accomplished it. It isn't really very hard to look at BO relative to Hillary and wonder on that front.

What IS interesting about the column is look at what supposedly Trump thinks of BOistan:

Never had a problem with the press. They don’t get it. I’ve crashed the system. I’m using the press, every one of them! Schwartz did have one phrase I really loved in my book. He said “I play to people’s fantasies” by using “truthful hyperbole.” What he meant is I make stuff up. 

Sure. Nobody cares. They want to dream. They want a spectacle. They want gold and towers. They want me to get tough. Fact-checkers! Is that even a job?

I completely agree. The press constantly creates false narratives, and Trump used that against them -- he is using it now. The press is supporting recounts against Trump based on no evidence of any reason for a recount, so Trump counters that millions voted illegally with no evidence. If the name of the game is "no evidence required", if one side can base actual actions on the no evidence, then the other can certainly make claims without evidence! "Facts"? Get serious.

Both our leadership and at least parts of our press used to ascribe to actually being educated and caring about ACTUAL truth -- not "97% of scientists" polling sorts of "truth", but Biblical, Platonic, Classical historical TRUTH. The mass of people have always wanted to "dream, have spectacle, gold and towers" -- since Babylon, Rome with "bread and circuses". What the author of the column pokes fun at is actually the known truth of history and human nature, but he fails to realize it.

That’s easy. I know what Americans want. They don’t want truth. They want excitement, disruption. They want to be led. They want authority. They want victories. They want parades. They want a wall at the Mexican border — so let them think I really might build one! You think they’re happy with Obama’s managed decline? Give me a break!

When you take away truth, culture, values the sacred, the Constitution, the separation of powers, that is EXACTLY what you get -- raw unvarnished human nature, and it wants "excitement, disruption, authority, VICTORY"! Promise them they will have an extra $2,500 a year in their pockets and be able to keep the healthcare they have now, or promise them a wall on the Mexican border.

So as I've pointed out, we are in a dangerous place. Our "elite" doesn't know the difference between sociopath and psychopath, and is unwilling to even look it up. If the elite cared about truth, culture, history, the sacred, etc, we would have never had BO and Bill Clinton would have been impeached.

Our founders well understood the dangers of what kinds of leadership one is likely to get in an office like president, so they produced a written constitution, separated the powers and LIMITED government so the possible mischief was as contained as possible.

Over the past 100 years we have shredded that document and the separation and grown a leviathan government so massive it makes Godzilla seem like a gerbil.

Yes, we are in grave danger -- but we have been there since at least 2008, and we DID pick the only option that we could guarantee would be heavily opposed.

The True Believer, Eric Hoffer

https://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915

The subject book is a classic published in 1951 by a rather interesting gentleman who was once homeless as well as being a longshoreman, self taught, read massively, and went on to win the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.

He believes that all mass movements are interchangeable in that they are driven by the same human needs. He considers the Roman Empire, Christianity, Islam, the Reformation, the Puritans, the US revolution, the French revolution, the communist takeover of Russia, and others to be "interchangeable".

...the vigor and growth of a mass movement depend on it's capacity to evoke and satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. When a mass movement begins to attract people who are interested in their individual careers, it is a sign that it has passed it's vigorous stage. 

He argues that mass movements depend on the "frustrated". Those that see their lives as somehow "spoiled" and they crave a "new life", a "rebirth". The mass movement let's them lose their spoiled selves in a cause.

"Those who clamor for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society."  

"Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority. Equality without freedom creates a more stable social pattern than than freedom without equality" 

In the old USSR there was a lot of "equality" and the small cadre of the "elite" had freedom. Here, at least in BOistan, the constant cry of the supposed mass was for "equality", while the "elite" like Hillary were able to be free from even the law.

"The poor who are are members of a compact group -- a tribe, a closely knit family, a compact racial or religious group -- are relatively free from frustration and almost immune to a mass movement." 

Therefore, those trying to move the mass into their column attack the family, the church and the community and attempt to balkanize races and other identity groups so people are "all alone" except in relation to the mass movement.

"The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority of the middle."

By "best" he doesn't mean "morally best" -- he means powerful, educated, those with resources. "The elite". The elite are "true believers" because they will get the power, the poor are the "true believers" because the elite have promised them the spoils. The "silent majority" are a bunch of stooges still working hard, trying to keep their families together in the face of attacks by the elite, often going to church. You know them -- "The Basket of Deploreables".

"The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole -- the church, party, nation -- and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in loose and relatively free society". 

.... when the frustrated congregate in a mass movement, the air is heavy laden with suspicion. there is prying and spying ...  

The surprising thing is that this pathological mistrust within the ranks leads not to dissension, but to strict conformity. Knowing themselves continually watched, the faithful strive to escape suspicion by adhering zealously to prescribed behavior and opinion. Strict orthodoxy is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith.   

I could go on quoting at length -- it is full of them. He was writing assuming that communism was likely implacable and would nearly certainly "win", but as always (in his mind), it's success would breed complacency in it's upper ranks which would finally be detected as weakness by the masses and result in a new mass movement.

Hoffer considers mass movements to "just be" -- Luther, Hitler, Stalin, Cromwell, George Washington, Jesus, Mohammad -- all "merely mass movement leaders". Sorting out the details on "good or bad" is not his real purpose -- just pointing out that the "active phase" as the movement is growing is "messy", maybe even "evil" (one could think of it like childbirth), but what comes after varies a lot.

I think it is clear that the left in this country has been on a sputtering attempt to create a mass movement in the US since at least FDR, and probably Wilson.

The most decisive for the effectiveness of a mass movement leader seem to be audacity, fanatical faith in a holy cause, an awareness of the importance of the close-knit collectivity, and above all, the ability to evoke fervent devotion in a group of able lieutenants. 

 The biggest thing missing in Bill Clinton, Obama and Hillary was "fervent able lieutenants".  There were simply none to name. It is ironic that Nixon, Reagan and W all had their "fervent able lieutenants", but lacked a "holy cause" and certainly any concept of "close knit collectivity".

Trump? Well, it remains to be seen -- "Make America Great Again" isn't exactly 99 theses!

The book is a classic of political philosophy. As an atheist, Hoffer naturally discounts the idea that "Jesus is different", but as mass movements go, Christianity has been around a LONG time, and actually encourages it's adherents to be worthless but redeemed with infinite worth in Christ. They can "lose themselves" in Christ who is fully God and fully Man, without having to lose themselves in some "mass movement" -- rather than "suspicion, prying and spying" (definitely a factor in hyper fundamentalist sects), they can be blood brothers, watching carefully for the log in their own eye, and being redeemed without losing themselves in some earthly "perfection".  It's only 170 pages long, and more meaty than I can cover in this blog length.

Well worth your time, highly recommended.

Krugman -- Coup Vs Just In Case

Paul Krugman Illustrates The Damaged Political Psyches Of The Left:

Conservatives (me included) have a terrible problem understanding how absolutely blatant and direct inconsistency is not disqualifying.

Got that? When a Republican challenges the results of an election, it’s a “coup.” When the loser is a Democrat, however, such a challenge is absolutely necessary, “just in case.” The next four years are not going to be kind to Paul Krugman and to people like him: they are going to discredit themselves even more thoroughly than they already have, all under the auspices of an insufferable, smarmy intellectual superiority. Can you imagine what it will be like for them when Trump wins a second time?

I'm certainly not ready to predict Trump will win in '20 -- it is not hard at all to imagine that he will have had enough of the pounding he is going to take and will retire to his towers, mansions and resorts. While the Clinton's grasp and claw for their next 100 million, and BO embarks on what I predict to be a money grab that will make the Clinton's seem frugal in comparison, even the lowest estimates of Trump's wealth put it in billionS plural. Obviously, given the "Clinton Fund", one of the big things the Clinton's were in the political game for was financial gain. Trump could be too -- but he as a bigger base to start from.

Former Enron advisor Paul Krugman is no stranger to massively incongruous positions. Any deficit under W was an economic disaster, a horrible example of incompetence and malfeasance, while under BO, all deficits -- even the 1.6 Trillion, were "much too tiny".

The point I disagree with on the article is that somehow gross inconsistency will suddenly become obvious to the masses and their positions will be discounted as a result. Based on past history, not likely.

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Hypocrisy? Not A Liberal Possibility

Trump portrays Clinton as a hypocrite for recount effort - POLITICO:

I love the headline. THE GALL! Calling a "liberal" a hypocrite ... it can't be done! They are already certified to have no standards whatsoever, they are absolutely immune to charges of hypocrisy!

Then the article lists all the times that Hillary talked of the horror of questioning election results (as the Democrats did in '00 and '04), how she has already conceded, including saying in the concession speech that; "We have to accept the results and look to the future, Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead."

The recounts are of course NOT about changing the outcome of the election. They, and the meaningless "Hillary won the popular vote" stories are about casting a pall over the Trump presidency before he ever takes office. This is the way that "The Party" (TP-D) plays -- they don't accept ANY results, not even MASSIVE defeat in state races, congress and the senate.

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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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Safety Pins -- For Diapers

A Sign of Contradiction:



The linked column  covers some of the major ideas behind the no doubt very short term safety pin phenomenon. Some of the reasons people wear one:

• solidarity with minorities
• protest the election of Trump
• hold up diapers 
• saw someone they want to impress or "be like" wearing one! 

I won't be wearing a safety pin ... but a cross seems like an increasingly good idea. 

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A Superb Statement on Voting Trump

Stolen  from "Friends of the Best of the Web" on FB. Very well done!

I think we understand that many (if not most) Hillary voters WANT the government stepping in all over -- and they don't particularly like elections, unless they go their way. However, if people DID believe in elections, the Constitution, American values, etc, this would be not just "right on", but actually likely to heal divisions. As it is, since the vision of the left is so at odds with the Constitution, American values, etc, it is unfortunately likely to make people of the left angrier.

I understand you’re angry. I understand you’re disappointed. I understand you feel like you don’t know your country anymore. But I need you to understand something.

It’s how I felt when you helped elect Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Believe it or not, I thought he was pretty-dangerous too. I thought he held some pretty radical points of view, too. Most of all, I dreaded what he had in mind for our country’s direction. And you know what? He succeeded in fomenting, presiding over, and implementing so much of what I feared.

My sister-in-law called two days before the election devastated her family of five’s private health insurance policy jumped $500 a month.

I’ve watched cops protested and assassinated while American cities roil and burn. I’ve watched people tie up traffic and “occupy” streets and places of business.

I’ve seen a chicken sandwich restaurant attacked because its founder supports traditional marriage and a beer company attacked because its owner supports a Republican candidate.

Some of my favorite comedians have complained their comedy is no longer welcome on college campuses because what was once a punch line is now “dangerous speech.” My favorite entertainers suggest because I don’t support their candidate, I’m somehow a racist, sexist, or a homophobe.

I’ve been told tougher screening of certain groups tied to terrorism and more secure borders is somehow anti -American while watching our citizens gunned down by radical jihadists is dismissed as “random acts” of “workplace violence.”

It took hacked emails to discover the nation’s media works directly with one of the nation’s major political parties to manipulate coverage of their opponents and curry favor for their chosen nominee.

College students now account for over a trillion dollars in student loan debt, while job prospects for them remain slim and low paying.

I’ve watched an IRS targeting certain political groups., an EPA that’s made our energy more expensive, a DOE which created a one-size-fits-all curriculum for my kids who all learn differently, a Veterans Affairs scandal that’s treated some of our heroes worse than animals, and a Secretary of State who created an illegal secret means of communication to enrich herself and provide favors with her office.

Perhaps worst of all, I’ve watched an FBI, DOJ, and Supreme Court become completely compromised by the politics of the day and not follow the Constitution and the rule of law. Without equal application of the law, we have no nation.

And you know who presided over all of these things? The man who made me feel for the last 8 years just the way you Hillary voters feel today. But here’s my promise:

My vote for Trump yesterday was to undo all of the things I just listed. I couldn’t care less about Trump the man. I’m not invested in him. I’m not wearing him on my shirt like you did Obama. I want Washington DC, corruption, bullying, chaos, and stagnation in this country to stop. I want to be left alone. I want you to be left alone, too.

I want my government to provide for the common defense and help put more disposable income in my pocket – that’s it. Leave me, my neighbors, my church, my community, and my state to run our own lives. That’s what I expect from Donald Trump. I don’t want and won’t support him “doing” anything to you or me.

Barack Obama, Washington D.C., and the elites of political parties, entertainers, and media companies have been dictating the terms of, and mocking American’s lives long enough. I’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with you in fighting Donald Trump should he engage in the same behavior.

But for now, understand this election symbolizes a nation full of people like me who feel like we’ve been getting the back of our presidents and government’s hand for eight long years.

Donald Trump is the response. He wasn’t elected to punish you, or judge you, or jail you, or mock you, or ridicule you if you disagree with him. That’s what the last 8 years have been.

I voted for him with the hope he moves Heaven and Earth to leave you and me alone to lead our lives as we see fit. If he strays from that, I’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with you to stop him.

I didn’t vote Trump because he’d inspire me or raise my kids or take care of me or influence my life in any way.

Donald Trump didn’t win because his voters thought he’d govern as a Republican Barack Obama. His voters hope he’ll govern just the opposite. If he’s successful and does it right, you shouldn’t know he’s there.

Discrimination Back In Fashion!

Fashion designer urges industry to refuse to dress Melania Trump - CBS News:

Back in the olden times of BOistan, you could not refuse to bake somebody a cake without the weight of the state coming down on you like a ton of bricks. Thank goodness it looks like the age of business being able to put up the"We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason!" sign is back!

Who says it is hard to get BOistani's to come together?!

Just coming up on two weeks and already opposition to the president is "courageous and patriotic", when just a couple weeks ago it was "racist, obstructionist and anti-American".

Talk about "change you can believe in"!

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Abortion, Defending Cakes

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/18/1601020/-Abortion-Doctor-Writes-Powerful-Response-to-Anti-Abortion-Witch-Hunt-by-Congress?detail=facebook

Satan can't create life, but he revels in destroying it. In BOistan, the pinnacle of his power so far is the tearing of the unborn from the wombs of their mothers in an unholy sacrament as old as Moloch. The abortionist in the linked article is very put out about being called an abortionist. At least none of the bakers that were put out of business for refusal to bake a gay "wedding" cake were ashamed to be called "Bakers".

Warren is also offended to be called by his name. He wants his TITLE to be used. My favorite answer to people that are consumed by their titles is "Well! I have the death sentence on 12 star systems!".

There are also PHDs, MDs, Pastors, etc that I have the highest respect for, and have a very hard time ever calling by their first name. Strangely, many of them WANT to be called by their first name.

Warren finds that even though he personally takes part in a holocaust now 10x that of the National Socialist one in Germany, ( 60 million plus slaughtered in BOistan vs 6 million in Socialist Germany),  he feels being called by his first name is reminiscent of socialism past and thus "chilling".

Obviously the murder of the unborn is a sacrament he takes very seriously, so to have any questions about it is a witch hunt, McCarthyism, and no doubt "The Spanish Inquisition" ... although he fails to personally throw that one in,  it seems a shame to leave it out when you are totally overwrought so I'll help him.

States can decide what drug laws they want and cities can decide to be "sanctuaries",  but Moloch must be appeased nationwide. Life must not be cared for  in any corner of BOistan, nor may there be a place where Bakers are free to follow their religious beliefs (unless they are Muslim). Thus saith BO.

Warren finds that getting a letter that names him as what he does is a really bad experience. Something like 60 million BOistani's find ourselves in the "basket of deplorables" for being racist, sexist, homophobic, ... and I guess failure to adequately respect abortionists.

BOistan is all about tacking nasty labels on others. As a Deplorable, I think I finally understand why black comedians and rappers like the N word so much.

Myth Of The Two Americas

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/the-two-americas-of-2016.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

"The Party" (TP-D) is the party of identity politics and division. What is important to them is if you are black, hispanic, educated, wealthy, poor, Muslim, Chinese, etc. -- Their shared vision, spread to each of our groups is "The other tribe is racist, homophobic, islamophobic, sexist ... in other words "deplorable". Our tribe is good, and what is more, we will take from the other tribe and generations to come and give you "stuff". Vote for us!"

You don't hear anything about "America" there, let alone "two of them", and you will hear little about "America" or even see American flags at their rallies. Their rallies are not about "America", they are about power and stuff, about rewarding friends and punishing enemies.

As you look at all the maps show the "divisions" of America, remember that in almost all of those areas the margin of victory was single digit percentages, and even though in a few, as much as 20-30%, it was NOT "100%"! Even blacks this time shook off their chains and only voted 88% for Hillary, as opposed to the 93-97% that they usually vote TP.

Close to half the country didn't vote at all. Naturally, TP counts them as "their people", and a propensity to not bother to vote would lead one to believe that TP would be their logical home. The REAL push of the next 10 years or so might be to make voting mandatory (BO has suggested it), or SOMEHOW make it even easier, or somehow legally rewardable. TP would be very happy to directly pay illegal aliens to vote -- anything for political power!

It is in the interest of TP to destroy any shared values, principles, interests, etc that might exist in BOistan and replace them with endlessly Balkanized identity politics, making each group believe that TP has their best interests in mind and will give them what they desire -- if not blocked by "the deplorables".

Maps are ALWAYS myths, they are NEVER the territory. They are an abstract view intended to convey some meaning -- either as honest and correct as a map with VERY limited data compared to the territory itself can be, or explicitly designed to convey a message which is known to be false in order to influence you.

Pretty much all the political maps from both sides are the latter. They give the VERY false impression that the red areas are close to 100% one way, and the blue areas are the same in the other.

That is completely false. Even in thought, Americans are FAR more aligned than really any of us can feel -- TP and it's media want us to think otherwise, and the illusion is so real that effectively everyone buys into it.

Women Are XX and Men Are XY

Transgender Conformity by Katherine Kersten | Articles | First Things:

The linked column is excellent, though a bit long -- the tragic story of the Nova Academy in St Paul is ignored by me here, but well worth the read. It points out that today we explain things through science that were once once fully understood by grade school children.

Every cell in the human body marks individuals as either male or female, with males bearing an XY and females an XX chromosome. Sex is not “assigned” at birth. It is identified anatomically when an infant is in the womb and then confirmed at birth. “In mammals such as humans, the female gestates offspring and the male impregnates the female,”

Much as if you declare yourself to be a cat, your body is still not that of a cat because your DNA is not that of a cat -- every one of your cells is YOURS. Not merely human, but YOURS, as it we spend lots of time with matching and anti-rejection drugs to allow transplants. Wearing a long tail will actually not make you a cat -- no matter what your other friends wearing long tails tell you. We know all of this scientifically, but part of the modern project is to reject pieces of science (the birds and the bees), while demanding that other pieces be converted to holy writ (AGW).

But we can all pretend -- a lot of things. The modern Recovery Movement has decided that "there is a higher power" (they assiduously avoid "God"), we are all here for a purpose, we have each been given unique and important strengths, and the way to live a happy and full life is to recognize this and live accordingly. They have reached this conclusion because people are dying -- in droves, from suicide, drugs, or simply giving up on life and slowly bloating or wasting away. They make it clear they are just pretending because they have to do something -- it would be more effective if they actually believed. 

Those are also things that a typical 6th grader could have schooled the modern PHDs on in 1950.

"“Hardwired to Connect” warns that American children are facing a “crisis” of “mental and behavioral health.” Young people are struggling with anxiety, depression, alcohol abuse, behavioral challenges, and thoughts of suicide, all at unprecedented levels, the report’s authors say. According to one study, by the 1980s, U.S. children as a group reported more anxiety than did children who were psychiatric patients in the 1950s. The report attributes this, mostly, to the breakdown of the family and other fundamental social institutions, which has weakened moral and behavioral norms and deprived young people of the “authoritative communities” that have traditionally provided security, meaning, and purpose.

The modern project of the destruction of God, family, community and interpersonal relationships (via social media, cell phones, games, internet, etc) had already made our youth by the 1980's to be equivalent to mental patients 30 years before. These are of course issues far less likely to be studied by our "science" than say the "crisis" of Global Warming, but I can't imagine that anyone over 50 doesn't realize that today's youth are conservatively 2-3 times worse off than the youth of the '80s.

Today’s transgender crusade can be seen as the latest manifestation of this denial. It is inherently authoritarian, as other latter-day Gnostic projects have been, because it has to be. Nature and common sense oppose it. In the “Gnostic dream world,” as Eric Voegelin once put it, “non-recognition of reality is the first principle.” Critics who persist in drawing attention to reality must be discredited or silenced. Otherwise, the Gnostic fantasy world crumbles.

I don't call "progressivism" regressivism as a joke, I call it that because that is what it is. It makes knowledge once accessible to grade school children into breakthrough ideas from PHDs. What is more, the reason why this is so is also obvious to grade school level thought.

Our natural God given bodies and brains know how to accomplish carrying on our species even though the actual mechanics of it are well beyond even our most advanced science ... eg. we can't manufacture even a dividing bacteria, let alone a human in a test tube.

Similarly, our culture and traditions, which prominently included religion, naturally inculcated purpose, meaning, answers to ultimate questions like death, and structure in which to live lives in "95%" loving and meaningful ways. They worked because they had either been divinely inspired or evolved (or both) over thousands of years. Failing to pass down the "DNA" of culture is as fatal to civilization as if we declared procreation to be "unnatural and restrictive, culturally imposed".

However, our culture was not "perfect" in a regressive sense -- it may well have been "perfect" in the practical sense of "it worked nearly as well as it could". There were always children who were "different", and for some of those children those differences were sexual. There were however acceptable roles for them -- the bachelor farmer, the two old sisters or brothers that ran the farm down the road and kept to themselves while nobody asked any questions, the nun, the priest, old spinster english teacher, etc.

Certainly there was a sanction to "follow society" as there is today -- which is why all who disagree with the regressive project are "racist, homophobe ... deploreables". I believe I will henceforth just use that handy summary word. The sanction allowed 95%+ to find an acceptable way to fit in, today's method alienates half the population and causes huge percentages of youth to be effectively equivalent to mental patients of 30-60 years ago.

The problem is in the numbers. No matter how much regressives like to fantasize about each individuals "right" to "create themselves", it is simply not possible to declare yourself a cat and suddenly become one. To attempt to do so is to consign yourself to a life of frustration.

The Judeo-Christian vision, which shaped Western civilization for 1,600 years, holds that God created man—body and soul—with purpose and meaning in an ordered universe. But the post-Christian worldview fast replacing it has no place for God, and perceives no purpose in nature. Christian man has become “psychological man” and the soul has become the self, in the words of Philip Rieff. The free-floating self—unconstrained by reality—is now believed to forge its own “identity” through a creative assertion of will.

The article closes with this -- none of this is particularly new to readers of this blog, but it is well done and the Nova Academy story is a classic tale for our times.

Over time, public policy making will become impossible if new interest groups attempt to piggyback on the transgender movement’s success, as seems likely. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch now insists that schools accept a kindergarten boy’s self-understanding and treat him as if he is a girl. What happens when an individual suffering from body integrity identity disorder identifies as disabled and applies for federal disability benefits? What if a white male business owner identifies as black and seeks to participate in a federal contract set-aside reserved for minorities? What if a forty-year-old woman regards herself as a senior citizen and demands Social Security benefits? How can policy makers logically deny their claims? As we enter the world of fantasy—when reality ceases to matter—it is impossible to predict where our society will crash against nature, as it inevitably will.

'via Blog this'

Mission Accomplished, Trump Mocked Disabled Reporter

The True Story: Donald Trump Did Not Mock a Reporter’s Disability – CATHOLICS 4 TRUMP:

We all remember how W put up the big banner "Mission Accomplished" on the aircraft carrier after Saddam was killed and Iraq liberated. Small problem, the banner was the standard banner that the SHIP used when they came home from another deployment, and the deployment they were coming back from was their longest deployment. No problem -- the media was able to bolster the myth of W's "arrogance and stupidity" for putting up the banner that he never put up. It worked for the media and "The Party" (TP-D) , that is all that counts.

So the media "has it on tape" that Trump mocked a disabled reporter. Did he?

According to the linked article, he did not. The thesis is the following:

1. The whole deal started with Trump's claim of Muslims celebrating 9-11 in New Jersey -- the media said he was crazy, never happened. 
2. The Trump team found an article in the WaPo talking about Muslims celebrating -- the reporter (the disabled one) tried to back away from his own story when it came to light. 
3. Trump made fun of the reporter backing away from his own story at a campaign event and the media got him on tape. 
4. The linked article found other examples of Trump mocking / impersonating someone on tape, and they all look the same -- apparently he isn't much of a mimic. 

Is this "proof"? No, certainly not, but I think we all understand why it is important for the media to create and maintain such stories. If we assume that Trump DID mock the reporter's disability, was it somehow "important to him" or was it a "slip"? Back when BO said that his bowling was "like the special olympics", he apologized and that was that -- no big deal. But you can't do that from the right -- you will be destroyed by misspelling "potato". So even if it WAS a slip, he can't apologize because he is on the "wrong side". 

What is true and what is false in modern BOistan is completely beside the point. It is what people BELIEVE is true! 60% of the population believes that human caused global warming (AGW) is a greater problem for us and our offspring than $150 trillion in debt and unfunded liabilities. It doesn't really matter what the truth is -- both are predictions about the future, there really isn't any "truth" about future predictions until they are proven true or false. 

We all heard all summer that Trump would lose by a landslide, the Senate would go Democrat and the Republicans would be lucky to keep the house. Those learned predictions didn't turn out to be so correct .. "truthful". 

BO stated in 2012 that anyone that claimed we could drill our way to sub $2 gas was "either lying or didn't know what they were talking about" ... we've been there before, we are there again. Nobody is asking BO "Which was it? Were you lying or are you clueless?". 

We could go on, but you get the pattern. I see the left holding up the "Trump made fun of a disabled person" meme as if it were some magic spell. Let's compare that to Libya and 4 dead including the Ambassador. Hillary famously uttered, "What difference, at this point, does it make?". 

One of those "differences" might be that Trump was elected. It seems pretty clear that "making fun of people with disabilities" was NOT part of the "Trump campaign strategy" (if he had one) ... so if he DID do that, it was a SLIP, like BO calling his bowling "Special Olympics". If we lived in a nation where an opposition candidate could apologize and move on, then apology would be good, but BOistan is not that place. 

While there is no way to KNOW the answer to this, it seems pretty clear that the media and the Democrats are the big winners in creating this meme (just like the "Mission Accomplished" meme). Based on the work done by the linked Catholic site, I think we have pretty good evidence that this is yet another case of a media created 'Fake News".

The difference seems to be that at least part of the country is sick of it. Many of us have simply been told too many lies by the MSM and TP to listen to anything they say anymore. It is certainly true that Trump may be a liar as well -- at this point, I'm very pleased to see some new lies rather than just the same old tired ones! 

'via Blog this'

An Honest Self Assessment From Journalism

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-the-unbearable-smugness-of-the-press-presidential-election-2016/

This one isn't long and it is well worth the time taken. Is there anyone in their 30's or later than has not at some point stared into the mirror and said "I'm the problem"! ?  A sample ... but just read it!

It’s a profound failure of empathy in the service of endless posturing. There’s been some sympathy from the press, sure: the dispatches from “heroin country” that read like reports from colonial administrators checking in on the natives. But much of that starts from the assumption that Trump voters are backward, and that it’s our duty to catalogue and ultimately reverse that backwardness. What can we do to get these people to stop worshiping their false god and accept our gospel?

For most Christians, HOPEFULLY, such is very close to an act of DAILY contrition. If not daily, then at least every couple of weeks as we contemplate taking the body and blood of our Lord at the altar in communion with our fellow penitent sinners.

YES, I DO understand that many have abandoned religion, and I also understand too well and PERSONALLY that it is far too easy to take even the miracle of the body and blood as mindless ritual.

I believe that the anguish of the linked column is real. It is real, and if it could be remembered and integrated into a real desire to CHANGE, to realize that even our "enemies" are worthy of our care, concern, and even LOVE, we might return to being an "America" that sought COLLABORATION, not mere "compromise". To truly value actual diversity of THOUGHT, the essence of what is human.

In this, **I** stand as the chief of sinners ...

Almighty God,
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
maker of all things, judge of all men:
We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness,
which we from time to time most grievously have committed,
by thought, word, and deed, against thy divine Majesty,
provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.
We do earnestly repent,
and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings;
the remembrance of them is grievous unto us,
the burden of them is intolerable.
Have mercy upon us,
have mercy upon us, most merciful Father;
for thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
forgive us all that is past;
and grant that we may ever hereafter
serve and please thee in newness of life,
to the honor and glory of thy Name;through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I personally know of no way forward but FAITH, but if the attitude of humility and love can be found in other ways, then I applaud them as well. If 2008 and 2012 were not enough to show everyone that America was broken, then surely 2016 has at least brought more to realize the fact of our abject failure as a people?

It is impossible to imagine more imperfect vessels than Obama or Trump to show us the loss of the exceptional spirit that was America. Must we sink to actual violence before we repent and make a new start?

A song that has always brought this thought to my mind ...