God Speed, John Glenn

John Glenn, American Hero of the Space Age, Dies at 95 - The New York Times:

February 20th, 1962 -- America took a major step to try to catch the USSR, "Russia" if you will. Today, we no longer even imagine competing with them -- both Russia and China have active space programs and BOistan has no ability to even  put a man in orbit. "Progressives" (regressives) have regressed our space capability back to prior May 5th 1961 when Alan Shepard became the first of American in space. We can no longer put a man in space,  John Glenn was the last of the Mercury 7 Astronauts, men who exemplified "The Right Stuff".

Scott Carpenter famously uttered "God Speed John Glenn" and it was not a controversial statement. America was unabashedly a Christian Nation then -- there was no need to even discuss it.

Glenn himself, a Democrat, still believed in God's Creation in at the age of 77 in 1998 when he rode the shuttle and said

“To look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible

Even Democrats believed in God and America back then. There is a link to some of the TV coverage of the launch embedded in that previous link.


During the time of BO, the biggest "milestones" reached were in the area of our sexual organs -- as in gay "marriage" and doubting the validity of gender. Climate change is "settled science", but the fact that every cell in our bodies save our blood cells has gender --  two X chromosomes for women and an XY for men, is no longer understood.

Man has free will. He can ponder infinite and the divine, or he can contemplate his navel and his sex organs. When John Glen launched, we reached for the stars -- going where "no man has gone before". Today, the frontier for mankind, at least in regressing BOistan,  is men in women's bathrooms.

We have regressed a long way from February of '62. Can Trump at least change the shape of the decline a little?

It remains to be seen, but John Glenn has now "slipped the surly bonds and touched the face of God".

If you stayed up WAY too late in even the '70s, they shut down the TV stations, and at least here in the midwest,  this is what they played.

Life Expectancy Down, Heroin Passes Gun Homicides

Heroin deaths surpass gun homicides for the first time, CDC data shows - The Washington Post:

As we come to the end of the age of BO, it is important to notice that he DID accomplish a couple of major things in his 8 year debacle.

In a grim milestone, more people died from heroin-related causes than from gun homicides in 2015. As recently as 2007, gun homicides outnumbered heroin deaths by more than 5 to 1.

Now that is "change we can believe in"! And that's not all!

These increases come amid a year-over-year increase in mortality across the board, resulting in the first decline in American life expectancy since 1993.

Why, we had a decline in life expectancy since the last time a Democrat was in the White House! And there are still those who claim that there are no real differences between our two political parties.



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Russian Hacking, Is It A "Slam Dunk"?

Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House - The Washington Post:

As a conservative, watching the weathervane of the MSM turn is one of the most enjoyable things about the shift of power. The CIA, the foolish agency that called WMD in Iraq a "Slam Dunk" suddenly has revived it's credibility with the media! Wonders truly never cease.

And yet another old practice has been revived -- leaking! In order to believe this headline report, you first have to believe the words and spin of the opposition senators that decided to violate their oaths to keep the information they were briefed on secret, as well as buying into their spin on the leaks they were sworn not to make. Why, just a couple months ago, "leaks" about Hillary were tantamount to "treason", but already they are important and likely "patriotic" in anticipation of Trump taking office!

This is a good story angle for the Democrats -- their policies, their attitude, their name calling are NOT to blame! They don't need to change ANYTHING ... those damned Russians rigged the election!! As far as that goes, fine with me ... better they focus on anything but making changes that will allow them to win! However.

To me, the interesting question here is what actually may be going on. Those of us that follow conservative media know that the White House was supposedly hacked in the fall of 2014 just before the mid-term election, ostensively by the Russians.

Earlier this year when an iPhone used by the San Bernadino terrorists was allegedly "unhackable" I covered a couple of things here. The bottom line points of that post are:

1. There is no such thing as "unhackable" 
2. The Russians, Chinese and who knows who else are likely MILES ahead of us (covered in link) on hacking technology -- so pretty much anything IS to some degree vulnderable. 
3. Trust nobody -- certainly not Trump, BO, Democrats, Republicans, the NSA, etc ... BOistan is lawless. We deciced to go that way for sure once we started killing babies in their mother's wombs -- it just went downhill from there, and we are way downhill. No rules always means NO RULES, people just have a hard time understanding that for some reason. 

BEFORE the election, it was "crazy talk" to mention that the election might be "rigged" -- now it is crazy talk to NOT look into it being rigged. At least this is something that we DO understand intimately -- "The Party" (TP-D) is still in as much control as a corrupt political party in a declining nation can be -- pretty much like the old communist party in the USSR circa '70s-'80s. All the alphabet agencies are the real power in BOistan, and they are still FIRMLY in the hands of TP and will be unless Trump can do a MAJOR "Scott Walker" on them -- which is going to be HARD.

So, I have to assume that the CIA was fully in TP control in '93 and now -- "their spin" is TP spin, which TP assumes to be beneficial to their power. My guess is that they knew post 9-11 that W would have no choice but to invade Iraq if the CIA assessment was a "slam dunk" on WMD. As now even WaPo is willing to report, the ferocity of the W counterattack left the terrorists spinning -- but not TP. The CIA essentially "forced" us into Iraq with it's assessment. Was "Slam Dunk" a black op to defeat W? W is enough of a Boy Scout to assume that post 9-11, the CIA really cared more about America than TP politics -- NEVER trust ANYONE! 

Anybody that cared about "the good of the nation", would look into potential hacking before an election rather than after it.  What the hell are they going to do if there WAS hacking? Have a "do over"? We investigate security threats on the president BEFORE they are carried out, not AFTER the president is dead! ... at least we try to. 

One possibility is that Trump knew the election was rigged, as did BO ... but Trump ALSO knew that the Russians had found a way to "outrig the riggers", or potentially (and this would REALLY be sweet), just "disable the rigging" -- making it very likely he would win. If BO wanted to take his warning BEFORE the election and look into it, then BO would know as well that the "rigging was off" -- but it would still be off, win, win for Trump.

If Trump won but the removal of the rigging was undiscovered, then Trump could do what he wanted. Either bring it to light, or not -- no sane person would assume that TP would come out AFTER the election and say "we now think it was rigged, after we told you it definitely was not -- trust us".

**IF** there is any real information at all, it was known before the election and BO was confident that things were rigged in TP's favor. 

In any case, looking into it NOW is insane! ... but since BOistan is an insane place, that is what is happening.

The cost of the '93 CIA "Slam Dunk" was a gigantic loss of face for the agency, and because of the way it was handled for the entire US government as well. Yes, I understand that TP made a calculated move to take the WH in '04, and they didn't mind that the collateral damage included a vast loss of faith in US intelligence, military, and especially the presidency. They assumed that with their media superiority they could lay that entirely on the Republican party and the sheeple would bleat along. It turned out that their media wasn't THAT powerful.

So post 2016 election, they are now doubling down HARD on destroying faith another institution, this time elections (they dabbled in that from 2K-2004 as well ... "Diebold") This looks especially strange because in October, they were the ones declaring that there were NO ISSUES with the election and that "voter fraud did not exist". Just for good measure, anyone that claimed there might be a problem was "insane, trying to foment violence, unpatriotic, etc, etc".

The worm has clearly turned, NEVER believe ANYTHING that TP is spouting! 

Evidence of Unicorns Voting in Detroit

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/05/recount-unrecountable/95007392/

Problems with half of the votes in key Detroit precincts -- how shocking!

County reports obtained by The Detroit News, though, indicate canvassers were provided no explanation for why the numbers didn’t add up in those precincts. They certified the results of the election anyway.

This is not one of those stories worthy of national attention -- widespread evidence of vote fraud in a major Democrat stronghold? What would be wrong about that?

Did you hear the one about fake news and Russian hackers influencing the election?  There are rumors that UFOs may also be involved -- seems like those would be better places to look for issues that large scale voter fraud in big US Democrat controlled cities!

Let's think more about Hillary winning the popular vote.

New Yorker, Tragedy of Trump

Presidential Election 2016: An American Tragedy - The New Yorker:

Mostly posed to enjoy the indignation of the effete snobs at the New Yorker.

"All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering."

The entire screed is no doubt comforting to the left -- shorn of power, but filled with double measures of hatred and disdain for those who failed to bow to their majesty. How the charge of "racism", the very favorite epithet  for the party of slavery and Jim Crow.

For eight years, the country has lived with Barack Obama as its President. Too often, we tried to diminish the racism and resentment that bubbled under the cyber-surface. But the information loop had been shattered. On Facebook, articles in the traditional, fact-based press look the same as articles from the conspiratorial alt-right media. Spokesmen for the unspeakable now have access to huge audiences. This was the cauldron, with so much misogynistic language, that helped to demean and destroy Clinton. The alt-right press was the purveyor of constant lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories that Trump used as the oxygen of his campaign. Steve Bannon, a pivotal figure at Breitbart, was his propagandist and campaign manager.

I don't think the New Yorker likes Trump very much. How sad.


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Ban This Article!

http://m.startribune.com/the-dfl-has-a-problem-here-s-an-intervention-and-three-step-program-to-help/405526126/

This is the kind of soul searching that I DO NOT want to see Democrats doing! It is damned dangerous, I want them focusing on "fake news", Russian hackers, and the cost of providing security for Trump and his family!

I think I'm pretty safe in assuming that VERY few people of a lefty bent are following this blog so we will do a little analysis.

Many reasons, of course. Republican Inc. has always been better than the Democrat Co-op at the cutthroat battleground tactics necessary to win elections. If they could sell the damaged merchandise at the top of their ticket this year, they pretty much proved they can sell anything.

Hmm. Really? As late as October the levels of smug on the impending Hillary landslide were at flood stage. We had heard for the last 8 years how the Republicans were democraphically dead and would never win the presidency again. Trump was going down by double digits and the Senate was as good as Democrat.

Republicans are pure crap as salesman. Donald Trump sold Donald Trump -- the Republican establishment hated him as did much of the conservative media (eg NRO).

Your electoral implosion was not driven by ignorant, racist, homophobic misogynists, and you need to let go of that morally smug meme if you ever want to regain the trust of middle-of-the-road D- and R-leaning voters.

That paragraph is truly dangerous, it ought to be banned! I'm fairly certain that Democrats enjoy their moral superiority far to much to lend creedence to this kind of thinking, but it is the kind of thinking that needs to be stamped out!

"Fake news", "stupid racist , homophobic irredeemable deplorables"! THAT is the kind of thinking we need -- DOUBLE DOWN! We still have the whole administrative state to fix, education and most of the media. Conservatives need to win A LOT MORE!

Where is the smugness of the Strib when you need it! Articles like this scare me!

Hamilton, SNL, Darth Vader, John Kasich

Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump - The New York Times:



Here we have a call to faithless electors that brings all of the names in the title into it's "reasoning".



The author is claiming he will be a faithless elector from Texas and the NY Times consideres it worthy to publish his "logic". The electoral college ought to "elect" someone like John Kasich because this brilliant gentlenman who supports SNL and opposes Darth Vader is more intelligent than 60 million voters.





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Intel Not 100%, Fake News

The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Answers Our Reporter’s Questions - The New York Times:

The media is currently in the mood to do stories on "fake news" as if this was a new phenomenon -- and somehow significantly responsible for the election of Trump. Maybe we should belly up to the Fisher Price Happy Hour Playset and order a stiff one.

Fake news is not a new phenomenon ... in the '90s, Janet Reno went all in on it relative to "The Little Rascals" day care center, and people went to prison over fake news.

Dan Rather lost his job because he tried to use a forged document to influence the election in 2004 on top of the already fake, or at least manufactured "news" about W's career as a TX National Guard fighter pilot 30 years earlier.

Here, the NY Times reports breathlessly on the works of a gentleman who woke up one fine day and drove to DC to "investigate" if Hillary was leading a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor. He wanted to to "shine some light" on the sex ring, and on the "spur of the moment" he decided to take his AR into the building. He points out to the Times that "the intel on this was not 100%" ... news at 11. I'm glad they straightened THAT out! Certainly there is no chance that his mental state (or Janet Reno's in the '90s) had anything to do with his actions.

As Hillary (she of landing in Bosnia under sniper fire and reporting how Benghazi was caused by an internet movie) intoned; "One danger is the “malicious threat of fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year,” said Clinton. “It’s now clear that so-called fake news can have real world consequences” including for the “lives of ordinary people,” she said. “It’s a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly.”

In news of the surreal, Brian Williams, he of "my chopper was shot down" also has entered the fray against the dastardly "fake news". How many times have I pointed out that living in a "post truth" era has "issues"? 

This is simple folks. NEVER trust a single source! EVER! If only one side of the ideological spectrum is reporting it, it is very likely fake. If the MSM is all over it, it is likely at least "unimportant" -- it may or may not be true that W Bush wasn't a real "Top Gun" 30 years ago, but it certainly wasn't important to his presidency -- especially for his SECOND TERM which is when Rather lost his job!  If a woman drives into Langley every day, her credentials as a "secret agent" are at least highly suspect and "outing her" is not very likely to be a matter of national significance -- in the old days, fake news used to be much father reaching than it has been during the 2016 election! 

We could go on, but if you read this blog, we don't need to. The current fake news "news" is obviously this weeks ploy for the left to explain Trump without having to engage in any soul searching as to their own policies, rhetoric, etc.  The more they avoid taking responsibility for the election the better -- when your opponent is intent on staying stupid, the best thing to do is agree with them! 

The Little Sisters Of the Poor Kick Ass

The Supreme Court oral argument that cost Democrats the presidency - The Washington Post:



This column is being posted largely because it covers points that I've already covered in depth, but they are covered in the WaPo as opposed to my little right-wing crank blog. The religious freedom of the actual Bible beleiving practicing Chrisitans is under attack in ways that peyote smoking Indians or equally opposed to gay "marriage" Muslims, has been a major cause for alarm for Christians. The fact that Democrats and the MSM patted us on the heads like children and said "don't worry, you will get over it" was not particularly palliative.



If you keep up with my blog, you will find it repetitive, but it is not long, and it is a good summary of some of the specifics behind making it clear to a few more percent of Chritians that "Democrat" was not a name that could be associated with "Christian".



The closing paragraph with the title connection.

As co-blogger Todd Zywicki wrote to me on Facebook, “When you find yourself in the Supreme Court adverse to the Little Sisters of the Poor you might consider whether maybe you have pushed a little too far.”

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Trump Already Has Milbank Praising W!

Trump’s one consistent policy: Chaos - The Washington Post: 

Dana Milbank is confused. He is also worried that vaious world leaders might be confused -- possibly even nervous. They were never nervious about BO -- unless they didn't like the way he licked their boots. Too much spittle sometimes I heard.



Here Dana is praising W ...

"For these reasons, George W. Bush made predictable leadership a matter of pride. When I covered his White House 16 years ago, I found that the best way to predict Bush’s actions was to listen to his words: He did exactly what he said he would do. Many didn’t like the result, but Bush made it easy for Republicans in Congress to follow his lead. "

Dana was SUCH a W fan! If we go back to a blog of mine in  February of 2014 we can contrast his joy at every twitch and blink of reporters beating up W while he tries to help with construction in New Orleans in 2005, with his horror at the savagely of Bill O'Reilly who failed to treat BO as the potentate Milbank found him to be.



I understand that the WaPo is 100% an arm of "The Party" (TP-D) and I assume that everyone that reads this blog finds this to be as unsurprising as I do, so I won't drag it on.



One of the true joys of Trump is watching vacuous windmills like Milbank twist in the wind, unable to get the purchase on any specifics of why they hate him, other than THEY DO, no matter WHAT position he takes!  Could he PLEASE  just hurry up and lock into some specific policy so they can evicerate him on specifics rather than on lack of consistency!



When you KNOW that you hate the position that he takes independent of which position he takes, he shows the colors of guys like Milbank as they start to oppose him on all sides of issues -- thus making it clear that the ONLY thing they really care about is OPPOSING TRUMP! ... no matter what he does!



When Dana Milbank has something good to say about W, it is obvious he is in SERIOUS distress!







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$125B No Issue for BO

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-buries-evidence-of-125-billion-in-bureaucratic-waste/2016/12/05/e0668c76-9af6-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html?utm_term=.5632f7a47f15

So the WaPo waits until after the election to mention that the Pentagon is wasting $125B ... all be it over 5 years. The only reason I'm putting this up is to remember it for when Trump is president and this sort of "buck" stops right on the presidents desk -- which is where it SHOULD! Now and then. The president is the CEO -- if he doesn't have the kind of SECDEF and joint chiefs to kick ass, and he doesn't do it himself, then you end up with this crapola.

BO never ran a lemonade stand as far as we know -- he never HAS had any clue. I'm sure that $125 B is chump change relative to the losses under BO -- not that any MSM outlet really cares.

Get ready for a whole new attitude!

I'm A Lumberjack And I'm OK

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/is-canadas-economy-a-model-for-america/?hootPostID=6fd4767e821928e00b8057f1f5c24a1a

Mark Steyn is a much better writer than I and similarly wordy. He has a wit that I admire deeply ... my real advice is to just go read the linked article. After reading "American Amnesia", the biggest thing I realize I enjoy about conservative writers is that they generally have wit and humor.

Some samples:

As we know from 9/11, the Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia use their oil wealth to spread their destructive ideology to every corner of the world. And so do the Canadians. Consider that in the last 40 years, fundamental American ideas have made no headway whatsoever in Canada, whereas fundamental Canadian ideas have made huge advances in America and the rest of the Western world. To take two big examples, multiculturalism and socialized health care—both pioneered in Canada—have made huge strides down here in the U.S., whereas American concepts—such as non-confiscatory taxation—remain as foreign as ever.

In order to properly understand the following, this video ought to be reviewed. Thankfully, with the election of Trump, I'm guessing that it can survive on the internet for awhile longer even though it clearly lacks proper respect for transvestites!

My colleague at National Review, John O’Sullivan, once observed that post-war Canadian history is summed up by the old Monty Python song that goes, “I’m a Lumberjack and I’m OK.” If you recall that song, it begins as a robust paean to the manly virtues of a rugged life in the north woods. But it ends with the lumberjack having gradually morphed into a kind of transvestite pickup who likes to wear high heels and dress in women’s clothing while hanging around in bars. Of course, John O’Sullivan isn’t saying that Canadian men are literally cross-dressers—certainly no more than 35-40 percent of us — but rather that a once manly nation has undergone a remarkable psychological makeover. If you go back to 1945, the Royal Canadian Navy had the world’s third largest surface fleet, the Royal Canadian Air Force was one of the world’s most effective air forces, and Canadian troops got the toughest beach on D-Day. But in the space of two generations, a bunch of tough hombres were transformed into a thoroughly feminized culture that prioritizes all the secondary impulses of society—welfare entitlements from cradle to grave—over all the primary ones. And in that, Canada is obviously not alone. If the O’Sullivan thesis is flawed, it’s only because the lumberjack song could stand as the post-war history of almost the entire developed world.

The closing health care example is really not to be missed, so I will include it here, even though I am WAY over my quote limit! The truly sad part here is that if the babies had died, Canada's "infant mortality rate" likely would not be affected -- the government does the counting.

**DO** just go and read it!

"A Canadian woman has given birth to extremely rare identical quadruplets. The four girls were born at a U.S. hospital because there was no space available at Canadian neonatal intensive care units. Autumn, Brook, Calissa, and Dahlia are in good condition at Benefice Hospital in Great Falls, Montana. Health officials said they checked every other neonatal intensive care unit in Canada, but none had space. The Jepps, a nurse and a respiratory technician were flown 500 kilometers to the Montana hospital, the closest in the U.S., where the quadruplets were born on Sunday."

There you have Canadian health care in a nutshell. After all, you can’t expect a G-7 economy of only 30 million people to be able to offer the same level of neonatal intensive care coverage as a town of 50,000 in remote, rural Montana. And let’s face it, there’s nothing an expectant mom likes more on the day of delivery than 300 miles in a bumpy twin prop over the Rockies. Everyone knows that socialized health care means you wait and wait and wait—six months for an MRI, a year for a hip replacement, and so on. But here is the absolute logical reductio of a government monopoly in health care: the ten month waiting list for the maternity ward.

Dividers On Division

Trevor Noah: Let’s Not Be Divided. Divided People Are Easier to Rule. - The New York Times:

I really didn't expect the  NY Times to remember much of what they said in their shock and awe phase right after the election. Here is a fine example of some first rate spin from Trevor Noah ... the new "Great Eviscerator" who replaced Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show". Only Trevor is a "kinder and gentler" eviscerator. 

"The past year has been so polarizing and noxious that even I find myself getting caught up in the extreme grandstanding and vitriol. But with extremes come deadlock and the death of progress. Instead of speaking in measured tones about what unites us, we are screaming at each other about what divides us — which is exactly what authoritarian figures like Mr. Trump want: Divided people are easier to rule. That was, after all, the whole point of apartheid."

Ah, Trump is an authoritarian that is like "apartheid". Hard to beat that for "bringing together". So I wonder if Mr Noah has any idea what "Identity Politics" is? The NY Times helpfully carried an article on it Nov 18th in which this was one of the paragraphs:

We need a post-identity liberalism, and it should draw from the past successes of pre-identity liberalism. Such a liberalism would concentrate on widening its base by appealing to Americans as Americans and emphasizing the issues that affect a vast majority of them. It would speak to the nation as a nation of citizens who are in this together and must help one another. As for narrower issues that are highly charged symbolically and can drive potential allies away, especially those touching on sexuality and religion, such a liberalism would work quietly, sensitively and with a proper sense of scale. (To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, America is sick and tired of hearing about liberals’ damn bathrooms.)

So the folks that have operated using "Identity Politics" for a good long while are LIBERALS ... taking blacks, women, hispanics, gays, transgenders, socialists, "marginally legal" immigrants, wealthy limousine liberals in big cities, environmentalists, muslims, and a couple of other SEPARATE GROUPS, and telling EACH of them "you are better off with us, we will cater to YOUR balkanized interests".

 In other words, keeping all those groups divided from each other, but "grouped" by promises to be better than the "other guys", "the irredeemable deploreabiles". Does the fact that Identity Politics is all about dividing, and dividing is what authoritarians do, make "progressives" into authoritarians that are like apartheid? I know the answer to that ... no, of course not. Liberals are always good!

Trump on the other hand said "Make AMERICA great again". America is an idea ... a single entity.

Sadly, given what we’ve seen in this election, Mr. Trump’s victory has only amplified the voices of extremism. It has made their arguments more simplistic and more emotional at a time when they ought to be growing more subtle and more complex. We should give no quarter to intolerance and injustice in this world, but we can be steadfast on the subject of Mr. Trump’s unfitness for office while still reaching out to reason with his supporters.

There we have it. We poor emotional Trump supporters were swayed by extremism and simplistic arguments  -- when what was needed was "subtle and complex" -- and mistakenly cast our vote for someone "unfit for office". However, the brilliant folks like Trevor will be oh so happy to explain it to us in their "subtle and complex ways"  -- usually beginning with "hey you bunch of deplorable stupid racist bigots, let me tell you what you BETTER believe".

That is how the left intends to "bring us all together".  It's a beautiful thing.

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American Amnesia Phase II, The Authors Die of Alzheimers

Ok, phase I was inane, phase II was insane -- as in the classic leftist claptrap of NPR, NYT, WaPO, Huffpo, CNN, MSNBC regurgitated in a massive flow. Pumping 50 million gallons of hog manure in IA comes to mind. This the link back to phase I if you didn't read that yet. 

We do samples of the pungent fertilizer -- so I will follow suit here.

The next year, Reagan made a U-turn. When a deep recession and his big tax cuts yielded massive budget deficits, the president accepted tax hikes to stanch the red ink.

Reagan was a tax raiser ... which I guess is an attempt to make him "one of theirs". But what he did was try to deal honestly with Democrats.

It happened to my father early in his first term when he sought to close a growing federal deficit caused by the deep economic recession. He believed Democrats in Congress would keep their pledge to make $3 in future spending cuts for every $1 in immediate tax increases. 

In 1982 he signed a compromise tax bill with the horrible name of TEFRA — the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act. And, when those promised spending cuts never materialized in Congress, TEFRA became one of the biggest regrets of my father’s presidency.

We could bore you with a LONG list of these, but the bottom line is that Republicans have been  snookered many times at this game. The authors of the book are mystified why trust has broken down between the parties!

How evil can the Koch brothers be?  Lots of pages of text worth ... they are of course Libertarians and not really Republicans, but "whatever" ... "they are not at war with the Republican establishment". Well, the Republican Establishment certainly was at war with Trump ... so Trump ought to be a good thing for these guys I assume.

For many pundits, American politics seems stuck in its own Groundhog Day: an interminable cycle of partisan warfare and gridlock. The cycle’s beginning can, like Groundhog Day, be dated to 1993. Clinton and congressional Democrats met fierce across-the-board resistance from a Republican Party acting with newfound unity and intensity. The epic battles that followed— budget wars, government shutdowns, impeachment of a president— set the tone for the next twenty-plus years. A new meme in American political discourse, “polarization,” became the new normal in American political life.

Why not 1973? Watergate was getting in full swing -- that had the impeachment of a president involved as well. Certainly the Republicans played Charlie Brown to the Democrats Lucy in the kicking the field goal vignette MANY times.  Reagan played the same roll in the $1 tax increase for $3 of future cuts.

One of the "small" items not really talked about is that Democrats held control of the House of Representatives for nearly 40 years, 1957-1994, but amazingly there was no corruption or cronyism under their rule. Gingrich was a "new breed", not an honorable guy like say ways and means chair Dan Rostenkowski from the mid-80s, who spent some time vacationing at the barbed wire hotel on the SE side of Rochester.

The polarization of the parties has been asymmetric. Republicans have moved much further right than Democrats have moved left.

You would measure that how? By government spending? (steadily up) By government regulation? (steadily up) By social issues? Republican W Bush proposes and passes prescription drug coverage under medicare? Bernie Sanders, a declared Socialist runs as a Democrat and likely would have won had the party not rigged their primaries? Gay "marriage" and men in women's bathrooms isn't a leftward shift?

Have we always had those things and I just realized it? I see leftward as toward more government and less morality and rightward is toward less government and morality. You would think that with their assertion that the "mix" of the "mixed economy" is toward LESS government, while the real world being ever more government spending as a % of GDP, they would at least deign to explain what they mean.

In the current chapter, we explain the parallel rise of two grave threats to the mixed economy: a new economic elite with ideas (and earnings) starkly distinct from the American mainstream and a newly influential economic philosophy that we call “Randianism” (after the radically individualistic thinking of the midcentury novelist Ayn Rand).

I see this development as positive -- Republicans are being accused of reading books other than the Bible ... and possibly Mein Kampf. The normal ding on Republicans is that they lack the intellect to be able to read. The offending text is "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, published in 1957.  Not one, but TWO "grave threats", one of them being a book -- the left always has had problems with books.

GOP presidential candidates have become more conservative, while Democratic candidates have not moved left.

Oh, that is what they mean! Obama was not farther left than Bill Clinton ... no need to even consider it! HW Bush was right of Reagan.  McCain and Mittens were to the "right" of W. Glad that is straightened out!

“Say you had a deal, a real spending cuts deal, ten to one . . . spending cuts to tax increases. . . . Who on this stage would walk away from that deal? Can you raise your hand if you feel so strongly about not raising taxes, you’d walk away on the ten-to-one deal?” All eight candidates raised their hands. The GOP crowd roared approval.

There is one of their "proofs" of the rightward shift of Republicans. How about Republicans have FINALLY figured out that a such a "deal" with the Democrats is letting Lucy hold the football again! Even the very stupid eventually learn!

What is it that makes Republicans so evil? The are racists!

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 changed that. Within a generation, the GOP represented the nation’s most conservative voters, and the geographic epicenter of loyal Republican voters became the Deep South— a region that is both poorer and more conservative than other Republican bulwarks. When Democratic leaders finally demanded the end of Jim Crow, black voters became overwhelmingly Democratic.

Never mind that the Democrats were the party of slavery and then of Jim Crow, that DEMOCRATS worked to filibuster the voting rights act and as a percentage, more Republicans than Democrats voted for it.  What really takes hutzpah is that the democrat strategy of keeping blacks on the new inner city welfare plantations where they share-crop the votes every couple years has not been much of an aid to the lives of their welfare slaves -- but no matter, I guess they have actually been consistent on their attitude to blacks for the countries entire history! Keep them on the plantation! Just make it look a little different from time to time.

Besides race, the "machinery" that allows Republicans to get voters to "vote against their interests" is:

This machinery has three key elements: Christian conservatism, polarizing right-wing media, and growing efforts by business and the wealthy to backstop and bankroll Republican politics.

Ok, the book was bad before, but by this point there is nothing not covered on NPR, NYT, WaPo, etc every day. It isn't clear what they would do to get Christian conservatives to stop voting against the killing of 60 million and counting babies, gay "marriage", men in women's locker rooms and such -- maybe kill them?

Do we really have to keep hearing about "money in politics" after 2016? Last summer the media was ecstatic that Hillary was cleaning Trump's clock on campaign money, especially from Wall Street. Here is bloomberg waxing poetic about her out raising Trump by 20 to 1 among billionaires. Gee ... let's get the money out of politics! The amount of crap about Citizens United in the book REALLY is a joke after November -- the "read by" date of this book expired Nov 8!

But even the most plausible of them— campaign finance reform, improvements in our electoral process, a concerted push to bring politicians back toward the center—

We need to get back toward "the center" -- which is? In the view of the authors, the country is "moving right" -- reams more regulation, socialized medicine, ever increasing spending, new "rights" ... gay "marriage", sex change, choose your own race? etc.

Moreover, while there’s no single solution, we do believe there’s an overarching and inspiring aim: restoring the capacity of our democracy to express and act upon the interests that large numbers of us share in common.

So how about 60 million Americans? Is that a "large number". I find it tragic and ironic that the numbers on each side in this past election are basically the same as the number of babies murdered since Roe V Wade. How many geniuses that may have cured cancer, solved our energy problems, or maybe written a book that allowed Trump and Hillary supporters to look across the fence and understand why there is so much disagreement, were gassed by Hitler? How many more have been killed since 1973?

Democracies are at constant risk of being overwhelmed by intensely organized minorities who distort, immobilize, or dismantle government to advance their own interests.

Which may be why this was once a Constitutional Republic. If the government was limited in size -- say 10-20% of GDP, then the special interests rent seeking via government, as well as vote buying schemes, would be limited BOTH by the Constitution and there just being 10-20% of the economy to take from, rather than 40%.

To reverse this spiral, we must reestablish a government with the capacity to foster broad prosperity. We need to ensure that ordinary voters and diffuse interests are capable of triumphing over concentrated interests. And we need to rescue the ideal of the mixed economy from the mists of American Amnesia. Many changes have swept the American economy since the 1970s. Yet our biggest problem is not a lack of attractive policy options. Our biggest problem is our politics. The mixed economy is as necessary as ever— indeed, in a world of increased interdependence and complexity, more than ever. And despite all the changes of recent decades, it is still within our grasp. We need better policies to restore its potential. But above all, we need a better politics.

So we have doubled the size of government in % of GDP since those "forgotten" days of the mixed economy. The authors may be certain there are some great "policy positions", but outside of LOTS more government, LOTS more taxes, and LOTS more regulation, the specifics were "thin" ... except for somehow getting the lowest possible barriers to voting, plus allowing felons, and only thinly trying to disguise the desire to allow illegals to vote (no IDs).

Some favor that redistribution; others oppose it. But what is missing is an understanding that most of what government does is not about redistribution at all; it is about addressing a wide range of problems that markets alone are ill equipped to tackle. Our discourse about government has become dangerously lopsided. The hostility of the right is unceasing and mostly unanswered.

I think the BIGGEST of this books many failings is the failure to recognize that BY FAR the biggest dollar amount of effort by the government IS redistribution, 70-80%.  What is far worse is that most of that is that 40% of US households are now getting over 50% of their income from the government ... and all of that (other than what is stolen from our children and grandchildren) is coming out of those who make over the lofty sum of $102K. They harp a lot on how "makers and takers" is nasty ... perhaps cash cows and vote slaves is more accurate?


This has gotten WAY too long ... I'll leave this as their analysis of the wonders of BOcare. It was really wonderful -- here in MN a lot of folks ended up paying $2k+ a couple for their insurance, $24K a year ... STILL with hefty deductibles and co-pays if they had to use it. AFTER the election, even the WaPo had the courage to interviewed Noseworthy from Mayo who pointed out it was time for a do-over.  They find any claims against BOcare to be completely false -- proof of racism, ill will, etc.

They claim millions are losing good insurance despite a historic expansion of coverage. They claim costs are skyrocketing despite a historic slowdown of medical inflation.

 See, the guys that wrote this book know that BOcare was a wonderful thing! Heck, Hacker (one of the authors) was even one of the architects of BOcare -- thanks! BOcare was one of the things that helped Trump beat Hillary!

So by $$$ the government has grown from 20% of the economy when they claim the "mix" was correct to nearly 40% ... but now they think the government is WAY too small. I think what they really mean is that the socialist vote buying programs to date have eaten the whole budget and they don't have enough left for them to buy more votes or pick more winners or losers -- but they don't say that, so the book is completely debunked by looking up a government spending as a % of GDP chart.

But I looked up the regulation volume in the first post as well -- that is also at record levels.

So, what I "learned":

• government is great, government is good, we thank it for our daily bread. When people go into government they are sainted and there is never any corruption or rent seeking (as in build bigger fiefdoms, keep people on forever even if no longer useful, etc) ... no problems in government ... except Republican obstructionism. 
• Republicans and business are in bed together and evil.  (and racist, but I repeat myself)
• Democrats are so amazing! If the Republicans (and at least the high level business people) could be herded into gas chambers, utopia would be at hand! The very fact that they question this utopia is a sign of their evil. 
• Fox News and Talk Radio! Nuff said ... well throw in "conservative think tanks funded by the Koch brothers". Puts the Democrat / government forces of goodness and light at EXTREME disadvantage! NPR, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, WaPo, all the universities, Hollywood, American Bar association, government workers unions, etc just CAN'T COMPETE! Side note ... who has market share on radio? They pointed how how much was conservative, but failed to mention that out of the top 4 with basically same numbers of listeners: "Liberal Things Considered" at top (NPR), then Rush, then "Liberal Edition" (NPR), then Hannity. The book led you to believe it was a conservative rout -- really more of a privately funded / publicly funded draw. 

The big thing that books like this make obvious is that the US electorate is operating under two completely different world views. One actually DOES believe in a truly mixed economy, with the government being 10, 20, or possibly even 30% of that mix. The other (the authors of this book) want a SOCIALIST economy with 50, 60 ??? % being government, and almost certainly eventually effectively 100% -- because anybody that opposes them is always going to be "evil". We know they want MUCH more government because having it jump from 20 - 40% of GDP looks like "backward" from their perspective -- there is indeed "Amnesia", but they need to look between their ears a lot more. 

Socialized Auto Care

A fitting end: Castro’s hearse breaks down | Power Line:

Fidel's hearse broke down -- God does give us really good hints.

One of the many comments from people that don't boot lick socialists and communists like BO and Trudeau .... "In Cuba, NOTHING WORKS ... except the prostitutes".


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