The Trump Card

Powerline does the "week in pictures" every week, it is always good, but this week was especially good. A couple really fit here. 

Over at the Washington Examiner, it was summed up as follows with a Baseball analogy that I really like.

Yes Hillary Clinton got more votes than Trump, the bulk of which are located in two states, but that is not how you win. In the 1960 World Series the New York Yankees scored 55 runs to the Pittsburgh Pirates 27; out-hit them as well .328 verses .256, but the Pirates won when it counted and all those superior numbers meant nothing.

In short, you win by the rules of the game, not by the rules of your bias. 

The media miss the things that matter to voters like how Trump thanks his voters verses Clinton's thank you; he holds rallies in the very regions that provided him with a win, while Hillary thanks the big dollar donors in Manhattan.

The end of the Constitution, the Separation of Powers and the Rule of Law all fit in that highlighted line. The left wants to create a world based on their biases by total destruction of what was once America -- they are at least well on their way, if not already successful, but they hit a solid bump int he road named Trump.

This analogy for rules vs "something we just thought would be a good way to call a loss a win" is good as well. In general, I think Trump played this election with 3 dimensional chess strategy while Hillary played it with Tic-Tac-Toe level strategy.

Tolerance, Moral Responsibility, Refugees

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/who-we-are-as-a-people-the-syrian-refugee-question/2/?hootPostID=0a9a9841e6c2af5cd8bc7155b67e6683

. First, disconnect rights from responsibility (obligation).

The idea that every right has a corresponding duty or obligation was essential to the social compact understanding of the American founding. Thus whatever was destructive of the public good or public happiness, however much it might have contributed to an individual’s private pleasures or imagined pleasures, was not a part of the “pursuit of happiness” and could be proscribed by society. Liberty was understood to be rational liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was understood to be the rational pursuit of happiness—that is to say, not only a natural right but a moral obligation as well.

When there are no morals, "tolerance" -- allowing relativism becomes the only "moral".

Over the past century and more, this morality grounded in the American founding has been successfully eroded by Progressivism. This erosion is manifested today in the morality of value-free relativism. According to this new morality, all value judgments are equal. Reason cannot prove that one value is superior to or more beneficial than another, because values are not capable of rational analysis; they are merely idiosyncratic preferences. In this value-free universe, the only value that is “objectively” of higher rank is tolerance. Equal toleration of all values—what is called today a commitment to diversity—is the only “reasonable” position. And note that it is always called a commitment to diversity. It is a commitment because it cannot be rational in any strict sense—it exists in a value-free world from which reason has been expelled. The only support it can garner under such circumstances is the simple fact that it is preferred.

Values precede reason. They either exist in the fabric of an ordered universe,  or they do not. If they exist, they transcend existence. If they do not exist, then might is right.

The article proceeds to argue that it is obvious that the admission of Syrian refugees is neither a moral or a Constitutional issue in a world with values. I agree -- self defense is a basic human right. Unless refugees, especially Islamic refugees can be properly vetted, there is not obligation to accept them.

October BO vs December BO On Election Meddling

In last-shot bid, thousands urge electoral college to block Trump at Monday vote - The Washington Post:

Here is BO on Thursday October 20th, just over 2 weeks before the elction, lecturing about the danger of not having faith in elections.

“I want everybody to pay attention here. That is dangerous,” Obama continued, as supporters in the crowd cried out. “Because when you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people's minds about the legitimacy of our elections, that undermines our democracy. Then you’re doing the work of our adversaries for them. Because our democracy depends on people knowing that their vote matters, that those who occupy the seats of power were chosen by the people.”

You got that? BO wagging his finger and pontificating on the seriousness of questioning elections as being essentially treason ("undermines our democracy").

But wait!!!!  TP lost, so NOW we have BO talking "investigations" into "Russian election interference"and "retaliation" ... is that like a "red line"??? !!! The danger here is HUGE, if I were Putin, I would make CERTAIN that BO finds his "evidence" -- because it is harder to imagine a cheaper more deadly weapon to launch into the soul of the US. Talking to the bride about some concerns over the groom PRIOR to the wedding is dangerous, but could be required -- AFTER? Hello?

This is a great summary of how "The Party" (TP-D) operates.

"The role of elector has intensified this year, in the wake of a bitter election in which Trump lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by a margin of nearly 3 million votes and the revelation of a secret CIA assessment that Russia interfered to help Trump get elected."

First  we have the fake news ... Hillary won the "popular vote", which is meaningless because we have the Electoal College (EC). Always have, that is how we run elections, and that is how we ran this one. Change the rules, (smart) people campaign differently! Change pro-football so you win or lose on time of possession vs score, and teams play different! Duh!

But TP lost. So although they claim to want a popular vote election with no EC, they are perfectly willing, demanding even,  to try to use the EC to subvert the will of over 60 million people that took part in the election under the rules specified in the Constituion and in force for over 200 years.

In fact, TP, the party famous for using the Constitution to wipe their soiled asses, is now a YUGE fan of Alexander Hamilton! A Federalist that was far from keen on there being any sort of popular vote at all!

He looked to see Federalist No. 68, written by Hamilton to describe the need for the electoral college. 

“We have been getting a civic lesson we weren’t prepared to get,” Koller said. “They gave us the fail-safe emergency brake, in case the people got it wrong. And here we are, 200 years later. It’s the last shot we have.”

My God,! Trump is enough to get lefties to read Federalist 68! He is a total miracle worker! The next thing you know they will be reading Plato, or even the Bible! Holy crap, the American mind might be trying to open!

But it may well be shut HARD if Putin plays his cards smartly!

Public Union Bubble to Burst?

http://www.economist.com/node/17849199

Excellent article worth reading all of. A sample.

Many people have jobs for life and performance measures are rare. The result is a paradox: the typical public worker is better off than the people he is supposed to serve, and the gap has widened significantly over the past decade. In America, pay and benefits have grown twice as fast in the public sector as they have in the private sector.

 How much does all this cost us? Hard to calculate, but consider ...

It is impossible to calculate the cost of the unions' inflexibility. But several recent studies provide some indications. Policy Exchange, a conservative think-tank, calculates that people in the British private sector work 23% more hours than their public-sector counterparts over their lifetimes, thanks to public-sector strikes, sick days and early retirement. Barry Bluestone, a left-wing economist, calculates that the price of America's public services increased by 41% in 2000-08, while that of private services rose by 27%. Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford University, argues that replacing the bottom 5-8% of American teachers with merely average performers could move the United States from near the bottom to near the top of the international maths and science rankings.

If  Trump can accomplish a single thing, a huge weakening of public unions would be very high on my priority list!

How The Russians Did It!

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443000/russia-election-hack-plan-revealed-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-only-pawns-kremlin

We know that Russia is a technologically superior nation since we hitch rides with them to the Space Station so we can pretend like we are still an advanced nation. This article lays out exactly how they managed to elect Trump president. I think the following was their most brilliant move! 

The men from Moscow hacked into Clinton’s teleprompter last September 9. In a fundraising speech that she delivered to donors at Cipriani restaurant, literally on Wall Street, her original reference to half of Trump’s supporters as “hard-working Americans thirsty for economic growth and tired of being lectured to by condescending, out-of-touch elites in Washington” disappeared. Instead, Clinton was amazed to find herself calling them a “basket of deplorables.” She was as stunned as anyone to find her lips forming the words “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.”

This one is also brilliant ... the whole article is worth reading.

The Russians drilled into the navigation system of Stronger Together, Clinton’s campaign plane, and erased Wisconsin from its map of the USA. This prevented her from landing and stumping even once in that entire state during the fall election campaign.

"Stronger Together" what a lame name for a plane. Why not "Herself"... or just "I'm a woman, Affirmative Action says you HAVE to elect me!"

Since BO openly tried to influence the Brexit vote, the election in Israel, and no doubt a few others that I'm forgetting, I'm surprised he is not pleased to see that BOistan has achieved "not exceptional" -- we are just one more nation whose elections other nations work to influence!

Note, that just because they might have thought that Trump would be easier to influence than Hillary, (who they had already bought and paid for in at least one urainium deal), doesn't mean they are right.

Hillary WANTED to run against Trump -- and look at how well that worked out for her!

Trump To Drain Government Worker Swamp?

Trump has a plan for government workers. They’re not going to like it. - The Washington Post:

This is the best news I've seen yet from the Trump transition! We need a 30-50% reduction in the number of government workers across the board, and even more importantly, their union must be decertified ASAP. Even FDR knew that unionized government workers was pure poison for a nation. The following is a classic modern statement by "The Party" (TP-D)

“Of course we want accountability,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who will enter the Senate in January, “but we also want to protect against political favoritism. It’s important that we not allow the civil service to be politicized.”

Yeah, sure they do!

To translate -- "Of course we want to avoid any and all kinds of accountability for anyone in good standing with TP, especially our loyal TP workers and campaign contributors in the Federal and State bureaucracies! It would be a tragedy of immense proportion if Republicans were allowed to take government jobs reserved for loyal dues paying members of TP!"

Chaffetz said he plans to push through wholesale changes to the generous retirement benefits that federal workers receive, by shifting to a market-driven, 401(k)-style plan for new employees. 

He said the model would be his home state, which six years ago replaced the defined benefit pensions that have disappeared at most private companies with a defined contribution plan for new state and municipal workers.

Golly, it has been well over a decade since IBM dropped the defined benefit plan and pushed everyone to 401K -- welcome to the new millenium government workers!

I think everyone understands the truth about government -- it is just that half the country or better is sucking on the government teat to some extent or another, and the fatted calves of unionized government employees have just been assumed to be part of the ride on the gravy train.

“The civil service system fails at almost everything it was designed to do,” said Paul Light, a civil service expert at New York University. “It’s very slow at hiring, negligent in disciplining, permissive in promoting.”

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209 to 6 Against Trump Racism

https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/12/why-209-is-the-most-significant-number-behind-trumps-victory?utm_source=nro&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=121416Why209&utm_campaign=crlinking

The best left wing narratives are often the least fact based. For the left, they are ESPECIALLY good if they are mere assertions that are impossible to prove or disprove. For example, "Trump voters are ..... racist, sexist, homophobic, uneducated, stupid, angry, deploreable, etc". For all the lefts supposed love of being "fact based", it is very hard to put a meter on any of those lables and prove their truth. Thus, we are expected to take them as asserted to be true by "The Party" and it's dominant media.

So why did 209 counties that voted for a black president TWICE flip over to Trump?

Perhaps no detail illustrates this more than the number 209. That’s the number of counties that voted to send Barack Obama to the White House (and not just once, but twice), that flipped to support Trump — and overwhelmingly so.

Again, those are counties that voted for Trump after they overwhelmingly supported a black president for two election cycles. If this election was indeed a cover for empowering white supremacists, how does Palmieri explain this statistic?

The answer is that she doesn't and doesn't have to because she is spewing the TP narrative, and the TP narrative needs no supporting facts -- it is taken to be true by definition!

How many counties that voted against BO did Hillary flip by comparison. Six!

Aside from how impressive that number is, there are equally unimpressive numbers for Hillary Clinton. In fact, Palmieri might do well to heed the number six. That’s the number of counties that never supported Obama, but voted for Clinton. Yes, just six.

Logical lefty explanation for that? The Russians did it!!!!!!

A Hopeless Mooch

http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/12/16/michelle-obama-says-america-is-entering-a-time-of-hopelessness/

Mooch Obama is feeling like it is "a time of hopelessness". Damn! It seems strange that 8 years of unremitting "Hope and Change" would leave a nation in such a state. Are we out of change too? ... gee, I checked my pocket, and we ARE. Picked clean!

Fortune lists Oprah as being worth $2.9 Billion , so at least she has some "change" left.

Perhaps it is time for "the other 60 million" to have a little hope Mooch!

Solving The BOcare, Medical Care Crisis

http://www.hoover.org/research/how-cure-health-care-0

By the time you get to the end of this post, you will know how to fix the healthcare system.

This post is important -- we need a little background Friedman that PJ O'Rourke has enhanced to stick in our brains first relative to how money is spent. This is taken from his book "Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards!"

I think we all intrinsically understand the preceding -- it makes a REAL difference whose money any person is spending and it makes a real difference who it is being spent on!

Now on to Milton Friedman on healthcare (I recommend you read the whole linked column, but I'm doing cliff notes here in case you are not going to). Milton has astutely observed that as technology has advanced in medicine, people in the developed world have paid more and more for health care, yet are generally less satisfied. Advances in technology in other areas (cars, tv, cell phones, the internet) have produced LOWER costs and GREATER satisfaction!

Rapid technological advances have occurred repeatedly since the Industrial Revolution—in agriculture, steam engines, railroads, telephones, electricity, automobiles, radio, television, and, most recently, computers and telecommunication. The other two features seem unique to medicine. It is true that spending initially increased after non-medical technical advances, but the fraction of national income spent did not increase dramatically after the initial phase of widespread acceptance. On the contrary, technological development lowered cost, so that the fraction of national income spent on food, transportation, communication, and much more has gone down, releasing resources to produce new products or services. Similarly, there seems no counterpart in these other areas to the rising dissatisfaction with the delivery of medical care.

So apparently, having 3rd parties -- employers, insurance companies and government buy our healthcare has provided us with a very expensive off color Yugo healthcare -- and we are surprised? But it's worse than that -- because government is involved.

Some years ago, the British physician Max Gammon, after an extensive study of the British system of socialized medicine, formulated what he called "the theory of bureaucratic displacement." He observed that in "a bureaucratic system . . . increase in expenditure will be matched by fall in production. . . . Such systems will act rather like ‘black holes,’ in the economic universe, simultaneously sucking in resources, and shrinking in terms of ‘emitted production.’" Gammon’s observations for the British system have their exact parallel in the partly socialized U.S. medical system. Here, too, input has been going up sharply relative to output.

Why is government different? It combines typical human hubris and incompetence with monopoly power -- in fact,  potentially total coercive power.  How to escape from this morass, now made much worse by BOcare? Well, the "perfect solution" would be:

The ideal way to do that would be to reverse past actions: repeal the tax exemption of employer-provided medical care; terminate Medicare and Medicaid; deregulate most insurance; and restrict the role of the government, preferably state and local rather than federal, to financing care for the hard cases. However, the vested interests that have grown up around the existing system, and the tyranny of the status quo, clearly make that solution not feasible politically. Yet it is worth stating the ideal as a guide to judging whether proposed incremental changes are in the right direction.

 So what does this all mean in simple easy to understand terms?

1. Like all goods, medical care WILL (and always has been) be "rationed" -- supply and demand are a form of rationing, as are long waits. The government decides on the waits, like having less MRI machines for the country than Mayo has with waits of 12 - 18 months. My wife would likely be a quad in Canada, but their healthy people LOVE their system! (the number of healthy people exceeds the number of sick people -- so socialized medicine is politically astute ...  note "insane evil pig" above )
   
2. 80/20 rule, 80%+ of medical care can be "WalMart, Target, Bloomies" levels of care -- basic physicals, high blood pressure, thyroid issues, diabetes, throat cultures, standard pregnancy/delivery -- People need to pay for 80% of their health care out of pocket, just like their groceries and gasoline.
   
   You buy the level you can afford when you are hurting -- and it is cheap because there is competition, and very limited liability. It is like buying normal groceries -- not steak, certainly not caviar. Just like when your car breaks or house needs a new roof, you either have savings to handle those "unexpected expenses", or you are forced to use credit. If you are really poor, you go seek state assistance, or to to the "medical shelf" (like the food shelf).
   
3. When really bad things happen -- cancer, trauma, heart attack, stroke, etc, "Cirrus Vision Medicine" kicks in -- note, I didn't say "Gulf Stream, Trump's plane, or Air Force One" level of medicine. The Cirrus Vision is a very advanced JET plane ... but it isn't "snotty". You can't afford the Cirrus level either, but just like fire insurance, you pay a premium for a policy so you are not RUINED ... it costs more than your fire insurance because the odds of you eventually getting bad sick are higher, and the care is going to cost more than replacing your house.
   
   You DO "notice it" -- Some number, say "20% of your net income" is yours to pay. Serious illness ought to be financially like having your home burn down -- a really bad thing (which it WILL be anyway, because serious health issues are MUCH more than just financial). 

A lot of this unfortunately assumes that we re-educate people on some of the basic facts of life that our political and educational system have hidden from us so they can shear us. 

1. "Single Payer" means that if you are a person that uses only public housing, public transportation, public health, etc today, you will likely LOVE it! If not -- like if you have your own home, car, etc, then you will also find that you need to have your own healthcare. You will pay dearly for the "public option", and THEN  unless you are REALLY wealthy, you will pay hyper-dearly for the "private option" that you actually use -- if you can afford it at all. Increasingly, many of us that bought into the old "American Dream" will finally fall into a frayed, stinking, 10-20 people to a ward slum of healthcare like the VA (the "public option" poster child), and find that we are dying in BOistan. 
2. Single Payer" isn't ... it is "paid by all taxpayers present and future". It is one stop lobbyist stop for those getting the money. They know who to pay off, take on junkets, provide good stuff for, etc. No need to deal with slimy "customers" (patients) anymore ... they are not paying anyway! If DC is happy, it's all good. If your business ever had a "large users group", imagine a "ONE users group"! How well did your business treat the customers that were not "large" compared to the big spenders? Imagine only a single real customer that determined your entire financial picture as a healthcare provider and you will start to get the idea. 
3. There is NO free lunch! Somebody is paying -- maybe not you, but somebody. Your neighbor, your kids, your grandkids, SOMEBODY (and likely not the "really rich guy" -- he has lawyers and tax accountants that he pays instead). When you don't understand that, most likely you AND everyone else is paying WAY more than you realize for your "free lunch", which is exactly the case for healthcare. "Free goods" are insanely expensive!
4. NEVER insure against losses that you can self-insure for! Yes, this means NEVER purchase the "extended warranty"! Assuming that the warranty is actually going to cover things that actually might happen (a BIG assumption!), someone is betting that they will make money by you purchasing the warranty, and they have LOTS more information than you have about the transaction and odds! Just like Vegas, they are "the house", and rule #1 is that the house wins! They have to, otherwise they would not be in business!
5. 
   Note, this applies DOUBLE to "don't have the (federal) government pay for people's food, car repairs, or basic medicine". The government is REALLY "the house", and they will take A LOT of pounds of your taxpaying flesh as they seek to pad their pockets and buy votes to stay in power! If government MUST be involved in chairity (it ought to be neighbors and churches), then it starts LOCALLY and as failure happens, the funding needs to take longer and longer expensive trips to the state and federal capitols so that 20-30-40 cents can return to do good deeds.
   
6. "The Government" is not "magic", and certainly not "god". Yes, it can promise to rob from your neighbor to give you things like healthcare, but it will also certainly charge a hefty fee for it's larceny "service". Since it is robbing though,  it WILL also rob from you, your children and your grandchildren as well. You asked it to be a robber, do you REALLY think it is going to be an "honest robber"?
7. Robbing for a "really good reason" is still robbery. If the reason is THAT good, reasonable people will want to invest in it, or even gift the money. The corruption engendered by deciding that it is morally OK to take money from others by force fits well with the "morality" that it is OK to take the life of another person for your own convenience. When you are willing to kill for convenience, or even allow such killing,  morality is over. (killing for convenience is another name for abortion -- as in the abortion of all moral standing, meaning that if you trust any person or organization (eg US Government) that supports abortion, you are insane and deserve whatever happens to you)
8. Once institutions are robbing people, there is no such thing as "reasonable", or "limited" because "institutions" ARE people  -- real imperfect standard issue people. Not "public servants", or some other sainted term. When your day to day job is robbing a set of people to hand the money to another set of people so they will keep you in power, you are going to want to keep some loot for yourself, and you will find a "legitimate" way ... or your union will.
   
   Since you have already convinced yourself that charging people vastly different rates based on income for redistribution is "moral", "progressive" even, it is much easier to see how you absolutely "deserve" a higher salary, cushy benefits like super health care yourself, full salary retirement at a young age "indexed for inflation", shorter work hours, more vacation, total job security, etc, etc) ... all of these are either "in" or "in sight" for unionized government workers see (AFSCME) 

The whole Friedman article is WELL worth reading. We COULD solve our healthcare issues in the next year or two -- I only hope that Trump and his advisors are looking at this sort of information! 

The Perfect Liberal Political Project

As Wisconsin Recount Finishes Up, $7M Finds 25 Votes for Hillary (Update: 131 Votes for Trump) | PJ Media:

For liberal efforts, $3.9 million is dirt cheap, and at least some good came out of it -- 131 extra votes for Trump!

Yes, on the downside, faith in elections and the bar for challenging them has been reset to where even electoral landslides now have precedent for challenge. From the "liberal" view however, this is a very small thing as they are making extremely clear by asserting as well that the election was "hacked by the Russians"!  Establishing elections as unreliable is an important step on the "liberal" agenda of totalitarian rule.


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BO Needs To Shut Up And Leave, Will He?

President Obama Promises Response To Russian Hacking In NPR Interview : NPR:

It started in from the left with W --  the idea he would create a fake crisis at the end of his term and hold on to power. During the W adminstration, something like 20% of Democrats believed that 9-11 was an "inside job" -- they were the "Truthers".  I actually ran into more than one of them, and the idea that W was a "Fascist" and would never allow elections again was common with them.

Unsurprisingly, this same sort of conspiracy theory about BO leaving office has arisen on the right, and I'm starting to wonder.

As I wrote about previously, why in the hell would any agency or ANYONE that wasn't thinking of nullifying a US election bring up theoretical Russian hacking AFTER the election? Especially if they made a big deal out of there being NO ISSUE prior to the election.

So now we have BO braying AFTER an election:

Obama said his goal is for a definitive White House report on the matter to be issued before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

Say what? Were anyone to have ANY remaining confidence in the crony state of BOistan they would have EITHER investigated and dealt with this PRIOR to the election, or they would have kept it under wraps until AFTER January 20th!

I can't even imagine if at the end of the W administration BO had won in a similar electoral landslide, but W was "investigating China, Russia, Cuba, or ???" potentially having "hacked the election", with the "definitive report" due prior to inauguration no less!  The MSM would have gone TOTALLY crazy!! If such a thing had happened, they should have! The coronation of BO was a major league cause for MSM and left US celebration -- it was like Princess Di getting married!

This rotten stench has been around WAY too long!!!! Time for strong cleansing of the swamp with a REALLY good air freshner  -- and I'm starting to wonder if we don't actually need a little "authoritarianism"!

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It's All Racism and Reparations

My President Was Black - The Atlantic:

The linked article is VERY long, rambling, and not worth the time to read. It was the impetus for the much shorter and to the point article that I covered here -- the seem is the same, racism and the need for reapartations.

Obama is unfailingly optimistic about the empathy and capabilities of the American people. His job necessitates this: “At some level what the people want to feel is that the person leading them sees the best in them,” he told me. But I found it interesting that that optimism does not extend to the possibility of the public’s accepting wisdoms—such as the moral logic of reparations—that the president, by his own account, has accepted for himself and is willing to teach his children.

For the "truly black", the ONLY possible answer is "reparations" -- the form of which is always unclear, but essentially the idea that the roles will be reversed. Blacks will be given "black privilige" in the same way they see the world as run today -- blacks will live in bigger houses, have more wealth, hold more prestigious positions, and whites will pay for it -- not as slaves, but at the point of the government gun as opposed to the slave masters whip.

It was hard to find a single paragraph to try to distill the rambling "evidence" of racism. I'd recommened reading my coverage og "Dog Whistle Politcs" -- the bottom line is that if you accept the racist label, you are a racist. If you do not, you are a worse racist!

That movement came into full bloom in the summer of 2015, with the candidacy of Donald Trump, a man who’d risen to political prominence by peddling the racist myth that the president was not American. It was birtherism—not trade, not jobs, not isolationism—that launched Trump’s foray into electoral politics. Having risen unexpectedly on this basis into the stratosphere of Republican politics, Trump spent the campaign freely and liberally trafficking in misogyny, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. And on November 8, 2016, he won election to the presidency. Historians will spend the next century analyzing how a country with such allegedly grand democratic traditions was, so swiftly and so easily, brought to the brink of fascism. But one needn’t stretch too far to conclude that an eight-year campaign of consistent and open racism aimed at the leader of the free world helped clear the way.

 I wasted my time on it -- no reason for anyone else to bother -- go look at "Know Your Whites" if you have time to waste.,



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Little More Stadium Graft

U.S. Bank suite guests included longtime DFL activists, friends - StarTribune.com:



Let the little people watch it on TV -- while "The Party" elites sit in the luxury box.



There are a lot of swamps that need draining in this country -- and blue state MN is a mighty swampy swamp.





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The Election Challenge Bar

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/12/lawsuits_against_the_electoral_college_why_not.html

In 1960, Richard Nixon could have challenged the elction results and most likely have won -- he did not, he felt that people losing faith in the election process would be "bad for the country".

In 2K, Al Gore challenged away -- and surprise, it lowered the faith of the public in elections and the presidency itself.

Fast forward to 2016. This election is an electoral landslide, but it is being challenged as no election of close to this level of win ever has been before. The new bar for the level at which an election is challengeable has been raised to basically "all elections can be legitimately challenged" -- AND, the the entire system is suspect due to "Russian Hacking".

I'm not sure anyone actually cares what is "good for BOistan", but if they did, the following paragraph would tell them that in some quarters, any sort of "good of the nation" is toally out of fashion!

There is no time like the present for liberal lawyers to start arguing creatively. If President Obama left us anything at all that’s currently irrevocable, it’s a federal bench that might be sympathetic to some of these claims. So at this point I am all for the Hail Marys and the tilting at windmills and whatever else progressives can do to gum up the machinery of normalization. Progressives have been known to argue among themselves about whether every last lawsuit is pragmatic or effective or counterproductive and crazy. This time, let’s litigate first and ask questions later. When in doubt, file it.

Knowing Your Whites

President Obama's Faith in White America is Misguided - The Atlantic:

A good article to understand the view of at least a significant number of blacks in BOistan.

In this milieu we, as a friend once described it, know our whites. To know our whites is to understand the psychology of white people and the elasticity of whiteness. It is to be intimate with some white persons but to critically withhold faith in white people categorically. It is to anticipate white people’s emotions and fears and grievances because their issues are singularly our problem. To know our whites is to survive without letting bitterness rot your soul.

No racism or stereotyping there! Or in the following -- turns out that whites got to BO.

White people’s attitudes, the contradictions of their racial identities and class consciousness, made Obama. Obama did not make them.

I think we get down to brass tacks in the following. "reparations" -- the sine qua non (essential condition, the required part) of "ending racism" in the US. "Somehow" giving the deserved upper hand to blacks because they "earned it" because of slavery.

My first black president seems to think that he can raise his daughters to believe in systemic racism without legitimizing the idea of systemic reparations.

My first black president seems to think he can have black cool without black burden. For all his intimacies with his white mother and white grandparents, my first black president doesn’t appear to know his whites.

Knowing your whites is knowing that they are dishonest, out for themselves, priviliged. Blacks on the other hand only want JUSTICE -- everything whites ever got was through corruption and privilege, so the only way for there to be justice is for the roles to essentially be reversed -- blacks have been earning whites living forever, while whites do nothing. It is time to for the reverse -- "reparations", which is synonymous with "justice".

So we come to the following assessment of "whiteness":

Those of us who know our whites know one thing above all else: whiteness defends itself. Against change, against progress, against hope, against black dignity, against black lives, against reason, against truth, against facts, against native claims, against its own laws and customs.

Whiteness can't be changed -- and the only change that matters is REPARATIONS! That is what is embedded in the litany above -- reparations are reasonable, the truth is that that they are required, that is also the FACT ... they are a "native claim" (in an odd way).

My answer to this is to look at Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, Thomas Sowell, Ben Carson, or even Barack Obama. It **IS** actually possible for blacks to make it in a "white man's world" -- but waiting for reparations isn't the way to do it. The WORST thing for blacks would be reparations -- it would be the black inner city X 1000. The more money that was showered on them, the worse their lives would become.

The sad part of all this is that Western Christian values -- personal responsibility, delayed gratification, stable families, belief in transcendent principles (and almost always God), classical education, etc, ACTUALLY WORK! Those values are fully colorblind -- both Abraham and Jesus were more black than white. Money and poverty are symptoms of ideas, ideas are the causal element.

Lots of luck spreading that message to the author of the linked column.

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