Make gas cans great again!

Buck Throckmorton writes in the Ace of Spades blog,

If Donald Trump wants to ensure he recaptures the 2020 electoral votes in the Great Lakes states he won in 2016 - and possibly add Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Maine - there is one simple thing he could do that would make him a hero to every snow-blowing American - issue an executive order to restore functioning gas cans.

To be clear, this would also make him a hero to tens of millions of other Americans throughout the country who use lawn mowers, power tools, etc around their homes or in their jobs. In 2009 the EPA banned the sale of gas cans that functionally pour gas. To be specific, the scientifically illiterate bureaucrats at the EPA outlawed gas cans with vents, mandating that all new gas cans must have crazy contraptions that require three hands to operate. Unlike the old gas cans, the new ones spill gas all over the user and onto the ground. The result of the EPA’s incompetence is a new gas can that is much worse for the environment than the one it replaced. The incompetent regulators at the EPA are so scientifically illiterate that they honestly believed that the vents on gas cans were there to allow gas fumes to escape, rather than the actual purpose of allowing air to flow in to the can so that gas can be poured out. Having received their “science” education in Oppression Studies classes at Grievance State University, these morons making rules for how we gas up our power tools have likely never handled a tool more powerful than their own personal groomers.

The government-mandated non-functioning gas can may be the most unpopular government-imposed regulatory rule since the 55 mile per hour speed limit. If you don’t know someone who mocks and despises these stupid red canisters, then you are living a very sheltered urban or upscale lifestyle. Most all working-class and middle-class Americans deal with these awful containers, and they mock the government for imposing them on us. Even James Lileks, the gentle Minneapolis newspaper columnist who also writes for National Review, had this to say recently on his daily blog about his efforts to gas up his new snow blower:
"This was not as easy as it sounds, since the gas can had a special safety nozzle that prevented gas from escaping under any circumstances, including the time when you wanted to pour it out. Push in the green tab to unlock, press with your palm! Nothing. Did it again: nothing. Did it again: somehow gas came out of the part where I was pressing, not the nozzle. Augh. Go inside, clean it off, try to get the damned SAFETY ENHANCED CAN to release a few drops. Nothing. In the process the smell of gas filled the garage and the tunnel, and when my wife came home she was overcome by fumes."

While not an obnoxious #NeverTrump writer like much of the National Review staff, Mr. Lileks has been politely #NotTrump. Perhaps liberating him, and millions of other snow blowing Americans, from the tyranny of the government-designed gas can would be persuasive come November 2020.

Even if you put politics aside, and out of compassion for his fellow Americans, Mr. Trump just needs to issue an executive order to end this gas can idiocy. His recent comments mocking government toilet regulations indicate that he has an ear for the impact of idiotic government regulations. Congress never passed a law which outlawed the old gas cans. Instead, these abhorrent new gas cans were simply foisted on us by zealous government imbeciles who have never mowed a blade of grass or poured a drop of gas out of a gas can. With one stroke of his pen President Trump can fix this mess. One more thing - after restoring functioning gas cans, President Trump should assemble the EPA team and ask every executive and manager in the EPA if they personally support the current non-functioning gas cans. Any EPA employee who replies in the affirmative should be terminated on the spot - with insults, derision, and mockery. Someone please forward this article to President Trump.

How about some appreciation for this UPS driver!

Earthrise in 1968

Robert Zimmerman wrote a book entitled, Genesis, The Story of Apollo 8. He writes in the Behind the Black blog,

...that space-faring future that spoke when they read from Genesis that evening. They had made the first human leap to another world, and they wished to describe and capture the majesty of that leap to the world. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Yet, they were also still mostly Earth-bound in mind, which is why Frank Borman’s concluding words during that Christmas eve telecast were so heartfelt. He was a spaceman in a delicate vehicle talking to his home of Earth, 240,000 miles away. “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.” They longed deeply to return, a wish that at that moment, in that vehicle, was quite reasonable.

Someday that desire to return to Earth will be gone. People will live and work and grow up in space, and see the Earth as Bill Anders saw it in his photograph fifty years ago.

And it is for that time that I long. It will be a future of majesty we can only imagine.

Merry Christmas to all, all of us still pinned down here on “the good Earth.”

Read more here.

Throwing around labels of discrimination

In Spectator, Dov Fischer writes about the controversy involving Rudy Giuliani and George Soros.

...Mayor de Blasio next joined in the chorus, also calling Giuliani anti-Semitic for Giuliani properly criticizing the way that George Soros throws around his money to promote evil Leftist programs. The irony of de Blasio joining that chorus is that, under his tenure as mayor, New York City has seen a shocking increase in anti-Semitic violence in the streets, with videos of attacks on Brooklyn men in Hasidic garb going internationally viral. De Blasio, like most American leftists, refuses to see attacks on Jews as “anti-Semitic” unless they are perpetrated by haters on the right. Pictures don’t lie, and the Jew-hating attackers caught on video repeatedly fail to meet the basic definition of “White nationalists.” So de Blasio repeatedly characterizes them as street violence, rather than as anti-Semitic attacks. In this, one is reminded of Obama calling acts of Islamic terrorism “workplace violence.” But now de Blasio finally has found someone to label as “anti-Semitic,” a predecessor New York Mayor Giuliani, whose administration could not have been warmer to the Jewish community.

The reality for Jews is that George Soros indeed is an apostate. When the Left races in to defend Soros, they come up with the pablum that he survived the Holocaust. But what does that inherently prove? Adolf Eichmann also initially survived the Holocaust. Soros survived by living as a non-Jew under the guardianship of a Nazi whom he assisted in his teens, keeping records for that Nazi of property the Nazis confiscated from Jews. That is Soros’s own acknowledgement, in a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft. It is not as though he survived the Holocaust by organizing an uprising at the Treblinka concentration camp or by organizing the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto. So, at best, his defenders should leave the Holocaust out of his defense because it does not wash. And today he is pure evil, an apostate akin to a Trotsky.

Same with the Communist Bernie Sanders, enemy of Israel. An apostate. An enemy from within.

...The Left wildly and irresponsibly wields defamation when they have nothing else — and they typically have nothing else. So they will use the term “racist” to attack very fine people who are not at all discriminatory but actually are good and decent.

The labels of discrimination are thrown around indiscriminately: homophobe, xenophobe, racist. For months — and even to this very day — President Trump has been tagged by Leftists with the label of “anti-Semite” even though there never before has been a President as favorably disposed to Israel and to standing up to Jew-hatred in this country. Thus, these words have lost all meaning, which is a shame. It should be a terrible thing for someone to carry the title “racist” or “anti-Semite” or “hater.” But the words now are a child’s game, akin to saying that “Your Mom wears army boots.” (And if she is serving in the armed forces, what’s wrong with that?) Most famously, Hillary Clinton went on her diatribe, packaging all conservatives into a “basketful of deplorables.” Her hateful comment was epically stupid and dishonest, helping her lose the 2016 Presidential election.

Those on the Left aim to protect enemies of Israel like George Soros and Bernie Sanders by setting up a defensive wall for the anti-Jewish evil they espouse, calling criticisms of them “anti-Semitic.” But it is not anti-Semitic for non-Jews as well as for Jews to call them out for the damage they seek to perpetrate on our society. Each is deeply evil. Each is surrounded by evil. Each perpetrates evil. Soros, for example, uses vast amounts of his money in part to try electing in targeted American cities local district attorneys who turn law enforcement on its head, freeing imprisoned thugs and refusing to prosecute criminals. Similarly, he has thrown around his money to prop up J Street, perhaps the worst enemy Israel has in Washington, D.C., an organization that offers a venue and microphone to politicians who want to attack Israel and threaten to cut off American support for Israel. Soros has given J Street close to a million dollars. He is despised in Israel — and they know a thing or two there about anti-Semitism.

...In the same way, Bernie Sanders is an enemy of Israel. One just looks at the supporters he attracts. He is endorsed for President by Ilhan Omar. He likewise is endorsed by Rashida Tlaib. He not only is endorsed by Linda Sarsour but also counts her as a campaign surrogate. Imagine: With twenty different Democrat Presidential candidates from which to choose, one Jew-hater after another opts to endorse Bernie Sanders as her choice. And that love is mutual. After each virulently anti-Semitic tirade, outburst, Facebook post, or tweet that gets an Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, or Linda Sarsour into trouble with decent people, Bernie Sanders races in to defend Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Sarsour. Yet he is quick to defame those prominent in defending Israel, calling Israel’s Prime Minister “racist” and calling for America to redirect huge amounts of its Israel support towards the Hamas-led government of Gaza that unabashedly aims to destroy Israel. Of course Jew-haters and Israel haters flock to support Bernie Sanders. And of course even Jews call him anti-Semitic.

...Rudy Giuliani is absolutely correct. George Soros is hardly a Jew. And, figuratively speaking, Giuliani not only is more Jewish than Soros but is more Jewish than half the Jews he knows. As for de Blasio, it would be appreciated if, now that he has terminated his ridiculous campaign for the American presidency, he would do something about the rash of anti-Jewish violence that has erupted on his city’s streets since he took office.

Read more here.

"Democratic Party / Hillary Clinton operatives were directly involved in the attempt to make Trump look like a Russian stooge."

Michael Van Der Galien reports in PJ Media,

Democratic Party / Hillary Clinton operatives were directly involved in the attempt to make Trump look like a Russian stooge. ...British ex-spy Christopher Steele shared more fake conspiracy theories with the FBI than just his infamous Steele dossier (with the pee story in it). At least three Steele assertions went to the Crossfire Hurricane team. Every single one of them was -- wait for it-- was untrue.

...This information was given to Steele, not by a Russian source, but by "two longtime Hillary Clinton operatives and liberal former journalists, Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer." In other words, Democratic Party / Hillary Clinton operatives were directly involved in the attempt to make Trump look like a Russian stooge.

Read more here.

"They impeached him because he wanted to go to court!"

"How far up does this go? I'd be shocked if Obama did not know what was going on!"

Merry Christmas!

I hope your Christmas Day was as wonderful as mine. I spent it at the farm owned by my ex-wife with her, her daughter by a previous marriage, our daughter, and our two sons. It had snowed last night, so the farm was covered in snow. Four of the six piglets came out to see me.


Inside the house, we were greeted by nine brand new Bernese Mountain Dog puppies. I posted that video on Facebook here.

Better than ever!

In the Ace of Spades blog, co-blogger CBD chooses to be optimistic in his Christmas Eve post.

We live in wondrous times, and in spite of the political and social stupidity of a large swath of people across the globe, our lives are better than ever, or at least we have the possibility of that condition.

Science has given us medical breakthroughs that are unbelievable; robotic surgery, gene-therapy for previously deadly cancers, the ability to save premature babies, new wonder drugs and thousands of other marvels that were unimaginable even a generation or two ago.

The technology of communication is quite simply magical! We have computers in our pockets (some people even use them as phones!) and our cars and in our refrigerators (yeah...I don't like that one) that are connected to a world-wide network that is seamless except for political manipulation.

Our transportation is more reliable and safer than ever, and unbelievably inexpensive. What once was an expensive cross-country flight in the 1980s has dropped in price by 50% when adjusted for inflation. Fuel to run our cars and heat our homes is abundant and cleaner than ever. Our environment is much, much cleaner than it was when we were kids, in spite of the caterwauling from the lunatic left.

Food is safe and abundant and better than ever, courtesy of GMOs and the miracle of free markets. We could feed the world with ease were it not for those aforementioned political manipulations.

We are left with complaining (correctly) that some consumer products are built without the legendary American robustness that our parents came to expect. Wow...life is pretty good if we need to complain about our dishwashers and washing machines and refrigerators (that make ice for us while we sleep!).

No...my name isn't Pollyanna Brown's Dildo. Our job is to protect the fruits of 2,500 years of Western culture from the depredations of those pesky political manipulations, and that means progressivism or socialism or leftism or whatever convenient shorthand we use to describe the pinch-faced scolds of the Left, who never saw a freedom they didn't want curtailed or a new technology they didn't want to control and tax or a dissident they didn't want imprisoned, or worse.

It's an existential fight, but it isn't a new one. We have been in this battle for a very long time, and it will still be going long after we are gone, so....enjoy the festivities of an American Christmas week and be confident that we can get back to running around with our hair on fire...but after New Years!

"Now what?"

Adam Mill writes in part in American Greatness,

One can imagine the unspoken question hanging in the darkness during the January 2017 ride back to the airport. A small gaggle1 of FBI agents had just concluded their long-overdue interview with Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source. The silence must have been deafening. Steele had tried to conceal2 his source from the FBI. But the FBI knew his identity and set up an interview behind Steele’s back, and the interview contradicted several Steele assertions. The downcast agents waited for somebody to ask the question on all of their minds: “Now what?”

The right answer would have been to admit to the court that Steele was an unreliable source who exaggerates and lies and put an end to spying on Americans in pursuit of the mirage of Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia.

When presented one last opportunity to do the right thing, the FBI instead pushed harder for their now-discredited hypothesis justifying the investigation. Peter Strzok had promised his lover, Lisa Page, he would “save” the country from Donald Trump. Given a choice between bringing the FBI back into the light of the Constitution or the darkness of blind hatred of Donald Trump, the conspirators choose darkness. It was at this precise moment that the FBI left behind any plausible deniability of “mistake” or “sloppiness.” From this point on, the FBI’s participation in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax became willful and intentional.

This is the FBI’s darkest hour. The next time the FBI prepared a warrant renewal application, it misrepresented the interview to make it appear as though the source confirmed Steele’s fairytale. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a deliberate defrauding of a court.

According to the recent inspector general’s report on the conduct of the FBI’s collusion investigation, several agents met with Steele’s primary source in early 2017 in order finally to get to the bottom of the Russia collusion claims Steele initiated. It would be another four months before then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would launch the reign of terror known as the “Mueller investigation.” Countless Americans would have their privacy invaded by 500 search warrants, 2,800 subpoenas, and 500 FBI interrogations.

...In December 2016, shortly before the electors formally cast their votes to make Trump the president-elect, the Clinton campaign manager made an appeal to the Intelligence Community to provide an “intelligence briefing” to the electors. He meant the Steele dossier which Clinton allies knew to be in the hands of the FBI.

Of course they knew. The Clinton campaign bought the dossier and paid Steele to give it to the FBI. Without any way for the Trump campaign effectively to rebut the smears, it’s hard to see how the electors could have resisted officials peddling Steele’s smears as official intelligence.

The hoax conspirators might have started as unwitting patsies to Steele. But their participation soon became intentional and criminal.

...Rosenstein’s signature on the last Carter Page warrant extension application sealed his fate as a co-conspirator. No wonder he threatened congressional staffers to keep his secret safe.

It’s the greatest scandal in U.S. legal history. Most chilling of all is that the current FBI chief, Christopher Wray, recently shrugged-off FBI agents lying to the FISA court. He said of the damning Horowitz report that, in his mind, what was “important that the inspector general found that, in this particular instance, the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization.”

If that’s what he believes and thinks is important, then the FBI is truly constitutionally bankrupt. Russia is ruled by an alumnus of the FBI’s Russian counterpart. Our Constitution won’t protect us unless our own cops with guns respect it. After 2016, one wonders whether the FBI looks upon Vladimir Putin with fear—or envy.

Read more here.

Worse than Watergate?

In Instapundit, Stephen Green links to an article in which

House Minority Leader McCarthy says: Spying on the Trump Campaign Is ‘a Modern-Day Watergate.’

Actually, Stephen points out that it is worse,

because Watergate was a high-level coverup of a low-level crime, but the political corruption of the executive branch was a high-level crime, period.

" Civil Liberty Abuse by Liberals? No Problem!"

Victor Davis Hanson writes in American Greatness,

Consider the recent statements and acts of iconic progressive celebrities.

Jane Fonda is chronically furious. This time she directed her wrath at those who disagree about the urgency of ending the entire fossil fuel industry and ruining the current economy. Her idea is to put climate “deniers” on trial for incorrect speech. So much for the First Amendment. “Now, because of the fossil fuel industry, it’s too late for moderation,” Fonda says. “And given the emergency, it’s those who believe in moderation, in pre-Trump business as usual, who are truly delusional. And those who lie and continue to lie about what they’re doing to the environment should be put on trial.”

Green teenage heartthrob Greta Thunberg has a different solution for those who disagree with her orthodox view on “climate change”: “World leaders are still trying to run away from their responsibilities, but we have to make sure they cannot do that. We will make sure that we put them against the wall, and they will have to do their job to protect our futures.”

If Thunberg is truly worried about past government decisions that have threatened the world, she might study Swedish history and ask why her forefathers sold iron ore to the Nazi war machine—without which it could not have waged the war it did—and often threw in Swedish transport in the bargain.

For those who think the American Civil Liberties Union and other liberal watchdogs ceaselessly monitor our government to ensure our Bill of Rights and laws are not abused to the detriment of citizens, they should be sorely disappointed. The Left has redefined “civil liberties” to mean “correct thinking.” Thus, incorrect thinking is not protected speech or behavior.

It is now clear that the top hierarchy of the FBI under James Comey and Andrew McCabe used the powers of their agency to deceive a federal court with fraudulent evidence in order to surveil a U.S. citizen as part of a larger plan to subvert a political campaign and eventually a presidential transition. It is also likely that both James Clapper and John Brennan trafficked in a fake dossier, a product of opposition research designed to smear a political candidate in a presidential race. Both were also likely involved in the use of overseas informants to surveil Trump campaign aides.

Few on the Left feel that it was either morally or legally wrong for Hillary Clinton to hire a foreign national to spy on her opponent’s campaign, much less for a foreign national Christopher Steele to interfere in a U.S. election. Laws are fluid, to be enforced when they champion the “good,” to be ignored or subverted when they empower the “bad.” That is why both Clapper and Brennan—who in the past alike have admitted to lying to Congress while under oath—were rewarded with paid analyst positions, respectively with CNN and MSNBC.

Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and McCabe are iconic figures to the Left, who were willing to use any means necessary to stop the fiendish Trump. Comey’s idea of “a higher loyalty” proves to be a euphemism for taking the law into one’s own hands to destroy an elected president deemed a threat to status-quo agendas.

J. Edgar Hoover surely would have approved of Comey’s gambit, of privately misleading the president as to the status of an ongoing FBI investigation directed at him, recording in notes a one-sided version of such a confidential conversation, and then leaking such memos to the press to encourage a special counsel appointment to investigate a president.

Few libertarians care that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was data mining the phone records of the president’s attorney and, by reverse targeting, his colleague Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). Fewer were concerned that he publicized such records, with the clear intent of smearing his enemies. Again, not a civil libertarian said a word—any more than any did during the Obama Administration when Eric Holder monitored the phone and email records of Associated Press journalists, or any more than when Schiff blatantly lied that he and his staff had no contact with the so-called whistleblower.

Civil Liberty Abuse by Liberals? No Problem!
A cynical reductionist with no faith in human nature might conclude that conservatives are less likely to abuse civil liberties because a mainstream press watches their every move, ready to pounce at even the suggestion of any abuse of free speech or expression or due process.

In contrast, liberals seem to have little problems with abusing FISA courts, inserting informants into political campaigns, snooping on congressional colleagues, and hiring opposition research to use foreign sources to defame a political opponent—because they correctly assume that the media either will ignore such abuse or that they will contextualize it in a way to help the “good” people ensure social justice.

Schiff, along with Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), remember, helped redefine the Constitution on impeachment by citing no treason, bribes, or high crimes and misdemeanors, but rather sought as an opposition majority in the Congress to smear with an indictment a first-term president before a scheduled reelection campaign.

We were told for weeks that impeachment must be accelerated to a vote. But when the polls supporting that effort tanked, we were told that such an impeachment vote must not really speedily be sent over to the Senate for trial. The Constitution’s guidance on impeachment is apparently what polls better on any given day—in a larger landscape in which the progressive agenda always would prefer to change the Constitution when it proves inconvenient, whether it be the Electoral College or the Second Amendment.

If and when fascism comes to America, it will not arrive with jackboots, stiff arms, and military uniforms. The attempt to suppress political opposition in anti-constitutional fashion, to regiment the economy by denying constitutionally protected freedoms, and the efforts to change the Constitution to reflect political utility, will come under the auspices of “equality,” “fairness,” “saving the planet,” and “social justice”—as a way to combat “climate change,” “racism,” “homophobia,” and “sexism.”

The old Confederate idea of state nullification of federal law—the great bane of a century of civil rights movements—is now a progressive trademark.

Over 550 sanctuary jurisdictions have announced that federal immigration law simply does not apply in full within their confines. Because there were no federal consequences when states simply ignored federal immigration legislation, why would not local jurisdictions—such as an increasing number of counties in Virginia—simply renounce state laws in matters of gun control?

The university is usually the canary in the mine of bad ideas and worse customs, and their fascistic view of the future has already arrived. Incoming students on many campuses are asked to select the proper racial background of their future roommates; if students can practice such racial segregation, will they soon be free to state which particular ethnic or racial background they do not prefer to associate with? Is there really a difference between preferring a particularly correct racial roommate and not preferring a particularly incorrect racial roommate?

“Safe space” is now the politically correct word for racial segregation. The First Amendment is already curtailed on campus by “hate speech” codes. If a student is accused of sexual harassment or assault, he will quickly learn that the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments do not really apply to the accused at most colleges.

Try giving a lecture in opposition to radical climate change theory, late-term abortion, or affirmative action on a college campus, or wearing a MAGA hat in the campus “free-speech zone.” The point is not that vigilante students would disrupt the lecture or attack the wearer, but that the college administration would contextualize the violence as understandable if not justified given the stress, discomfort, and hurt feelings that such free expression is believed to cause the “good” students.

The modern university, the radical climate change movement, most of the media, and the new progressive party all share the same notion that the U.S. Constitution is an impediment to their agendas. If it can’t easily be changed, then at least it can be ignored when more power is needed to do more of the right things.

Clearing it all up

In PJ Media, Michael Van Der Galien provides us with the video and transcript of Nancy Pelosi talking about withholding the articles of impeachment. In addition, there is a Twitter video that "clears it all up." Read and watch it here.

Believing

Psychic powers of the Media-Democrat Complex

Ace of Spades writes,

Rudy Giuliani Alleges That Fired Ambassador "Masha" Yovanovich Blocked Probe Into Money-Laundering Operation
—Ace of Spades
The entire media is calling this a "conspiracy theory," which confuses me-- when a Democrat oppo research group shit out an actual conspiracy theory, they insisted on three years of investigation, including illegal surveillance of US citizens, to try to verify it.

But this, they know, on first sight, without any actual investigation, is a "conspiracy theory" unworthy of further consideration.

In addition to being the most virtuous, most intelligent, and most educated humans who ever lived on the earth, it also turns out that our Media-Democrat Complex is skilled in using psychic powers such as precognition.

Read more here.

Visiting the troops

Happy Festivus!

Senator Rand Paul apparently does an annual airing of grievances. Read his Happy Festivus grievances here.The video featuring his dad, Ron Paul, being confronted by Rudy Giuliani, is excellent. Rand Paul has some catty things to say later in a tweet about Giuliani.

Some of Trump's most recent accomplishments

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance lists a few of President Trump's recent accomplishments:

Tax cuts and regulatory reform; USMCA trade agreement negotiated and passed; Mexico halting illegal migration flows; new central American amnesty agreements; border wall under construction; lower energy costs; lower and stabilized fuel costs; highest blue collar wage gains in decades; largest resurgence of manufacturing jobs in 50 years; Korea-US trade agreement (KORUS); U.S-Japan trade agreement; U.S-China trade agreement (phase-1); withdrawal from Trans-Pacific multinationals (TPP); dissolution of Paris climate treaty; approval for ANWR energy development; five new gasoline refineries; U.S. energy independence; U.S. worlds largest producer of energy; LNG energy exports; elimination of excessive federal regulations; SNAP reforms; 3.5% unemployment; largest employed U.S. workforce in history; 150,000 employer registrations to U.S. trade-skills apprenticeship; seven new industrial steel manufacturing plants; low and stable 1.5% inflation; highest GDP growth amid industrial nations; highest consumer confidence in decades; highest small business confidence in decades; 7.3 million jobs available (JOLTS); one year net employment gain 2.4 million workers; two supreme court justices; no new wars; NATO countries stepping up defense financing; troops coming home; pay raises for military; VA Choice created; right-to-try legislation passed; U.S. embassy in Jerusalem; North Korean hostages released; ISIS destroyed, caliphate dismantled; al-Bagdadi dead.

Watch video here.

Is the Ground Zero Mosque back?

Mark Steyn writes in Steynonline,

And so the Ground Zero Mosque goes quiet, but it never quite goes away. 9/11 was "the day that everything changed" mainly in the sense that the urge to self-prostrate became pathological: precisely because America was attacked in the name of Islamic supremacism, it is no longer acceptable to object to Islamic supremacism.

Read more here.

"The social-justice crusaders are stripping the future of everything that gives human life meaning: beauty, sublimity, and wit."

Heather MacDonald writes in City Journal,

...The test for whether a norm is white and thus illegitimate is whether it has a disparate impact on blacks and Hispanics. Given the behavioral and academic skills gaps, every colorblind standard of achievement will have a disparate impact. The average black 12th-grader currently reads at the level of the average white eighth-grader. Math levels are similarly skewed. Truancy rates for black students are often four times as high as for white students. Inner-city teachers, if they are being honest, will describe the barely controlled anarchy in their classrooms—anarchy exacerbated by the phony conceit that school discipline is racist. In light of such disparities, it is absurd to attribute the absence of proportional representation in the STEM fields, say, to bias. And yet, STEM deans, faculty, and Silicon Valley tech firms claim that only implicit bias explains why 13 percent of engineering professors are not black. The solution to this lack of proportional representation is not greater effort on the part of students, according to social-justice and diversity proponents. Instead, it is watering down meritocratic standards. Professors are now taught about “inclusive grading” and how to assess writing without judging its quality, since such quality judgments maintain white language supremacy.

...This same process of de-norming is happening in law enforcement. Across the country, district attorneys are refusing to enforce misdemeanor laws and judges are releasing convicted felons early because virtually every criminal-justice practice has a disparate impact on blacks. That disparate impact is due not to criminal-justice racism, but to blacks’ exponentially higher crime rates. This ongoing push for decriminalization and deincarceration will result in more black lives being lost to violent street crime. The liberal elites seemingly don’t give a damn, however, since black street-crime victims are killed overwhelmingly by other blacks, not by racist cops or white supremacists.

...The only precedent for our current resentment-driven war on the West’s magnificent achievements is the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and that didn’t turn out well. The Cultural Revolution, however, was waged mostly by the less educated against the more educated. The oddest feature of today’s social-justice crusade is that it is being prosecuted by the elites against themselves. Every college president, law firm managing partner, and Fortune 500 CEO would rather theatrically blame himself and his colleagues for phantom bigotry than speak honestly about the real causes of ongoing racial inequality: family breakdown and an underclass culture that mocks learning and the conformity to bourgeois values as acting “white.” Anti-racism has become the national religion, with the search for instances of racism to back up that religion becoming ever more desperate. Over the last year alone, ladies’ flats, sweaters, keychains, and Adidas and Nike sneakers have been purged from the marketplace for their imaginary connection to racist symbols. Innocent schoolboys have been tarred as bigots by the national media, and a robust traffic in hate-crime hoaxes has thrived.

Our cultural past is full of wonderful mysteries, however: how, for example, did Western literature evolve from Medieval romance to the realistic novel—the romance peopled by allegorical figures who roam Classical landscapes, the novel showing acute attention to individual character and the details of everyday life? What did such a change mean for how human beings think of themselves in the world? The evolution of form, whether in literature, art, or music, is a grand adventure story, whereby we trace the ever-changing reflection of human experience in the mirror of human imagination. The greatest sin of the social-justice and diversity crusade is to teach students to hate this cultural inheritance. The social-justice crusaders are stripping the future of everything that gives human life meaning: beauty, sublimity, and wit.

Read more here.

"A tough chart for Democrats!"

This is a tough chart for Democrats. pic.twitter.com/k7FFahHNFy

— James Pethokoukis (@JimPethokoukis) December 20, 2019