Monday, December 31, 2018
Insane screamer gets fired for his behavior toward a Trump supporter in Georgia
In Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft has a video showing an employee of a vape shop in Georgia Tube video made by the Trump supporter, showing the employee insanely screaming at a customer who is wearing a Trump shirt and hat. The customer says he is trying to buy something for his wife. The employee calls the Trump supporter a racist, while ignoring a black man who came into the store before the man wearing the Trump clothing. Go here to see the video. The employer fired the nutcase after viewing the video posted on YouTube by the Trump supporter.
Creative Destruction
In AEI Mark Perry writes,
Mark then provides links to the following examples:
According to economist Joseph Schumpeter, the important economic concept known as “creative destruction” describes the “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”
Mark then provides links to the following examples:
Exhibit A: List of defunct airlines of the United StatesRead more here.
Exhibit B: List of defunct retailers of the United States
Exhibit C: List of defunct automobile manufacturers of the United States
Exhibit D: List of defunct newspapers of the United States
Exhibit E: List of defunct American magazines
Exhibit F: List of piano brand names (99.99% of these are defunct)
Exhibit G: List of defunct fast-food restaurant chains
Exhibit H: List of defunct restaurants of the United States
Update:
Exhibit I: Things that didn’t exist on Christmas 15 years ago:
iPhone
YouTube
iPad
Netflix streaming
Google Maps
Snapchat
Spotify
Android
Uber
Lyft
Alexa
Airbnb
App Store
Google Chrome
Fitbit
Waze
Slack
Square
Dropbox
Venmo
Bitcoin
Hulu
Kindle
A superb report on what can be done about illegal immigration
Kudos to the Epoch Times for sending Charlotte Cuthbertson down to Yuma, Arizona to talk with Sheriff Leon Wilmot to learn firsthand what Sheriff deputies have to deal with and find out how much a border wall has helped to alleviate crime in the area.
In 2005 and 2006, before the border fence, most of the crime in the community was committed by illegal aliens, drug traffickers, and human smugglers, said Bratcher. Now, the majority of crime the sheriff’s department deals with is caused by local drug addicts trying to support their habits.Read more here.
“The methamphetamine addicts and those types probably commit 80 to 90 percent of the property crimes, the burglaries, the thefts, that kind of stuff,” Bratcher said. “So there is a tie when you consider that it’s the drug problem causing the crime problem—where are the drugs coming from? Mexico.”
Wilmot said he has noticed a transition away from marijuana being trafficked into the United States since some states legalized it. Mexico is instead increasing its poppy cultivation to make heroin.
“Unfortunately, we’re starting to see an uptick in the meth and the cocaine and the heroin that has been coming across the border. We’re seeing the OxyContin right now. Fentanyl is a big one,” he said.
“Now, one of the battles that we are seeing, is the cartels are trying to get juveniles to smuggle that stuff across the border.”
Right along the border, thousands of American citizen children live in Mexico, but cross the border to attend school everyday.
“They’re trying to exploit these kids, thinking they won’t get charged,” Wilmot said.
The sheriff’s department has partnered with Border Patrol to conduct an education program in local schools to deter children from becoming drug traffickers.
Watch all the way to the end. The incredible stuff happens in the last five seconds.
Watch (be patient) to the end
— EagleWings (@Rise1Soar2BFree) December 29, 2018
I’m like what did I just see?
😳😳😳😳😳😳pic.twitter.com/GIAtmCYQNP
Whom do we value more, turtles or humans?
Killing a Preborn Turtle:
— Noah Ring (@TheNoahRing) December 29, 2018
Illegal under federal law
$100,000 fine
1 year in prison
Killing a Preborn Human:
Legal under federal law
Funded by the government
Applauded as “empowering”
"The great mental ward of the Pacific Northwest"
Kevin Williamson reports from on the scene at an Antifa protest in Portland, Oregon.
“Whose streets?”Read more here.
“Our streets!”
The thing is, the pointy-headed little black-shirted goons aren’t entirely wrong about that.
The official target of tonight’s march is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — an agency within the Department of Homeland Security that some Top Gun–loving bureaucrat surely christened thus so that it could be called “ICE,” which sounds about 35 percent more jackbootilicious than you really want a law-enforcement agency serving a free people in a still-functional constitutional republic to sound. “Abolish ICE!” is the official theme of the evening, and the blackshirts return to it from time to time, but the real subject of tonight’s fugue is, pardon my Anglo-Saxon, “F*** the police!” which is developed in a kind of sloppy exposition in three or four different chants.
And these absolutely are their streets, as the two neutered Portland cops following them dutifully around make clear. The goons and thugs occasionally take a moment to amuse themselves by messing with the cops, screaming obscenities at them or committing flagrant but relatively minor violations of the law in front of them, daring them to do anything about it. The cops trudge and trundle on, calm as monks, pretending not to notice as the hoodlums pound on passing cars, block intersections, and menace bystanders. At the most public of public spaces in Portland, Pioneer Courthouse Square — “Portland’s living room,” they call it — the goons encounter a little bit of counterprotest, not from sad incel Proud Boys or the Klan or simply from other pissant neo-fascists wearing slightly different-color shirts — but from a young black man who intuits, not inaccurately, that this is mainly a bunch of rich-white-kid play-acting by little runts who make pretty good thugs when confronted with people in wheelchairs or little old ladies — more on that in a second — but who are basically chickensh** poseurs who are Down for the Cause only to the extent that it doesn’t stand between them and a soy latte and an MFA. He says as much, at higher volume than probably is really necessary — and the weaselly little munchkin blackshirts who had just a second before insisted that all cops are bastards! and boasted of their control of the streets turn immediately to the police for help. And the police, damn their eyes, help: They evict an actual peaceable protester, if a loud one, from the public square — in order to make room for mask-wearing, law-breaking, little-old-lady-assaulting hooligans.
The problem is most dramatically on display in Portland, but it is hardly limited to the city “where young people go to retire.” Everywhere pointy-headed progressives are given unchallenged power, the same thing happens: Berkeley surrendered to political violence, too, along with Washington and other cities and practically every college campus.
...And in spite of the ridiculous rhetoric surrounding Antifa, this is very much a Democrats-vs.-Republicans issue. As the blackshirts marched through Portland on the evening of the 2018 midterm elections, Democratic-party workers and campaign flunkies wearing official IDs on lanyards around their necks stepped out of the Hilton and the other places where Democratic grandees gathered to watch the returns, pumping their fists and chanting along with Antifa, sometimes looking around at one another a little guiltily. Nice young well-scrubbed college-educated political professionals and volunteers cheering on a mob of masked terrorists explicitly committed to a campaign of political violence.
...The helpful people at Merriam-Webster remind us that fascists seek “severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition.” Senator Warren pursues the former, and the blackshirts pursue the latter. Their efforts are perfectly complementary.
...Once political violence is out of the box, it is hard to put it back in. Left-wing militias such as Antifa beget right-wing militias that cite the existence of left-wing militias as justification for their own, and on and on it goes. We have seen this before in many contexts, and it rarely ends well. The original German Antifa served an enterprise whose worldwide affiliates would murder some 100 million people in the 20th century alone.
...a funny thing happened: As the march began to peter out, a group of Antifa loitered for a bit on a street corner, and I loitered with them for a while, observing. And then I got tired and decided to bring my labors to an end and go on my merry. As I walked off, a contingent, apparently believing that we were once again on the move against fascism, began to follow me, pumping their fists and chanting, until they figured out that I wasn’t leading them anywhere. And thus did a National Review correspondent end up briefly leading an Antifa march through Portland.
Of course they followed me. They’ll follow anything that moves.
Neutered police officers and Nazi fighters
In National Review, Madeleine Kearns interviews Kevin Williamson, the National Review's roving reporter, about his recent experiences in Portland, Oregon. Here are some of Kevin's observations that stood out to me.
The thing about places like Portland and San Francisco is that they aren’t nice. They have a reputation for being wooly and hippieish and silly, but they are in fact very angry places, full of very angry people. They are also highly segregated places in ways that the South and Southwest really aren’t. Angry white people with money make the world go ’round, apparently.Read more here.
...I think you get bad behavior where bad behavior is tolerated. In Portland, the blackshirts aren’t a tiny schismatic fashion. There were Democratic-campaign staffers standing out in front of Democratic-campaign events on Election Night chanting along with them.
Madeleine Kearns: You describe the police officers present as being “neutered.” How so?
Kevin D. Williamson: They watched crimes being committed and did nothing.
Madeleine Kearns: How do the police balance peacekeeping with First Amendment rights?
Kevin D. Williamson: There isn’t anything unpeaceable about the exercise of First Amendment rights. I don’t care for mass protests myself — a large crowd of people all facing one direction and chanting seems to me more properly part of a religious exercise than a political one. But if that’s your thing, then by all means go and bark at the moon. But when people start blocking traffic, pounding on the hoods of cars, damaging property, committing assaults, that’s a different thing. And I don’t think there’s really much of a First Amendment issue presented by policing ordinary crime when that crime happens in the course of a political action.
Madeleine Kearns: In what way were the anti-fascist protesters you saw fascists?
Kevin D. Williamson: They are the American Left’s answer to the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale, down to the penchant for black shirts. They perform the same function: using violence and intimidation to silence political opposition and to terrorize the political opposition. “Fascist” is a notoriously difficult word to define, but they are as close to a textbook case as you are going to find.
Madeleine Kearns: You write that their “idol is the proletariat rather than the nation.” Could you please unpack that?
Kevin D. Williamson: Utopian political movements — and all totalitarian movements are basically utopian — love the world, except for all the people in it. They all are antiliberal and they all seek to degrade the individual and individualism. Their liturgy requires an object of adoration, and it’s usually the same object: the People, or, as American populists like to put it, We the People. For traditional nationalists, it’s the Nation in abstract and idealized form; for socialists, it’s always been the proletariat, who apparently are the only people included in the People. If you’re acting in the name of the People, you can brutalize persons. The interests of the People require a gulag, the interests of the People require a death camp, and if the people have to suffer for the People, then so be it.
...The people suffering under that particular boot-heel don’t realize that they are wearing the boot, and that they have the power to take it off of their own necks at any time they want, that they can take a little freedom out for a spin and see if they like it. They don’t need a revolution. They need Jesus.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
How would you like to sit on the couch and chat with Rudy Giuliani?
One thought: the longer Mueller takes, the more comfortable Giuliani seems to get: "Put up or shut up, Bob!"
Good character
Jonah Goldberg asks if there is any definition of good character which Donald Trump can clear. Roger Kimball responds in American Greatness,
I don’t know anyone who voted for Donald Trump, or who later came to support him, because he thought the president was a candidate for sainthood.Read more here.
On the contrary, people supported him, first, because of what he promised to do and, second, because of what, over the past two years, he has accomplished. These accomplishments, from rolling back the regulatory state and scores of conservative judicial appointments, from moving our Israeli embassy to Jerusalem to resuscitating our military, working to end Obamacare, and fighting to keep our borders secure, are not morally neutral data points. They are evidences of a political vision and of promises made and kept. They are, in short, evidences of what sort of character Donald Trump is.
Add them up and I think they go a long way towards a definition of good character that Donald Trump can clear.
As for coming up with “a definition of good character” that the president can clear, let me begin by backing into it and offering a negative definition a friend of mine offered: “Maybe not having sex in the Oval Office with an intern, weaponizing the IRS, DOJ, CIA, and FBI, being impeached for lying under oath or wiping clean thousands of text messages and emails under subpoena…”. The concluding ellipsis, it should go without saying, looks forward to a much longer list.
...I remember being taken aback when Bret Stephens this time last year took stock of Donald Trump’s accomplishments and concluded, “I still wish Hillary Clinton were president.” The list that Stephens mustered was long and impressive. It began with tax cuts, the effective obliteration of ISIS, and the decertification of the Iran deal and ended with the robust economy and the ascension of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. (Brett Kavanaugh was yet to come.) “What, for a conservative,” Stephens asked, “is there to dislike about this policy record as the Trump administration rounds out its first year in office?”
What is more important than negotiations with China? "outing the coup and convicting the current officials who are corrupting all levels of our current government."
In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance writes,
As for me, I agree with Treehouse commenter Kent, who writes,
The confrontation with China is the priority for President Trump. POTUS knows China is far more dependent on the U.S. than vice-versa.Read more of Sundance's excellent analysis here.
President Trump is the first U.S. President to understand how the red dragon hides behind the panda mask. The entire planet is focused on the dynamic of Chairman Xi and President Trump. Billions waged on tweets, coded messages, hints of smiles. Epic stuff.
In the multinational finance world this financial face-off is bigger than the all military world wars combined. This is legendary stuff here. Bigger than any legacy initiative ever fathomed by all Presidents in decades. Every nuance and inference is carefully reviewed by Wall Street’s ‘Big Club’ looking for any leverage to influence the outcome.
The funniest thing is Donald Trump doesn’t care about all that. He has the desired ‘America First’ outcome gamed out for decades: We finally win, China acquiesces.
It may not be popular to keep pointing out, but this is the stuff President Trump really cares about. The Deep State, DC Swamp, Mueller, Comey, Michael Cohen, congressional hearings…. confrontations, resistance efforts…. and all that ‘spygate’ and surveillance stuff is way over there…. Something that is necessarily attended to, but in the larger scheme of things, far less important.
President Trump has fifty years of business skills in various predatory and adversarial financial deals. Leverage, or the ability to force an opponent to take an action that benefits your position, is the most valuable weapon in deals; business or politics the same is true.
Leverage and influence is extremely valuable and it’s not just against Democrats and the Never Trump alliance (ie. Sea Island group). President Trump is in a fight against multiple enemies from all sides, across all aisles and political alignments.
The declassification leverage is a weapon; an atomic hammer that strikes everyone in a 360° blast radius. President Trump is not going to waste it to remove a few political gnats.
As for me, I agree with Treehouse commenter Kent, who writes,
I find it hard to accept that deeply corrupt individuals who hate America as founded being in charge of all the major law enforcement and national security organizations “takes a back seat” to the negotiations with China. If we do not eliminate the massive internal corruption which is attempting to complete a coup which takes Trump out, then all the China stuff is just dust in the wind.
The top priority is outing the coup and convicting the current officials who are corrupting all levels of our current government.
What are the solutions to the corruption of the Deep State bureaucracies?
The corruption of the Department of Justice and the FBI are the subject of an analysis by Sundance at the Conservative Treehouse. What are the possible solutions? Sundance proposes some solutions, but they will not happen until a whole lot more American citizens come to understand the nature of the corruption and politicization of these vital agencies. Read more here.
I would add to this problem the corruption and politicization of our other Deep State agencies, such as the CIA. With Democrat control of the House of Representatives the immediate future looks dim to me.
I would add to this problem the corruption and politicization of our other Deep State agencies, such as the CIA. With Democrat control of the House of Representatives the immediate future looks dim to me.
Cunning political strategists
At The Conservative Treehouse, Sundance looks ahead to a probable sequence of events in the first quarter of the Resistance year of 2019.
The baseline is that Democrat leadership are cunning political strategists, and have likely already drawn out the big picture road-map with details to be filled in as they proceed.Read more here.
The first event is the congressional use of Michael Cohen for a series of public committee hearings. [Oversight (Elijah Cummings) and possibly -though less likely- Judiciary (Nadler) and HPSCI (Schiff)] This likely has to happen before March 6th, 2019, when Cohen is scheduled to enter federal prison. It’s almost certain Cohen’s incarceration deferment contains the unwritten agreement to appear. [Democrat leadership almost certainly coordinated this plan with team Mueller and the SDNY some time ago.]
The second event is the release of the Team Mueller political report which, despite its inability to find criminal wrongdoing, will most certainly be written with highly charged innuendo as damaging to President Trump as possible. The release of this report will absolutely fuel several public committee hearings [Oversight/Reform (Cummings), HPSCI (Schiff) and Judiciary (Nadler)] without any doubt.
The third event is the release of the OIG Horowitz report on possible FISA abuse. Due to the nature of Mueller’s proprietary investigative blackout (Horowitz not allowed to see investigative material or witnesses with Mueller probe ongoing), the Horowitz report will likely come out *after* Mueller.
...♦Gang of Eight (IC Oversight) – The Go8 line-up will be radically different in 2019 and far more adversarial to the executive branch. Ranked by influence over IC:
Nancy Pelosi (D) – Speaker of House.
Adam Schiff (D) – Chair, HPSCI
Senator Mitch McConnell (R) – Senate Majority Leader
Senator Richard Burr (R) – Chair, SSCI
Kevin McCarthy (R) – Minority Leader House.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D) – Senate Minority Leader
Devin Nunes (R) – Ranking Member HPSCI
Senator Mark Warner (D) – Vice Chair, SSCI
♦The Broad Political Alliances – Overlaying the DC political alliances within the intelligence community Gang of Eight you see a resistance ratio of 7:1 against the executive branch.
Pelosi, Schiff, McConnell, Burr, McCarthy, Schumer and Warner all allied with the overall UniParty resistance objective; and only Devin Nunes as an ally to the White House. That’s a ration of 7:1 in favor of “The DC Resistance” against the Executive Branch.
...Mueller (the team, not the individual) will be handing the Resistance baton to their allies in congress; and the team will then set off for a well indulged, stunningly compensated, media tour which will likely include numerous advanced offers from Hollywood types for movie rights. Most of them will enjoy job offers from major networks and political allies.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
"actors reading from scripts supplied to them by people hidden from public scrutiny."
In the American Thinker, Thomas Lifson writes,
I have long wondered about who writes the talking points that keep Democrats reading from the same script. That person – or more likely, persons – evidently issues instructions that the office holder branch and the journalist branch of the Democratic Party mimic in their public statements. But in order to appear slightly authentic, they are supposed to speak extemporaneously and make it appear that they all came up with the phrases-of-the-day spontaneously. This works for interviews with print and television journalists, but the rise of Twitter has introduced new danger of exposure. Now we have proof that the current ostensible leaders of the Democrats’ party are often just actors reading from scripts supplied to them by people hidden from public scrutiny. Christmas Eve saw the presumptive new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi issue a tweet that was identical, word-for-word, to one issued 23 minutes earlier by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.Read more here.
It's Christmas Eve and President @realDonaldTrump is plunging the country into chaos. The stock market is tanking and the President is waging a personal war on the Federal Reserve—after he just fired the Secretary of Defense.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) December 24, 2018
It's Christmas Eve and @realDonaldTrump is plunging the country into chaos. The stock market is tanking and the president is waging a personal war on the Federal Reserve — after he just fired the Secretary of Defense. #TrumpShutdown
— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) December 24, 2018
Needless to say, the mainstream media takes no interest at all in the process by which Democrats achieve what is euphemistically called “message discipline.” The notion that there is a command center that instructs Democrat officeholders what to say each day is certainly an important subject, for the identities of those staffing the command center determines a large portion of our national political dialogue. Who pays these people, whoever they are? Who selects them to put words in the mouths and twitter accounts of people that supposedly represent their constituents?
"takes every occasion to strut and preen his moral superiority as a member of the Coup Cucks Clan Conservative Inc. Con Artists
JJ Sefton brings us news from Ohio.
Good morning kids. Last weekend of 2018 is here so let's get with it. Before getting to anything else, I want to address the loathsome pillock that goes by the name of John Kasich and his equally detestable underlings in the Ohio state legislature. First, this floating fog bank of halitosis who takes every occasion to strut and preen his moral superiority as a member of the Coup Cucks Clan Conservative Inc. Con Artists vetoed legislation that would have banned abortions on infants in utero that have a detectable heartbeat. But not to be outdone by the son-of-a-postage stamp, the Ohio GOP failed to override the veto by just a single vote. It was right to blast the likes of Chief Justice Errant Crockovich and Associate Justice Kavanaugh (I hold out hope that this was a one-off for him) in losing the multi-state lawsuit over Planned Parenthood funding, but it's our state and local jurisdictions that must do the heavy lifting in breaking up Big Eugenics. Tragically, Ohio has failed us big time.
"Is that a yes?"
Family gives the best Christmas Present ever to their cousin who has never experienced an actual Christmas... Worth a watch! ❤❤❤ pic.twitter.com/4fuazXFBB2
— Kevin W (@kwilli1046) December 26, 2018
Hypocrites!
Did you know that the E.U. funded this 764-kilometer wall on the Turkey/Syria border? If I did my math correctly, that is about 473 miles!
The I Am Awake website reports,
The I Am Awake website reports,
While the EU and its loyal followers persistently preach that any form of borders are racist, many will be shocked to learn that the construction of this wall was largely funded by the 28-member state union.Read more here.
"Create a victim, and you have a villain."
Brandon Morse reports at Red State,
So pretty much, no dating at the University of Missouri according to certain officials, who believe that a smaller woman (i.e. the vast majority of women) being asked on a date is a Title IX violation if you’re a larger male (i.e. the vast majority of men) because it makes the smaller woman uncomfortable.Read more here.
“SQUIRTED MIXTURE OF BLEACH AND WATER INTO RECTUM WANTING TO PREVENT AIDS”
Guess which orifice had the most objects stuck in it in 2018. Adequate Man writes,
All reports are taken from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s database of emergency room visits, all descriptions are verbatim, and none of those things belong in there.Read them here and be careful in 2019!
As always, objects are sorted by orifice, working south.
Twice in one week!
From the Ace of Spades blog, Misanthropic Humanitarian has tonight's Saturday Night joke.
A gas station owner in Arkansas was trying to increase his sales, so he put up a sign that read:
*** "FREE SEX w/fill-up ... just guess the right number between 1 & 10.” ***
Soon a local redneck pulled in, filled his tank, and asked for his FREE SEX.
The owner told him to pick a number from 1 to 10. If he guessed correctly, he would get his FREE SEX.
The redneck guessed ‘8’. The proprietor said, "You were close. The number was ‘7’. Sorry, but no FREE SEX this time."
A week later, the same redneck, along w/his brother, Bubba, pulled in for another fill-up. Again he asked for his FREE SEX.
The proprietor again gave him the same story, and asked him to guess the correct number.
The redneck guessed ‘2’ this time.
The proprietor said, "Sorry, it was ‘3’. You were close, but no FREE SEX this time."
As they were driving away, the redneck said to his brother, "I think that game is rigged, and he doesn't really give away FREE SEX."
Bubba replied, "No. it ain't, Billy Ray. It ain't rigged. My wife won twice last week."
Make 'em eat seaweed!
I assume by now you know that California has passed legislation to regulate cow farts! Kevin Boyd reports in Rare,
Depending on how the regulations are crafted, they could result in price increases on milk and other dairy products for consumers all over the country. California dairy farmers say they’re already struggling with high labor costs, a drought, and low milk prices. The new regulations, combined with the mandatory increased overtime pay that was enacted by the California legislature this year, could force many dairies out of business.Read more here.
California regulators plan to combat the methane that is produced by the digestive systems of cows. Cows release the methane when they pass gas, belch, or produce manure.
One of the ways they plan to reduce methane emissions is by requiring farmers to change the diets of their cows. For example, Australian scientists have discovered that adding a sprinkle of dried seaweed to a cow’s diet reduces the amount of methane it produces by 99 percent. The same scientists who made that discovery are now trying to scale up seaweed production to meet global demand. There is no estimate on how much this seaweed will cost.
You don't think transgendered people feel empowered?
How dare you call me sir! Can't you tell I am a lovely lady?
“I make it my goal to at least in one way make someone smile,” he said.
© Provided by CBS Interactive Inc. After word got out about John Lopez's kind gesture, people in Princeton, Texas, rallied to get him the recognition he deserved.
Read more here.
Losing customers, so let's try virtue signaling!
After I read a Facebook article about a number of businesses deciding to pull their advertising from the Tucker Carlson Show, I made a note to myself not to patronize those businesses. One of them is IHOP. MoneyWise includes IHOP in a list of restaurants that are struggling.
The chain that got its start as International House of Pancakes is getting battered.Read more here.
IHOP has been losing customers to ethnic restaurants and places known for healthier foods. Its parent company wants to move toward those types of menus and away from the kind of comfort food that turns off today's consumers who pay attention to calorie counts.
So, owner Dine Brands said it would close as many as 40 IHOPs this year.
All things new again
Guest post
by Suzann Darnall
As we move towards a new year, I am realizing that all things are new again. Unfortunately, not all new in a good way. As my husband faces his ongoing fight to fully recover from cancer we are learning many more things than we ever wanted to know about the world of cancer and its many treatments. This new knowledge and these new skills are going to be very necessary in a large portion of the coming year.
We are learning about what color ribbon is appropriate to his kind of cancer. We are learning the names of his chemotherapy drugs. We are learning that his eventual radiation treatment will be combined with yet another chemotherapy drug. We are learning about all the different kinds of medications that are necessary to sustain a quality of life during cancer recovery and treatments. We learned what a chemo port is all about. And, we are learning that sometimes mistakes are made . . . which is almost as scary as the initial
finding of cancer.
I am learning way more about nursing, drugs, and other such medical topics than I ever had an interest in knowing. But, I am also learning how to ask questions, how to seek out answers, and how to possibly make a miserable situation a little bit more comfortable for my husband. I am learning that sometimes thinking outside the box works as well in caring for a sick husband as it does when dealing with a sick animal or trying to figure out designing a quilt. Imagination goes a long way to solving problems. And, we are both
learning that cancer recovery and treatment involves a lot of problems!
We are learning that cancer is a disease which is best suffered while someone is at your side. And, on your side. True for both patient and caretaker. I have learned that even the caretaker has need of nurturing and support. We are also learning that prayer is indispensable in the fight against disease, exhaustion, hopelessness, fear, and sorrow. Also learning that sometimes you just have to reach out to family, friends, and community to ask for help. The best part is we are learning that family, friends, and community are ever
so happy to offer the assistance required.
Pete is learning patience. Not a lot, but more than he had before. I love him dearly, but he is not a patient patient. However, he is learning to ask me for help and permit me to help. He has learned to allow me to fight some of the battles when he is sick or tired and we need information or require service. He is also learning to be more understanding about my need to provide nurturing and service while he is undergoing these trials.
I am learning that I must sometimes walk away and allow him to be alone. That I have to occasionally step back and let him handle something by himself. It is not easy and I do not do it well, but I am trying. I am also learning how to hover quietly and be able to step in if necessary.
It is a new phase of our life together. Not one we would have chosen, but one we are willing to learn the skills needed to make it work. We have been committed to one another for more than 41 years. We have faced new challenges at various times in our life. Issues with health, loss, and more. This is just another bump in the road to eternity and we will learn whatever it takes to cross to the smoother path on the other side.
While 2019 may not be off to a great start, it is what it is and we will deal. I am so grateful that my husband has a chance for renewed health that I will overlook the bad as much as possible in my search for the good. And, there is much good in some of the new things we have discovered on this difficult path. The depth of love from even distant family and friends. The level of support from not just family and friends, but acquaintances, folks newly met, and even strangers. The realization that our love can withstand anything and still hold elements of sweetness, romance, and hope. Learning that kisses under the full moon are just as special with a chemo patient as they were with a young lieutenant.
While I am not a person to throw out the old just ‘cause the new has arrived, I am happy to welcome this new year and let the old one go. I know the new one still brings some of the same problems, but it also brings hope anew for learning more ways to deal with what we are facing. I can do anything with my sweetheart by my side. I will fight any battle he needs. I will steal every kiss possible and take a minute to dance in the living room on a good day. ‘Cause even for two old folks like us, all things can be new again. . . if one just looks at them from a different perspective!
by Suzann Darnall
As we move towards a new year, I am realizing that all things are new again. Unfortunately, not all new in a good way. As my husband faces his ongoing fight to fully recover from cancer we are learning many more things than we ever wanted to know about the world of cancer and its many treatments. This new knowledge and these new skills are going to be very necessary in a large portion of the coming year.
We are learning about what color ribbon is appropriate to his kind of cancer. We are learning the names of his chemotherapy drugs. We are learning that his eventual radiation treatment will be combined with yet another chemotherapy drug. We are learning about all the different kinds of medications that are necessary to sustain a quality of life during cancer recovery and treatments. We learned what a chemo port is all about. And, we are learning that sometimes mistakes are made . . . which is almost as scary as the initial
finding of cancer.
I am learning way more about nursing, drugs, and other such medical topics than I ever had an interest in knowing. But, I am also learning how to ask questions, how to seek out answers, and how to possibly make a miserable situation a little bit more comfortable for my husband. I am learning that sometimes thinking outside the box works as well in caring for a sick husband as it does when dealing with a sick animal or trying to figure out designing a quilt. Imagination goes a long way to solving problems. And, we are both
learning that cancer recovery and treatment involves a lot of problems!
We are learning that cancer is a disease which is best suffered while someone is at your side. And, on your side. True for both patient and caretaker. I have learned that even the caretaker has need of nurturing and support. We are also learning that prayer is indispensable in the fight against disease, exhaustion, hopelessness, fear, and sorrow. Also learning that sometimes you just have to reach out to family, friends, and community to ask for help. The best part is we are learning that family, friends, and community are ever
so happy to offer the assistance required.
Pete is learning patience. Not a lot, but more than he had before. I love him dearly, but he is not a patient patient. However, he is learning to ask me for help and permit me to help. He has learned to allow me to fight some of the battles when he is sick or tired and we need information or require service. He is also learning to be more understanding about my need to provide nurturing and service while he is undergoing these trials.
I am learning that I must sometimes walk away and allow him to be alone. That I have to occasionally step back and let him handle something by himself. It is not easy and I do not do it well, but I am trying. I am also learning how to hover quietly and be able to step in if necessary.
It is a new phase of our life together. Not one we would have chosen, but one we are willing to learn the skills needed to make it work. We have been committed to one another for more than 41 years. We have faced new challenges at various times in our life. Issues with health, loss, and more. This is just another bump in the road to eternity and we will learn whatever it takes to cross to the smoother path on the other side.
While 2019 may not be off to a great start, it is what it is and we will deal. I am so grateful that my husband has a chance for renewed health that I will overlook the bad as much as possible in my search for the good. And, there is much good in some of the new things we have discovered on this difficult path. The depth of love from even distant family and friends. The level of support from not just family and friends, but acquaintances, folks newly met, and even strangers. The realization that our love can withstand anything and still hold elements of sweetness, romance, and hope. Learning that kisses under the full moon are just as special with a chemo patient as they were with a young lieutenant.
While I am not a person to throw out the old just ‘cause the new has arrived, I am happy to welcome this new year and let the old one go. I know the new one still brings some of the same problems, but it also brings hope anew for learning more ways to deal with what we are facing. I can do anything with my sweetheart by my side. I will fight any battle he needs. I will steal every kiss possible and take a minute to dance in the living room on a good day. ‘Cause even for two old folks like us, all things can be new again. . . if one just looks at them from a different perspective!
Now I know where the phrase "Cool Cat" came from!
Imagine being as smooth as this cat. pic.twitter.com/WYFujIRFCO
— Back To Nature (@backt0nature) December 23, 2018
Via Misanthropic Humanitarian
Will Governor Brown pardon him so he can stay in the United States?
Ace of Spades brings us news of a Mexican man illegally in the United States. He shot and killed a Sacramento policeman. Do you think California Governor Jerry Brown will pardon him?
"But I thought they were there to protect us!"
CBS Boston has this report on how seasonal workers at UPS had almost their entire paychecks confiscated by the Teamsters Union.
She collected only $14.52 out of 41 hours of earnings. The union took the rest!
She collected only $14.52 out of 41 hours of earnings. The union took the rest!
"Could you give me a ride to someone else's house?"
The Huffington Post brings us a story of a man who broke into someone's home, helped himself to food and clothes, and sat down to watch t.v. When the actual homeowner arrived home, the thief asked him to give him a ride to another house. Oh, and he had stolen two cars; one ran out of gas, and he crashed the other one in the woods. Police arrested him after one of his relatives called the police.
"In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters."
David Thompson has compiled a list of "mental contortions of our self-imagined betters." He goes month-by-month with absurd political correctness we are expected to obey. In one month, though, there was something wonderful which is presented in brief video form, entitled A Giant Stone in the Sky. Read it all here.
Thursday, December 27, 2018
"There are elephants crashing around in the forest!"
I apologize for linking to a story written in March, but it is one that I missed, and maybe you did, too. James Rosen writes in the Examiner,
...the academic scholarship published since 1977 has documented in exhaustive detail how the critical wings of the Nixon White House, the National Security Council, the covert operations unit dubbed “the Plumbers,” and Nixon’s campaign arm, the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, were all infiltrated by rival power centers in the capital and exploited for intelligence. The people burrowing in came from the military, the intelligence community, and the news media (reports that the Soviet Union also placed moles in the Nixon White House have not been confirmed).Read more here.
Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn., the ranking Republican on the Senate Watergate committee and later President Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff, never spoke explicitly of a Deep State. But he alluded to it once, in suitably cryptic terms. Reeling from his discovery that the Pentagon had spied on Nixon, and struggling to grasp the large role of the Central Intelligence Agency in Watergate, Baker said: “There are elephants crashing around in the forest.”
The instrument the military men used was the JCS-NSC liaison office, housed in the Executive Office Building and run by a pair of admirals. The late Melvin Laird, the longtime Wisconsin representative selected by Nixon to run the Pentagon, told me in a 1997 interview that before becoming defense secretary in January 1969, he had observed the chiefs building what was, in literal terms, a covert intelligence capability against the White House.
By December 1971, the White House Special Investigations Group, a covert unit called the "Plumbers" formed to plug leaks of classified material to the news media, had uncovered the activities of Navy Yeoman Charles Radford, a stenographer and courier detailed to the JCS-NSC liaison office. After intensive polygraph examination, Radford admitted to having stolen some 5,000 classified documents in 1970-71 from White House National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and his aides. He'd even rifled through Kissinger’s briefcase while he slept on his official airplane. Radford admitted having passed top-secret documents, via the liaison office, to Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Thomas Moorer.
...the CIA’s inspector general reported in 1975, after Nixon had resigned, that CIA agents had been placed in “intimate components of the Office of the President.”
...Why would these institutions have wanted to spy on Nixon? Mitchell had a theory. As he told Len Colodny, co-author of Silent Coup (1991): “It was his [Nixon’s] personality and his mode of operation that did him in.”
...In the political donations made by Mueller’s staff lawyers, federal filings show, more than $62,000 went to Democrats, only $2,750 to Republicans.
Nixon would have understood. Seven of the top eight lawyers on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force had served under Robert Kennedy at the Justice Department. In the early 2000s, again using FOIA, I became the first researcher to mine the WSPF's 10,000-page archive: 10,000 pages in all. And while those papers did not contain the kind of sophomoric invective for the incumbent that would later characterize the Strzok/Page texts, the WSPF archive captured the prejudicial bias the Watergate special prosecutors harbored toward their prey.
As Trump surveys the political landscape of 2018, he too can be forgiven for imagining that the Deep State, or something like it, exists. Like Richard Nixon, our 45th president took the oath of office keenly aware that influential figures in the military and intelligence communities deeply distrusted him as an accused colluder with a foreign power, as someone who was not “one of us,” and as a man many said was psychologically unfit for the presidency, whatever voters thought. Both saw their inaugurations marred by rioting. Both would stand eternally accused, whatever the evidence, of capturing the presidency through collusion with a foreign power, and thus be stripped, by media elites that despised them, of all legitimacy. And like Nixon, Trump has been subjected, from the inception of his presidency, to unprecedented leaks of classified material to those elites.
In all this, with the various Russia investigations still unresolved, their ultimate discoveries and outcomes unknown, Trump would do well to internalize the central lesson of Watergate, and perhaps thereby avoid some of the many self-inflicted wounds that Nixon committed during his own death throes against entrenched forces. This lesson Nixon articulated in the final minutes of his presidency, in the maudlin and meandering farewell address he delivered to the White House staff in the East Room on Aug. 9, 1974, shortly before boarding the helicopter that whisked him away from power.
“Always remember,” he said, “others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”
"ACLU: the faithful friend to America's foes."
In Frontpage Magazine, LLoyd Billingsly gives us a history of the American Civil Liberties Union. He calls them American Criminals' Lobby Unlimited and explains how they are the faithful friend to America's foes. Read more here.
The West's Frankenstein Monster
Robert Miller writes in American Greatness,
The Europe of today may not yet be expansionist as were the great powers that dominated it in the past, but like its predecessors, it does not respect national self-determination or sovereignty. In fact, the Europe of today does everything in its power to subordinate the wills of its member-states to a geopolitical agenda that is both anti-democratic and anti-sovereignty.Read more here.
...In his idealistic and Kantian naiveté, Emmanuel Macron decried nationalism as a “betrayal of patriotism.” Macron, Merkel, and other proponents of the EU are part of a distinct intellectual tradition that holds traditional Western notions of popular national sovereignty in utter contempt and is animated by the guiding principles of EU supranationalism. The spirit of the EU is perhaps best summarized in a quote displayed in front of the European Parliament by the late British diplomat Philip Kerr. Kerr, who pressured Churchill to appease Hitler, declared, “National sovereignty is the root cause of the most crying evils of our times . . . The only final remedy for this evil is the federal union of the peoples.”
...America can, and should set a foreign policy that undermines this European supranationalism.
...Using monetary diplomacy, the United States can approach countries skeptical of the Eurozone, and offer them the chance to resurrect their old national currencies through dollarization. In this hypothetical scenario, Greece, Italy, or other Eurozone states can reintroduce their national currencies and inspire confidence in the new currency by pegging it to the dollar. Once investors gained confidence in the new national currency, the reemerging state could decouple from the dollar and have its monetary independence once again. American businesses and tourists would have to exchange currencies more often as a result, but this hassle is a small price to pay in re-establishing national self-determination. Additionally, once monetary independence is recovered from a distant and burdensome European bureaucracy, European states could compete for business on their own terms.
Globalization has been a factor of politics since Mesopotamian city-states established trade routes with ancient Egypt and India; however, globalization in its 21st-century form does not work. Open borders harm national populations through lowering wages, allowing unrestricted flows of illicit substances and crime, and rendering national identities meaningless. This kind of globalization is not only unnatural, but it is divorced from historical experience. At present, European states are some of globalization’s biggest victims. Nebulous values such as “diversity” mean nothing when they bring suicide bombings and poverty along with them. In the balance of competing values, national sovereignty is simply too valuable to turn in for an alternative.
Now, these institutions have become the West’s Frankenstein monster. It’s a monster that threatens us politically, economically, and culturally. To begin taming the beast and save the West, America must seek to free European states from the monster the EU has become.
"...we have reached the point where the Mueller team may be constructing more crimes than it is finding."
Victor Davis Hanson writes in American Greatness,
If you take media-sensationalized sex out of the equation, Trump, like any other American, has the right to pay anyone whatever he wishes to keep quiet about past embarrassing behavior, whether that be secretly gulping down too many Big Macs or cheating on the golf course.Read more here.
...Add it all up, and we have reached the point where the Mueller team may be constructing more crimes than it is finding.
"The horizontal definition of politics, Left versus Right, is no longer truly applicable to our time. Instead, Trump represents the new vertical politics of our age: fighting for the majority below against the socio-economic minority above."
Brandon J. Weichert writes in American Greatness,
...Face it, the Left won the big economic battles of our age.Read more here.
The 62 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 did not vote for him because they wanted to slash federal government programs. Instead, they wanted Trump to make those programs more efficient and to ensure that only American citizens were granted the benefits the government had promised them. Had Trump behaved like a normal Republican presidential candidate (in other words, just another “beautiful loser”) and vowed a harsh plan of government austerity, he’d have lost to the other Republican duds in 2016. Those duds, in turn, would have lost to Hillary Clinton, who was promising every government handout and tax increase imaginable.
As for foreign policy, the Left created the dominant paradigm in that arena as well: it’s all about interventionism.
Just as with government spending, there was a time when there were true differences of opinions between the Left and the Right when it came to foreign policy. The Left tended to favor more aggressive and interventionist foreign policies whereas the Right had more variegated views (namely, there were those called “isolationists” who wanted no involvement with the wider world and others who were “realists,” who merely wanted to maintain a healthy balance-of-power). Since the Reagan Revolution, however, the so-called “neoconservatives” became the dominant figures in Republican foreign policy circles. Thus, interventionism became the dominant view for the Republican Party as much as it has been for the Democratic Party.
For the Left, their vision for an effective U.S. foreign policy had less to do with preserving the national interest and more to do with “maintaining global stability.” Left-wing interventionists believed that by protecting at-risk civilian populations in far-flung countries that most Americans could not find on a map, they were creating a more peaceful, stable world. Theirs was a commitment to shared international norms (whatever those are) and multilateral institutions intended to diminish American sovereignty and its overwhelming military power. Weirdly, it constantly uses overwhelming military force to accomplish these goals.
Both the neoliberal and neoconservative interventionists believed that open borders and free trade were the solutions to humanity’s warlike nature. It’s just that the neoconservatives on the Right tended to emphasize hegemony and were willing to use unilateralism and preemption to enforce America’s “unipolar moment” (the point at which the United States was the last remaining Superpower at the end of the Cold War). At least neocons used the rhetoric of national interest to advocate for their interventionism whereas the Left abandoned that concept entirely.
Traditional conservative views on foreign policy favoring such things as realism were pushed out of the GOP, while the traditional Liberals who favored non-interventionism at all costs, were ignored by the Democratic Party establishment. Despite the unpopularity of the Iraq War and the neocons, however, most Americans are still quick to support expansive military action in benighted corners of the world, such as Syria if it means ensuring that innocent people are protected (even when doing so risks wider war against a Syrian ally, like Russia). In effect, the Left managed to win out in the foreign policy debate as well: it’s all about armed humanitarianism these days. Trump is moving the Overton Window on this conversation, however, and thanks to Trump there is at least now room for debate.
Culture is now the last remaining great battle between Left and Right. Just as within the fields of economics and foreign policy, however, the Left is winning the Culture War—and why wouldn’t it? After all, the Left broadly dominates the media, the courts, academia, and the bureaucracy.
The real fight now is between up-and-down; those who comprise the elite and those who do not.
...President Trump is not a Republican, a conservative, or maybe even a rightist in the conventional sense. The horizontal definition of politics, Left versus Right, is no longer truly applicable to our time. Instead, Trump represents the new vertical politics of our age: fighting for the majority below against the socio-economic minority above. It is this framework that Trump, and the Republican Party, must operate in to win reelection in 2020.
Arabs and Muslims are warming up to Israel, while the Left grows more hostile to Israel
Daniel Pipes writes in the Washington Times,
Barack Obama's policy of appeasing Tehran jolted the Arab states to get serious about the real threats facing them.Read more here.
It is striking to note that full-scale Arab state warfare versus Israel lasted a mere 25 years (1948-73) and ended 45 long years ago; and that Turkey and Iran have since picked up the anti-Zionist torch.
That Arab and Muslim enmity has fractured, probably never to be reconstituted, amounts to one tectonic shift in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The second, no less important, involves the global Left's growing hostility to Israel.
...MbS versus Jeremy Corbyn symbolizes these two tectonic shifts, as does Israel now enjoying better relations with Egypt than with Sweden. The president of Chad turns up in Israel but a singer from New Zealand does not. Israel's athletes compete in the United Arab Emirates but get banned in Spain. Muslims show increasing indifference to the breakdown in Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy, but Leftists express growing anger over it.
...the rage against Israel is not about Ashkenazi-Sephardi relations, tensions on the Temple Mount, a possible attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, or Israel's own nuclear weapons. Rather, it almost exclusively concerns the status of some 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Thanks to a mix of Palestinian public relations expertise and continued antisemitism, the welfare of this small and powerless but fanatical population has transmogrified into the premier global issue of human rights, getting endlessly more attention than, say, Ethiopia – and motivates nearly all denunciations of Israel.
Therefore, when the Left, now largely excluded from power, eventually returns to office in countries like Japan, India, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Israel will face a crisis due to the unresolved situations in the West Bank and Gaza.
Accordingly, a resolution of this issue should be an utmost priority for Israelis.
That does not mean touting yet another "peace plan" doomed to crash on the hard rock of Palestinian intransigence. It does mean, whatever one's favored plan might be, the need to end Palestinian aggression toward Israel: no more suicide attacks, kite bombings, and rockets. Only this will soothe Leftist rage.
Only an Israel victory and a Palestinian defeat will achieve this.
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
2:30 a.m. in Germany!
Earlier today I noted that President Trump and Melania were in Iraq this morning giving troops a boost. Guess where he is tonight? Germany! Here is a picture of him with some of our military leaders there. I think I see Melania at the far right in this picture taken in black and white aboard Air Force One.
Yeah, that was Melania in the first picture: see the stripe on her pants?
via The Conservative Treehouse, where there are more pictures of smiling soldiers.
Yeah, that was Melania in the first picture: see the stripe on her pants?
via The Conservative Treehouse, where there are more pictures of smiling soldiers.
"Don't ever be satisfied with where you are because a competitor will always come up with something better!"
US consumers spent nearly $850 billion dollars this holiday season! Former Walmart CEO Bill Simon is the guest on Fox Business. Walmart has about $500 billion in retail sales! Simon says Walmart's secret is to continuously reinvent itself. Don't ever be satisfied with where you are because a competitor will always come up with something better! Simon is now a teacher at Baylor University.
At The Conservative Treehouse, Sundance explains with a graphic illustration Trump's focus on the Main Street economy rather than the Wall Street economy.
At The Conservative Treehouse, Sundance explains with a graphic illustration Trump's focus on the Main Street economy rather than the Wall Street economy.
Courageous
The Independent in the UK reports,
A Russian performance artist has stripped naked and nailed his genitals to the ground of Moscow’s Red Square in a shocking protest aimed at “the police state”.Read more here.
Pyotr Pavlensky, who sat for an hour and a half outside the Lenin Mausoleum with the nail through his testicles yesterday, described his ‘Fixation’ act as “a metaphor for apathy, political indifference and [the] fatalism of modern Russian society”.
The 29-year old performer, who timed his stunt to coincide with Police Day yesterday, faced spending 15 days in custody but was freed today. It is not yet clear whether he will be re-arrested, after a judge ruled that documents had been presented incorrectly in court.
The extreme public act was recorded on video and uploaded online before leading social media platforms blocked it, according to Russian news website grani.ru.
In May, protest artist Pavlensky attracted attention by wrapping barbed wire around his naked body outside St Petersburg’s parliament, a symbol for human existence inside a “repressive legal system”.
A statement released by Pavlensky read: "As the government turns the country into one big prison, stealing from the people and using the money to grow and enrich the police apparatus and other repressive structures, society is allowing this, and forgetting its numerical advantage, is bringing the triumph of the police state closer by its inaction."
Figures from the Russian arts world praised his recent act, with one calling it “a manifesto of powerlessness”.
"We need to beware the hysterical cries that “something must be done!” about the “crisis” du jour. For when the crisis passes, more of our freedom will have gone with it."
Bruce Thornton writes in Frontpage Magazine,
...just as during war we have seen Constitutional rights temporarily suspended, as Lincoln did habeas corpus during the Civil War, or as Wilson did free speech rights during World War I, so too the progressives have been eager to limit our rights in order to keep such “obsolete and indefensible notions,” as progressive historian Charles Beard over a century ago described natural rights, from interfering with the progressives’ implementation of their utopian ambitions. So today we see calls to limit the First Amendment’s rights protecting speech and religion, or the Second’s right to keep and bear arms.Read more here.
Our Constitutional mechanisms by design are cumbersome because the Founders’ primary aim was to defend political freedom, both of individuals and the states, from a centralized and concentrated power that inevitably seeks to expand at the expense of freedom. That’s why the progressives want to dismantle the Constitution’s checks and balances that limit power, and in the name of efficiency, justice, and equality, empower and expand technocratic elites who supposedly know better than individuals, families, communities, and the market what’s best.
We need to beware the hysterical cries that “something must be done!” about the “crisis” du jour. For when the crisis passes, more of our freedom will have gone with it.
Oil production in Venezuela has come to an almost complete halt
Ace reports that oil production in Venezuela, which has the world's largest reserves, has come to an almost complete halt.
Meanwhile, Russia has taken over five Venezuelan oil fields for the fire-sale price of $1.5 billion in bailout money.Read more here.
Consumer confidence, investor confidence
Did you know that today the Dow had its biggest single-day gain in history? Ace points out that shoppers spent the most on holiday shopping in six years.
When Santa uses technology
From @missenell: “When Santa uses technology 😅🎅.” #catsofinstagram pic.twitter.com/DXSBgFTKr3
— Cats of Instagram (@catsofinstagram) December 25, 2018
Lest we forget
Christmas in 1944...
— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) December 25, 2018
So you can have a Christmas in 2018. pic.twitter.com/Wn3FhLZXM1
Intellectually corrupt Harvard
Bookworm writes,
By admitting semi-literate anti-2nd Amendment activist David Hogg, Harvard shows how intellectually corrupt tax-payer supported higher education has become.Read more here.
...Any school that indoctrinates rather than educates is a lousy place in my estimation, and that’s true regardless of its reputation.
...One cannot get around the fact that neither Hogg’s grades nor his test scores would normally have brought him to Harvard’s attention. Moreover, his tweets revealed a young man who is barely literate and extremely ignorant. It is purely his hostility to the Second Amendment (about which he knows nothing) that sees him being invited to an institution that once produced people notable for actual accomplishments, rather than politically correct views.
...It’s true that, when colleges and universities advanced actual knowledge, it made sense for Americans, citizens of the only nation standing tall after WWII, to advance taxpayer funds to these institutions for the benefit of all Americans. Now, though, these institutions are expending the greatest part of their time and money to create an elite class that loathes those it tries to control, and that marinates itself in Marxist ideology that bears no relationship to actual education and that, instead, seeks to undermine everything that made America a unique nation among nations.
Secret experiment to influence Alabama voters
Ace links to this article in the New York Times in which a secret experiment was carried out in Facebook and Twitter using fake Russian Bots to influence voters in the Alabama election on behalf of Democrat Doug Jones in his successful race against Roy Moore. Ace comments,
Then, Ace takes a look
It is time to go to the comments section to see how Ace's commenters reacted to this story.
Note they immediately claim it was too small to impact the race -- and yet they've been claiming for two years that a hundred thousand or so dollars spent on FaceBook ads in the five billion dollar plus 2016 Presidential race was nigh decisive and an assault on our very democracy.
But this $100,000? Pish-posh. 'Tis nothing.
...They're now claiming that this was purely a scientific experiment and that they did not intend to hurt Roy Moore's campaign or depress Republican turnout or excite Democrat turnout.
I guess that's just a bonus coincidence that it worked out so nicely for them.
Then, Ace takes a look
at how the New York Times reported this expenditure of $100,000 in confessed false flag operation in a race costing $51 million, versus how it reported about the same amount being spent to influence a five billion dollar plus presidential election
It is time to go to the comments section to see how Ace's commenters reacted to this story.
It's almost as if the dems accuse others of doing exactly what they are doing. Weird that.
Posted by: Bosk
Just because you're dead shouldn't mean your votes won't still be counted.
#DeadLivesMatter
Posted by: Speaker Nazi Pelousi
"accuse the other side of that which you are guilty" -- Goebbels
Posted by: Wontsubmit
Not mentioned: the legality of the Democrat's secret effort to influence a national election.
Posted by: BackwardsBoy
"doing research"
Isn't that the defense that pedophiles always use to explain the photos on their computers to the fbi?
Posted by: Gentlemen, This is democracy manifest
It is who she is, Piers!
In the Daily Mail, Piers Morgan tells Michelle Obama here to stop with her "bitchy" comments about Melania Trump.
Christmas Near Paradise
Vanderleun writes here about his Christmas near Paradise. The last paragraph:
Later, as he drove west back into town, the sunset in front of him grew more and more intense until it held all the colors of a raging wildfire cast up from behind the coast range. He stopped by the side of the road and watched this singular sunset burning brighter and brighter until its colors became as incendiary as the Light of the World, born this day, long ago, in Bethlehem.
Being willing to evaluate and re-evaluate ones ideas and positions
Did you know that Dick Morris was a Republican when he worked as a key advisor for Bill Clinton? He tells in this video how he was raised by a staunchly Democrat family on the west side of Manhattan. "I used to believe that the reason people got more conservative as they got older was because they wanted to conserve their money. Then I realized that was part of it, but also because they realized that the Democratic ideas didn't work! He admits that Reagan's policies of refusing to negotiate with the Soviet Union worked, and that Dick's ideas would not have worked in destroying the Soviet Union.
Transgender Ideology is Institutionalized Child Abuse
Michelle Cretella writes in the Daily Signal,
...transgender ideology is not just infecting our laws. It is intruding into the lives of the most innocent among us—children—and with the apparent growing support of the professional medical community.Read more here.
As explained in my 2016 peer reviewed article, “Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate,” professionals who dare to question the unscientific party line of supporting gender transition therapy will find themselves maligned and out of a job.
...I have witnessed an upending of the medical consensus on the nature of gender identity. What doctors once treated as a mental illness, the medical community now largely affirms and even promotes as normal.
...The transition-affirming protocol tells parents to treat their children as the gender they desire, and to place them on puberty blockers around age 11 or 12 if they are gender dysphoric.
If by age 16, the children still insist that they are trapped in the wrong body, they are placed on cross-sex hormones, and biological girls may obtain a double mastectomy.
The transition-affirming approach has been embraced by public institutions in media, education, and our legal system, and is now recommended by most national medical organizations.
...There is an obvious self-fulfilling effect in helping children impersonate the opposite sex both biologically and socially. This is far from benign, since taking puberty blockers at age 12 or younger, followed by cross-sex hormones, sterilizes a child.
...From studies of adults we know that the risks of cross-sex hormones include, but are not limited to, cardiac disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, strokes, diabetes, and cancers.
...Scientific data show that people under the age of 21 have less capacity to assess risks. There is a serious ethical problem in allowing irreversible, life-changing procedures to be performed on minors who are too young themselves to give valid consent.
...prior to the widespread promotion of transition affirmation, 75 to 95 percent of gender-dysphoric youth ended up happy with their biological sex after simply passing through puberty.
...Adults who undergo sex reassignment—even in Sweden, which is among the most LGBT-affirming countries—have a suicide rate nearly 20 times greater than that of the general population. Clearly, sex reassignment is not the solution to gender dysphoria
...The crux of the matter is that while the transition-affirming movement purports to help children, it is inflicting a grave injustice on them and their nondysphoric peers.
These professionals are using the myth that people are born transgender to justify engaging in massive, uncontrolled, and unconsented experimentation on children who have a psychological condition that would otherwise resolve after puberty in the vast majority of cases.
These harms constitute nothing less than institutionalized child abuse. Sound ethics demand an immediate end to the use of pubertal suppression, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgeries in children and adolescents, as well as an end to promoting gender ideology via school curricula and legislative policies.
It is time for our nation’s leaders and the silent majority of health professionals to learn exactly what is happening to our children, and unite to take action.
Do intellectuals have a "right to rule?"
Deion Kathawa, writing at American Greatness, quotes from a 1998 essay entitled “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” by Harvard professor Robert Nozick
Kathawa points out that
“[t]he intellectual wants the whole society to be a school writ large, to be like the environment where he did so well and was so well appreciated.”
Kathawa points out that
The real world requires compromise and (sometimes) snap decisions. Very often, ideas cooked up in the ivory tower disintegrate on contact with reality, leaving massive casualties in their wake (e.g., Marxism). “Nation-building,” “globalism,” “unfettered free trade,” and “amnesty” also spring to mind as rotten ideas that (perhaps) look good on paper but are deeply, dangerously inimical to America’s interests in today’s world.Read more here.
...Similarly, the anti-Trump right-wing intellectual bristles at a political system that does not “appropriately” value their “expertise” and “superior” knowledge and which, consequently, elevates a “buffoon” like Trump to the presidency—and on the shoulders of millions of those “deplorables,” no less. Anti-Trump right-wing intellectuals traffic in information, the gold standard in today’s world, something upon which we are ever-more reliant. Yet, in this arena, the American electorate defied them and their harebrained “proposals,” offered coercively, not through persuasion. Brazenly so. Thus, they resent the man who smashed their pretensions of politics-as-white-paper-drafting-session and roundly repudiated their perceived “right to rule.”
President and First Lady make a surprise visit to our troops in Iraq!
Donald and Melania Trump greet military personnel at the dining facility during an unannounced visit to Al Asad Air Base, Iraq. Reuters
The New York Post reports,
President Trump used the cover of the partial government shutdown to slip off to visit US troops in Iraq.
Trump and first lady Melania Trump met with military personnel on Wednesday at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq, according to photos from Reuters.
His whereabouts sparked speculation about what Trump was up to because he hadn’t tweeted in more than 17 hours, no press aides were in the media office and lights were turned off on the second floor where White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has her office.
It is the first time Trump has visited troops in a war zone since becoming president.
Who wants to rub noses with deplorables in Iowa and New Hampshire when you can just spend your money on votes in California?
Seth McLaughlin reports in the Washington Times,
A couple hundred thousand Democrats will brave a cold winter’s night in Iowa on Feb. 3, 2020, attending the caucuses for what has traditionally been the kickoff of the party’s primary season.Read more here.
But this time around, California will be joining them.
The state has moved up its primary to March 3, looking to get in on the early action. And since the state allows early voting 30 days in advance, it means some people will have already cast live ballots on the same day the caucus kicks off.
Indeed, the same day that Iowans caucus, it’s possible that more people will be casting absentee ballots in California.
That could be a major boost to big-budget candidates who don’t want to compete in the retail politics world of Iowa and New Hampshire but would rather battle over the airwaves for the bigger prizes looming just weeks later.
There is a way!
Via JJ Sefton
Rovvy Lepor writes in American Thinker,
It seemed like the long-awaited border wall funding had finally slipped into the political abyss. Then, under withering criticism from conservatives and other supporters of the border wall, President Trump reversed course, making it clear that the remaining portions of the budget will only be signed once he receives funding for the wall. On December 20, Republicans in the House of Representatives responded by passing substantial border wall funding in the form of a bill allocating $5.7 billion for the wall and close to $8 billion in disaster relief for areas hit hard by this year’s hurricanes and wildfires.
While the $5.7 billion falls short of the $21.6 billion that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimated it would take to complete the border wall, it is a substantial step in the right direction. DHS estimated that the $21.6 billion would fund a border wall that would extend almost the entire length of the border and would add about 1,250 miles to the border wall, which stood at 654 miles (at the time of the DHS report). $5.7 billion would fund over one-quarter of the border wall and allows President Trump to construct approximately 330 miles of additional border wall in the most vulnerable and dangerous parts of the border.
This leaves budget reconciliation as the only option to pass the $5.7 billion in border wall funding. Budget reconciliation, like the nuclear option, allows for a simple majority of 51 votes in the Senate to pass legislation, rather than the normally required 60 votes. However, unlike the nuclear option, it would not break precedent and would likely enable the border funding bill to pass. In May 2018, the Heritage Foundation recommended that Republicans pass the 2019 budget using budget reconciliation. This would have resulted in a superior budget to the current budget and would have included substantial border wall funding because it would not have required support from the Democrats.
...It is even more likely that Republicans will pass $5.7 billion with reconciliation than if the bill would have funded $25 billion because all but one of the Republican senators are needed to vote in favor of this bill. While detractors of the bill in the Democrat party decry spending billions of dollars protecting the southern border, funding the border wall is a very small amount of money compared to the estimated 2019 budget of $4.448 trillion. $5.7 billion is only 0.128% or 1/780 as compared to the budget. And spending so little on the border wall to protect U.S. national security and fulfill a basic campaign promise is the least that can be done.
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
The bigots are at it again!
In the American Spectator, Larry Thornberry writes,
Two of the Senate Democrats’ main picadors in the unsuccessful attempted knee-capping of now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh are at it again. This month California’s Kamala Harris and Hawaii’s Mazie Hirano landed on Omaha lawyer Brian Buescher, nominated by President Trump to serve on the Nebraska U.S. District court, for, of all things, his membership in the Knights of Columbus.Read more here.
That’s right, the Knights of Columbus, a venerable Catholic fraternal, service, and charitable organization that has been committing good works, including helping the sick and needy, since before Harris’s and Hirano’s grandparents were born. The Knights also support traditional Catholic values and social policy. And this is the rub, according to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Trump Derangement Syndrome has spawned a new ailment: Mad Dog Disease!
Dov Fischer writes in the American Spectator,
It is fascinating that these liberals, who always denigrate the military and prefer to manipulate the armed forces into serving as their laboratory for transgender social experiments (Yes, Zer!), suddenly are singing paeans to Gen. Mattis. It is ridiculous. They have no shame.Read more here.
They adore a great patriotic general? Gimme a break. Six months ago, Secretary Mattis was being grilled on why we had not yet left Afghanistan. They want to close down ICE. Not the border — that may remain wide open — but they want to close down ICE because Immigration and Customs Enforcement is run by “Nazis.” They express empathy and sympatico for extremist elements like “Black Lives Matter” when the BLM crowd oppose the police and march in streets calling for police deaths. All manifestations of defending our safety and security, at home and abroad, are evil for them. All first responders are pounded with contumely. Even Gen. David Petraeus would get heckled when he set foot on a campus to lecture.
But, now that President Trump has accepted Secretary Mattis’s resignation, oh how those Leftists love their Mad Dog! Listen to Don Lemon and Chris Matthews and Chris Cuomo as they pathetically yelp: Woof, woof! How every American liberal salivates Pavlovian merely upon hearing those sweet two syllables: Mad Dog!
Baloney. Or, as they say in the Land of Canine: Grrrrrrrrr!
If Trump Derangement Syndrome has evolved into a full-fledged malady impacting half the American population, it now seems to have spawned a new ailment: Mad Dog Disease. The basic symptoms are the inexplicable sorrow being expressed by anti-war activists, flower-bearing peaceniks, who incomprehensibly cannot sleep, eat, or otherwise function now that James “Mad Dog” Mattis no longer is our Secretary of Defense. They can’t handle it: Who will protect us, if not our sweet beloved Mad Dog? It is a thing.
...We forget now, but Truman was a comparative nobody and nothing at the time. FDR’s first Vice President, John “Cactus Jack” Garner, had been a serious player, having been House Minority Leader and then Speaker of the House before serving two terms as Roosevelt’s first Veep. Henry Wallace, who just had served eight years as Secretary of Agriculture, was Vice President through Roosevelt’s third term. And then came Harry Truman, a two-term Senator from Missouri with limited presence, who rose to the Vice Presidency on January 20, 1945 — and suddenly was commander-in-chief of the United States less than three months later on April 12. This veritable novice suddenly found himself in charge of leading us past Hitler and then dealing with the impossible choices that would confront him in dealing with Japan: Will we send in the military and perhaps lose another half a million men, even as the Japanese were vowing additionally to murder all 168,000 American prisoners of war they were holding if we invaded their mainland? Would we be prepared to fight another three years into 1948 as then was expected? Or would we opt to cut our losses by changing the course of civilization and dropping “The Bomb”? If so, would we stop at one? If Japan would not surrender, two? If that did not finish the war, another? Another?
Somehow we emerged from the Civil War with our nation intact. Likewise from World War II. We survived Okinawa and we somehow even survived Obama — who, after all, got beaten by a junior varsity. That is how our country operates. The peoples elect the civilian commander in chief, and he sets policy, not his appointees. They serve at his pleasure to help him achieve his objectives and fulfill the promises he made to the voters who elected him. No general, however patriotic and heroic, is above that hierarchy. Gen. James Mattis is one of the finest military heroes and leaders we have been blessed to have serve our country in this era. But it was time for him to step aside from the President’s cabinet because he differed from the President on so many policy issues. He did not share President Trump’s views opposing transgender social experimentation in the armed forces. He disagreed on the initiative to launch a sixth unit of the armed forces, focusing on a space force. He opposed moving our Israel embassy to Jerusalem. He opposed pulling out of the Paris climate accord, and he opposed pulling out of the disastrously myopic Iran Deal. He even demurred on the President’s decision to impose tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel in order to protect and foster America’s home-grown aluminum and steel production capabilities. He did not share the President’s view that the military and its budget will need to be part of building the Wall along our southern border, and that fight looms larger than ever as the new Congress enters, intent on withholding funding for the Wall, almost-certainly assuring a showdown over the use of defense funds for homeland security.
Really, Gen. Mattis really had to depart. The media should honor the continued vitality of the civilian leadership of our armed forces, rooted in the United States Constitution. President Trump is doing fine. The nation is in good hands. Remember: it was not that long ago that our defense and national security were in the hands of Obama, his revolving door of Defense Secretaries — and Susan Rice handling, uh, intelligence. Those were the people freeing murderers from Gitmo to murder again, while justifying the releases as needed to bring home Bo Bergdahl, a coward who is lucky he was not shot for desertion, but whom Rice said had served with “honor and distinction.” After we survived the psychological syndromes that the Obama Wasted Decade should have engendered, we have been inoculated. The Left media can go bark up another tree.
"Finally, America confronts a massive espionage operation."
Michael Cutler writes in FrontPage Magazine,
I have been unable to find specifics of what the Trump administration plans to do in the way of restricting students from China.
...When China rattles its sabers at the United States and other countries around the world, frequently those sabers were designed by those engineers who received their education in the United States.Read more here.
Furthermore, indeed, all too frequently China also shares stolen technology with adversaries of the United States.
Every other year ICE issues a report about the enrollment of foreign students in the United States. Here is the link to the latest such report: SEVIS By The Numbers: Biannual Report On International Student Trends April 2018.
It disclosed, among other facts that:
Forty-nine percent of the F and M student population in the United States hailed from either China (377,070 students) or India (211,703 students), and interest continues to grow. Over the reporting period, both China and India saw proportional growth between 1 and 2 percent, with China sending 6,305 more students and India sending 2,356 more students. It is this level of participation from China and India that makes Asia far and away the most popular continent of origin. In fact, 77 percent of all international students in the United States call Asia home.
F student visas are for students enrolled in academic programs while M students are enrolled in trade schools.
...President Trump is demonstrating a clear lesson to the thugs and bullies of the world that finally America will no longer be pushed around.
I have been unable to find specifics of what the Trump administration plans to do in the way of restricting students from China.
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