Bah! – Cold Fury

“My answer would be, ‘It’s none of your fvcking business'”

Posted on 1/15/20191/15/2019 by Mike 2 Comments

Wrong answer. Mine would be: NO, I do not. It might be a lie, but when some meddlesome asshat is trying to pry into business not his own with me, I don’t feel the slightest compunction about telling said asshat anything at all, and let him try to sort truth from fiction if he can.

Boston city officials plan on pushing legislation requiring doctors to ask patients whether or not they possess firearms in their homes.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s administration said Wednesday that the step would be taken to help health care providers statewide “play a larger role in addressing gun violence” by identifying red flags or patients at risk of suicide or domestic violence.

“We’re just asking them to help identify ways to save lives,” Boston Police Commissioner William Gross told the Boston Business Journal, adding that the legislation won’t suggest that doctors should solve crimes and that owning guns won’t be included in patients’ medical records.

Yeah, you go straight to hell, y’hear? It’s a safe bet that the medical-records bit at the end is just a straight-up lie itself, or soon will be. Actually, if I’m not mistaken the AMA has been urging doctors to ask their patients the same thing for several years now, but I could be wrong about that. MisHum closes with:

Why not ask about knives, rope, cars, baseball bats, booze and pills while you’re at it.

Don’t worry, they’ll get around to it soon enough. Count on it.

Update! Bill explains why “none of your business” is a mistake:

Don’t tell your medico anything you don’t want the government to know about if you can help it.

My doctor in SF once asked if I owned any firearms. I told him no, which was a flat lie. But telling him it was none of his business would have told him too much.

Exactly. This is just one of the many horrible side-effects of socialist tyranny: the complete erosion of trust, even in places where trust can be vital, and ought to be a given. But then, the eventual degeneration of beneficial, healthy community relationships into Hobbes’s War of All Against All is another of those features-not-bugs baked right into the collectivist cake.

Oh, and it would seem my memory didn’t quite fail me just now on the asking-about-guns thing. Or not entirely, anyway.

“Get Rid Of The Electoral College? It Would Lead To The Break-Up Of America, Or Worse”

Posted on 1/8/20191/8/2019 by Mike 1 Comment

At this point I’m inclined to consider that a feature, not a bug.

Why is this so important? The Electoral College has kept bigger states from bullying and pushing around the smaller states. Along with the Senate, in which each state gets two senators regardless of size (and Democrats want to get rid of that, too), the Electoral College gives small states a voice.

By the way, many of those small states are traditionalist, small-town oriented, conservative and Republican. Red States, in short. Getting rid of the Electoral College would give Blue States political domination over Red States. Democrats don’t give a hoot about “democracy.” What they care about is power. And eliminating the Electoral College or circumventing it altogether would give Democrats that.

Under their vision, the 50 states would wither away in terms of power and autonomy. They would merely be geographical descriptions, beholden entirely to the federal government. This kind of “democracy” means states like California and New York, with their huge, dysfunctional cities and large Democratic majorities, would become in effect geographical dictators to the rest of us.

It would also result in far more power residing in a corrupt centralized government. It move us inevitably toward the Sovietization of America. If you doubt that, recall that under the now defunct Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics, the individual republics had theoretical autonomy. They in fact had none. All powers and rights resided with the central government.

By which we’ll know it’s working exactly as intended. Can this possibly come as any kind of surprise to anybody by now?

In creating the Electoral College, the Founders very carefully and intentionally kept us from having a pure democracy. Why? Pure democracy amounts to mob rule. Get a 51% majority for anything, and it becomes law. Such countries, the Founders knew from deep study of history, inevitably led to disaster, chaos and collapse.

No Electoral College? Some states might hate losing their ancient rights and autonomy so much that they decide to secede. The left, which today cheers on far-left anti-Trump California when it says it might secede, would no doubt suddenly get very authoritarian about keeping Red States in the union. They’re taxpayers, you see.

Does anyone remember the Civil War?

We urge all Americans to oppose this awful idea of abolishing the Electoral College. You won’t create a purer democracy, as those who propose this plan suggest. In fact, you will surrender your precious rights as a citizen and give the authoritarian far left a path to permanent power — a political disaster that would end our nation’s successful 230-year run as the world’s freest, and most successful, republic.

Which is a feature, not a bug, for the Democrat-Marxists. So let them bring it on, then. This is what the American people voted for last fall. They should get it, good and hard.

The battle lines are firmly and clearly drawn: the commie hordes versus whatever handful of Real Americans still remains. At this late date, it’s just about time to open the ball and settle the issue one way or the other. Then, when the dust has settled, let the Left and the idiots who voted for them drain the cup of their “victory,” to its bitterest dregs.

TRUMP MUST BE IMPEACHED NOW!

Posted on 1/7/20191/7/2019 by Mike 1 Comment

Unfit for office.

In the fall of 1968, Donald J. Trump received a timely diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that led to his medical exemption from the military during Vietnam. For 50 years, the details of how the exemption came about, and who made the diagnosis, have remained a mystery, with Mr. Trump himself saying during the presidential campaign that he could not recall who had signed off on the medical documentation.

This is it? This variation on the old “chickenhawk” canard is really all they have left now? Walsh says:

Etc., etc. As part of their ongoing proctological examination of Trump and his family (including its deceased members), the Times and other Democrat media outlets have thrown all prior journalistic standards to the wind and will now report rumor and hearsay uncritically, just as long as they help in furthering the Narrative of Trump’s unsuitability for office. In the quoted passage above, I have highlighted in bold the weasel words that indicate there is no proof of the thesis being outlined in the story itself, but also that the reader is expected to draw the politically correct conclusion — that Trump’s deferment for bone spurs was the result of a favor from a doctor who may have owed Trump’s father a favor himself. That Dr. Braunstein, like Fred Trump, is dead is a feature, not a bug.

Well, I guess we can now look forward to seeing Mueller sink his fangs into this too, as part of his open-ended, neverending investigation of “Russian collusion” in the 2016 election. Hopefully, the Democrat-Marxists will include it as part of their articles of impeachment also, if only to underline once and for all what a complete farce our national political circus has become. This part of the NYT’s squalid hit piece is especially annoying to me:

The fact that a candidate seeking the presidency received military deferments or otherwise avoided fighting in Vietnam is not unusual. Voters have shown themselves willing to look past such controversies, electing George W. Bush, who served stateside in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam era, and Bill Clinton, who wrote to an Army R.O.T.C. officer in 1969 thanking him for “saving me from the draft.”

As I wrote here years and years ago: Bush did not “avoid” Vietnam by “serving stateside” in the ANG. For one thing, he had been trained to fly an aircraft—the F102 Delta Dagger—that was being phased out of service before his training period was even done. For another, serving in the Air Guard was by no means a ticket out of the Vietnam War; many AG units fought there, including Bush’s. For yet another, Bush actually tried to enlist in a special program for deployment there but was turned down on the grounds that his training wasn’t complete and he didn’t have the 500 hours flight time required. Thus:

The point of this discussion is that the military record of George W. Bush deserves a fair treatment. Bush has been criticized for avoiding service in Vietnam, though the evidence proves that the Texas Air National Guard and its F-102 pilots where serving in Vietnam while Bush was in training. Bush has been criticized for using his family influence to obtain his assignment, but the evidence shows that he successfully completed every aspect of the more than two years of training required of him. Bush has been criticized for pursuing a safe and plush position as a fighter pilot, but the evidence indicates the F-102 was a demanding aircraft whose pilots regularly risked their lives. Bush has also been criticized for deserting the Guard before his enlistment was complete, but the evidence shows he was honorably discharged eight months early because his position was being phased out.

This is not to say that there exist no points of contention in Bush’s record worthy of criticism. There are indeed some irregularities from April 1972 to May 1973 that indicate he may not have completed his responsibilities as a National Guardsman. However, these allegations have been fully investigated in the past and were found to lack credibility. Both the New York Times and the Boston Globe investigated Bush’s military service and concluded that “Bush logged numerous hours of duty, well above the minimum requirements for so-called ‘weekend warriors.'”

So, just another pantload of the usual lying-liberal bullshit, then. Clinton, on the other hand, remains the same old draft-dodging scumbag he always was. Sorry for the digression and all, but like I said, it still annoys me. And since they’re still using the same sleazy tactics they were back then—and still succeeding with them—it’s still relevant.

Disconnected

Posted on 1/6/20191/6/2019 by Mike 3 Comments

To quote Johnny Rotten: not a trace. No reality.

Never in modern times has there been such a disconnect between the opposition party and the realities of national life. The very talk of removing Trump, without evidence of an impeachable offense, is a stick in the eye to history and most Americans.

To be clear, the disconnect is not the product of policy differences, though they exist too. This is instead a mass outbreak of Trump Derangement Syndrome that, for those infected, can be cured only by undoing the results of the 2016 election.

And if by some lightning strike they succeed, then what? Impeach President Mike Pence, too?

How does any of this help the country address its infrastructure needs, reform entitlement programs or ensure better schools and more opportunities? And what message does it send to our allies and adversaries about America’s resolve?

The questions answer themselves. The relentless fixation on impeachment is a destructive decision that sacrifices national progress and security on the altar of partisan madness.

Well, to be fair, the Democrat-Marxists care not a whit for either of those things.

Paralysis by politics, of course, is a bipartisan disease, and Trump is not immune. His decision to force a partial government shutdown over border wall funding followed warnings that he was on the verge of betraying a key promise to his supporters.

But that doesn’t make both sides equally wrong.

No, it certainly doesn’t. On that last point, this sort of thing just annoys the living hell out of me:

THE L.A. TIMES IS PRETTY COOL WITH ANTI-SEMITISM, APPARENTLY: Can you admire Louis Farrakhan and still advance the cause of women? Maybe so. Life is full of contradictions.

As Drew McCoy tweets, “Replace ‘anti-Semite’ with ‘anti-Muslim’ and see if this piece gets published.”

Yet another reminder that the alt-right and the mainstream left are the mirror images of each other.

That’s Ed Driscoll making with the false equivalence in bold above; I’ve seen him do it several times, and he’s by no means the only one guilty of it.

By yielding to the Left’s denunciation of the former alt-right as being composed exclusively of “Nazis,” “fascists,” and “white supremacists,” the milquetoasts nominally on our side have shot themselves—and us—in the foot yet again. The term “alt-right” itself has been forever poisoned by a misguided eagerness on the part of Doormat Rightists to score points with the Left by proving their docility and reasonableness to them. It’s exactly the sort of thing that made a fool of Juanny Maverick a thousand and one times, that killed the Tea Party movement a-borning. It’s futile. It’s stupid. And it ain’t even close to the truth.

Sorry, cucks, but one of these things is NOT like the other. The alt-right, whatever and whoever it might represent now, is in no way a “mirror image” of the Left. The Left is seditious, treacherous, underhanded, and violent. They hate America That Was in its every particular: its values, its traditions, its strength, its prosperity, its influence. They hate the white males who founded it, built it, and made it work. They want it destroyed forever—ALL of it—and replaced with a collectivist tyranny firmly in control of every single aspect of our lives. ALL of our lives, every one of us.

The alt-right is, or was, NONE of those things. Not ONE. Period. Fucking. DOT. To pretend otherwise is a mug’s game, a fool’s errand, and suicidal. How can it possibly be that so many of us still can’t understand that the Left can never be defeated by continuing to play their game, by their rules?

The funny thing is, the desire to disassociate and distinguish themselves from the half-assed Loser Right is the very reason the alt-rightists started calling themselves that in the first place. Now they’re trying again with Derb’s newly-minted Dissident Right, which I actually like better anyway. We’ll soon see how long it takes the cucks and schmucks to fuck that up for us too, I guess.

An open letter to Mittens

Posted on 1/5/20191/6/2019 by Mike

From the comments, Skeptic unloads, and every word’s a gem.

Dear Senator Romney:

Mitt….buddy….pal. We gotta talk.

First of all, congratulations on winning the Senate seat in Massachusetts….uh, I mean New Hampshire….wait, Utah, that’s right, it was Utah. Winning your second election in seven tries had to feel good. I mean, “two and five” beats the hell out of “one and five,” am I right? And hey, even though you carpetbagged your way to perhaps the safest Republican Senate seat in the country when Orrin Hatch finally retired, it’s an accomplishment of sorts.

The best news was that you didn’t have to face a debate where you’d fold up like a cheap suit, like you did against Obama and Candy Crowley in 2012. Remember 2012, Mitt? When the media called you a racist/sexist/bigot/homophobe, murderer, anti-gay bully, and even a dog abuser? Aw, who can remember ancient history like that? Certainly not you – because if you did, you wouldn’t be sucking media ass before even sitting down in your Senate office.

Which brings me to the reason for writing this, Mitt. What’s the deal with that op-ed attacking Trump? Look, we get it. We know that you hate Trump. Well, you hate Trump, except for all the times you asked him for campaign donations…or his endorsement in 2012…..or begged him for a Cabinet job after his election…or asked him for another endorsement in your Senate run. Again, ancient history – who can remember as far back as February? Now you’re bound and determined to take the John McCain Official Backstabbing Media Whore Republican job.

The problem, Mitt, is that when you do stuff like this, it reminds us of a lot of things. Like, for instance, how you got rich. Your dad, George, got rich building things. You got rich by destroying them. Your company, Bain Capital, essentially did a much-refined and legal version of what the Mob did when they took over a business – ran up the debt, sold everything that wasn’t nailed down, and hung creditors with the unpaid bills while killing the company and putting people out of work. Made you rich as hell, but left you open to all kinds of attacks in your Presidential run.

The bitch, Mitt, is that we Republicans DEFENDED you back then. And then you spit in our faces. Which reminds us of what you really are, Mitt. You’re a very, very bad man. You use people and then you throw them away the moment they cease to be useful to you. Like you did Trump. Or the people that worked at all those companies.

You preach about ethics and character, Mitt, but you have neither of those qualities. Some people say that you’re probably a good guy in your personal life, but I doubt it. Frankly, I think you’re probably the same scumbag in private that you are in public and business life – you’re just so filthy rich that your family just doesn’t want to be cut out of the will.

So, Mitt, enjoy your spots on CNN. Say hi to Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert when you go on their shows. And hey, keep that Senate seat warm. You’re a Mormon in Utah, it’ll be yours as long as you want it. It won’t be like Massachusetts, where you had to decline to run for re-election so you wouldn’t lose yet another election.

But know this, Mitt. You will never, ever, ever, ever be President of the United States. Your loss of an eminently winnable election in 2012 did incalculable damage to the United States, and you’ll never get another shot at it. And thank God for that.

I’d advise you to just lay low and keep your mouth shut and collect your salary, but you’re far to much of a narcissist for that. So I will smile knowing that your vote, and your mouth, are essentially irrelevant in the big picture. And since I’m significantly younger than you, know that someday I will piss on your grave.

Signed, a loyal Trump supporter

Ouch. I mean, just…OUCH. Romney is, was, and ever shall be part of the Deep State problem, not the solution.

Update! Walsh piles painfully on:

You remember Mitt: the man who a) courageously decided not to run for re-election as governor of Massachusetts because he knew he would lose, b) lost the GOP nomination in 2008 to the left-for-dead candidate John McCain, and c) lost the 2012 election to Obama after winning the first debate and refusing to challenge the obvious electoral hinkiness in Ohio that still has Karl Rove scratching his head.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, the recrudescent Romney blasted the man he once begged to nominate him for secretary of state as he publicly announced his candidacy for the office of the Media’s Shadow President. That unpleasantness about the dog on the roof, or bullying the gay kid in prep school? All forgotten now!

And this from the guy who wanted Trump to give him a job in order to (as Bill Clinton famously said) “maintain [his] political viability within the system.” Mitt’s willingness to cozy up to Trump even had some completely disinterested reporters fretting: “The statesmanlike version of Mitt Romney has left the building, and the self-proclaimed ‘severely conservative’ one has returned,” wrote Karen Tumulty in the Washington Post last March after Mitt took a “harsh” line on illegal immigration.

But once rebuffed, Mitt pivoted, ran for the U.S. Senate, won, and now stands ready to inherit the mantle of Bob Corker and Jeff Flake as the only living Republicans the media will quote with approval. That both of their political careers ended thanks to their opposition to Trump doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.

Hopefully, that’s something our now-hobbled lame-duck President can still get done on his own. As for Mittens and those oddly pliant Severe Conservative Principles™ of his: hey, like Groucho Marx, if you don’t like those, he has others.

Invisible hand update! Pulling Mitt’s strings.

McConnell has a history of getting caught. However, fortunately for him people also have a tendency to forget [see McConnell’s scheme in the Mississippi 2014 Cochran race as an example]. Almost no-one remembers that U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, the founder of the Senate Conservative Fund, quit the Senate specifically because of the schemes and internal Machiavellian power moves of Mitch McConnell.

So when the carefully constructed, pre-planned, pre-scheduled, and pre-organized public op-ed by incoming Senator Mitt Romney was deployed in the Washington Post… for those who have watched McConnell work; we knew exactly who orchestrated it and why.

Senator Romney will be one (not the only) visible face of the opposition. However, just like former Senator Corker and current Senator Sasse, the instructions (direct and indirect), and/or the approvals, will come from Leader McConnell’s office.

Through his power structure McConnell directly controls about 8 to 15 republican senators; we have called them “The Decepticons” for years. [Cornyn, Thune, Porter, Blunt, Portman, Burr, Barasso, Crapo, Murkowski, Gardner, Roberts, Sasse, Tillis, Graham and now Romney]

McConnell needed to test Romney’s commitment to the Decepticon club. Romney passed the test. Romney was rewarded with placement on the Senate Foreign Relations committee. Those Senators who sit on this committee get the most financial benefit from foreign lobbying.

Yes, Democrats are the opponents. However, the far more urgent MAGA enemy is Mitch McConnell.

Sundance notes that he “has followed and mapped how Mitch McConnell operates for over a decade.” Knowing how good he’s always been at digging this behind-the-curtain stuff up, I would hesitate to call him wrong on this one. And while we’re on the topic of Yertle McTurtle:

While McConnell and his team may bemoan their lack of the 60 votes needed to overcome Democrat opposition, the truth is, neither he nor his team has ever even tried. Because the wall, or anything else related to Trump’s immigration agenda, isn’t a McConnell priority.

This is obvious when you look at things that are among his priorities; that is, what happens when the congressional GOP and the White House align. On tax reform, McConnell clearly communicated his priorities, he worked closely with his House colleagues, he engaged K Street, Wall Street, Main Street, and the White House. He worked his Senate colleagues, horse-traded for votes, and made sure all of them were prepared to vote favorably.

Senate Republican leadership worked the tax bill for a solid year before getting it passed, using a reconciliation vehicle that only required 51 votes in the Senate (the same vehicle they could have used for the wall this year, but left untouched; effectively, a silver bullet left chambered).

In short, Republicans united with the president around tax reform, a priority they all wanted, which faced stiff opposition from Democrats, and for which they did not possess 60 votes in the Senate. They made the earth shake in pursuit of it. And they won.

The same effort could be applied to the wall. But McConnell has instead chosen to ignore it.

For Cocaine Mitch it’s a Swamp two-fer: he’s opposed to the wall, and he’s opposed to Trump too. So what’s not to like about a little quiet backroom skullduggery that snooters both at once?

Annnd here come the Democrat-Marxists!

Posted on 1/4/20191/4/2019 by Mike

Gird your loins.

Rep. Brad Sherman plans to introduce articles of impeachment against President Trump on Thursday, the first day of Democratic control of the House.

Sherman (D-Northridge) is reintroducing a measure that he first rolled out in 2017. But this year it carries more political significance: The decision of whether to act on it rests with Democrats — not Trump’s Republican allies.

That’s what the American people voted for. Now let them get it. Good and hard.

No way the Senate will go along, though. I mean, no way. Right? Not with such stalwarts to hold the line as, say, that Severe Conservative from Utah who…uhhh, never mind. Ah, but that’s not all:

BREAKING: Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen (TN) introduces bill to eliminate the electoral college pic.twitter.com/QQJKtrc8ir

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 4, 2019

This is—quite literally, in fact—just the beginning, folks. And don’t anybody bother trying to tell me that they “can’t do” this or they “won’t do” that. You just watch and see what they “can’t” or “won’t” do.

Update! With Democrat-Marxists ascendant once more, we can all expect one hell of a lot more of this too:

My strong belief in my Second Amendment rights is core to who I am. I know that is not understood by many today, however I am not asking to be understood. I’m asking to be left alone.

Be sure to ask nicely. Then let’s see what it gets you.

I am asking for progressives who run city government to live up to their assertion of tolerance and just let me be.

Because I own a long gun with a pistol grip and a detachable magazine, I had to the end of December to self-identify to the police, present myself for investigation and my gun for inspection, pay fees in order to receive a police-issued permission slip, all to avoid jail time, monetary penalties, and the confiscation and destruction of my gun.

I have never been convicted or even charged with a crime in my 54 years of life, but this week I became a criminal. I am no different then potentially thousands of other Boulderites who cannot bring themselves to submit to this ugliness. And yes, I know, most people today don’t see this as ugly or intolerant, but simply a reasonable thing to do about this “epidemic.” After all, something needs to be done.

For publicly stating that I will not comply, my daughter has been targeted at her Boulder school, the one with posters celebrating tolerance and diversity all over the walls. My refusal to submit has been commented on by teachers in front of their classes. She has been ganged up on by students and bullied because “her father is a murderer.” She is worried that I will be taken to jail. As a single dad to her and her handicapped brother, I have to admit I’m worried about that too.

I respect the police, greatly. The cops I know hate the idea of enforcing this intolerance.

Which ain’t gonna stop them from doing it, bub. Like I always say: it isn’t a “right” if you have to get a permit from the government to exercise it.

Updated update! “It’s time to debate how to Begin.”

How’s that Voting thing working out for you?

While Trump has done some good for us, the main thing that he ran on The Wall has not come to fruition, Obamacare has not been repealed and our national Debt is about to hit 22 TRILLION! There’s more but you get the point.

Our forefathers’ worst nightmare has now come upon us. They created a free government, limited in its powers and a servant to the people. But today the United States has become an empire, fast decaying into tyranny; and we their children have become strangers and subjects in the land our fathers won. Instead of a free and just social and political order, today we are threatened by a Godless national culture and a corrupt, despotic federal government that knows no limits to its power.

What happened to the Rule of Law? We all witnessed James Comey lay out Hillary Clintons crimes one by one and then he stood there and said Sorry about your Luck but she is untouchable and flipped the big middle finger to the American People. I used to think that restoring the Rule of Law would save us from this path of Civil War we are on. Now I think the only way to restore the Rule of Law is by exterminating a great many people who think the law should only apply one way.

It’s ugly all right, and a deeply disturbing thought. But if you think this isn’t related to the rest of the post above, you got some more thinking to do.

Deep dive into the Deep State sewer

Posted on 1/3/20191/3/2019 by Mike

It’s corruption, all the way down.

A collection of reports compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, the dossier is now engraved in contemporary U.S. history. First marketed as bedrock evidence that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, the dossier’s legitimacy took a hit after reports showed the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the work.

The revelation that the dossier was used to secure a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page compromised the integrity of the investigation the FBI had opened on Page and three other Trump associates by the end of July 2016. Nonetheless, that same probe continues today as the special counsel investigation.

The dossier plays a central role in Robert Mueller’s probe. In the unredacted portions of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s memo outlining Mueller’s scope are allegations that Trump adviser Paul Manafort colluded with Russian government officials interfering in the 2016 race. That claim is found in no other known document but the dossier. It is unclear whether further dossier allegations are in the redacted portions of the scope memo.

The dossier operation has not only damaged institutions like the FBI and DOJ, it has also poisoned the public sphere, perhaps irremediably. As a result, it is now accepted journalistic practice to print, and reprint, any garish fantasy so long as it’s layered with Russian intrigue and Trump team treason. Even as the rest of the country sees an institution that has made itself a laughingstock, the press continues to salute itself for its bravery—or the courage and industry required to take leaks from law enforcement and intelligence officials and Democratic operatives in an effort to topple a president it doesn’t like, elected by neighbors it holds in contempt.

How did it come to this?

Easy: a bunch of goddamned Deep State liars cooked it up to cripple and/or unseat Trump for the sole purpose of preserving their own ill-gotten and illegitimate power, and to help Her Herness steal the 2016 election. After the unthinkable happened and it turned out her crippled, deranged, drunken ass couldn’t be dragged across the finish line by hook or (mostly) crook, Job One became covering hers and Obama’s busted attempt to rig the 2016 election—that, along with a whole slew of other criminal behavior besides.

Lee Smith does indeed dive deep into this stinking cesspool of Mordor On The Potomac malfeasance, and he deserves full props for his meticulous spelling-out of the details of the whole sordid tour de farce. It all amounts to a completely damning indictment of the Swamp entire; every single soulless blaggard who touched this turd is besmirched by his or her involvement in it, and prison ought to be the most minor of their worries. Actual revolutions have been sparked by less than has already been revealed of this mess, and we still don’t know the half of it. But for my money, the worst, the most damning part of all, lurks withing the wording of the godawful FISA law itself:

Title I of the 1978 Foreign Surveillance Act—“Electronic Surveillance within the United States for Foreign Intelligence Purposes”—lays it out. Under the definition of “agent of a foreign power,” there are two categories: “any person other than a United States person,” and “any person.” Since Page is an American citizen, he falls into the second category.

According to Wauck, the relevant parts are two paragraphs in Section 101 (b) (2). To obtain a FISA warrant on a U.S. person, the target either:

(A) knowingly engages in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of a foreign power, which activities involve or may involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States;

(B) pursuant to the direction of an intelligence service or network of a foreign power, knowingly engages in any other clandestine intelligence activities for or on behalf of such foreign power, which activities involve or are about to involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States.

Get that? “Any person other than a United States person,” and “any person.” “…involve or are about to involve a violation of the criminal statutes of the United States.” Gee, not much leeway allowed by that weasel-worded bafflegab, eh? FISA casts itself a pretty damned broad net, it seems, the better to be of use in any imaginable situation wherein the Deep State might wish to ensnare itself some prey, whether great or small.

The FISA law should be thrown out entire, immediately. It established one of the most unconscionable kangaroo-courts in history, an all-powerful, unaccountable, top-secret star-chamber of a sort that neither should nor could exist in any but the most brazen and corrupt of tyrannies. Its continued existence is a blight upon this nation, and a condemnation of any people that would countenance it. It is a crime and a disgrace. Its use in promoting the Steele dossiers and the ongoing coup attempt behind them is sickening…and is exactly the kind of thing FISA was designed to be used for from the start.

You have to cut the grass to see the snakes

Posted on 12/31/201812/31/2018 by Mike

And the yard is overrun with them.

Nearly two years after Donald Trump was sworn into office, NeverTrump still has no compelling policy alternative to what they derisively call “Trumpism.” Instead, they embody the approach they endlessly ridicule in the president, using insults, obfuscation, and emotional outbursts to avoid answering a very direct question:

What Would NeverTrump Do?

Alarmed the president wants to pull a few thousand troops out of Syria? NeverTrump should convince Americans that the loss of one U.S. soldier is worth the risk—and use something more than the banal “it’s in the interest of our national security” trope.

Object to the president’s planned withdrawal of 14,000 troops from Afghanistan after we’ve partially occupied that nation for more than 17 years? Tell us, NeverTrump, why the 12 American soldiers killed in that country this year alone, four years after our combat mission officially ended, was a necessary sacrifice.

Instead of mourning the murders of Jamal Khashoggi and (even more pathetically) the Weekly Standard, perhaps NeverTrump should’ve devoted one column—just one—to mourn the murders of the brave Americans who are our real guardians, not the phony warriors celebrated by Time and Commentary.

Don’t like the Tariff Man? Then what, NeverTrump, is your plan to halt unfair trade practices and tariffs levied on American products? How would NeverTrump have exacted a steep reduction in Chinese-imposed tariffs on U.S. automobiles, as Trump succeeded in doing this year? Please explain to a farmer friend of mine who told me earlier this year that “China has been screwing us for years” how NeverTrumpers will stop this one-sided screwing? If only NeverTrump had devoted a tiny portion of the time it’s devoted to the threat of Russian Twitter bots to the legitimate threat of Chinese piracy. How would NeverTrump halt the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars in intellectual property by the Chinese each year?

There is no such thing as free trade between nations no matter how many times NeverTrump clicks its loafers and repeats it in the CNN green room.

Ditto for border security. If a wall won’t fix anything, as most NeverTrumpers insist, then what will? The security and humanitarian crisis at the border—starkly described by John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist this year—is real, and it’s a crisis that establishment conservatives and the GOP not only have ignored for more than a decade, it is one they were complicit in allowing to be manufactured.

It did not have to be this way. Last summer, while admitting the “scene at the southern border is a horror,” the best solution Goldberg could come up with to mitigate the flow of unskilled, destitute migrants was “to make poor countries rich as quickly as possible.” Neat idea, Jonah. Probably nobody has ever thought of that one before.

That mindset exposes NeverTrump’s most egregious flaw: Their shared sympathy for the downtrodden from other countries while ignoring, if not straight up mocking, Americans who face economic and political alienation in their own country. Trump has tackled the lethal opioid epidemic; the exodus of working-class job opportunities in rural communities; and the nation’s costly gambit of prioritizing climate change mitigation over expanding America’s energy production. And, NeverTrump, what say you on these issues?

They’ve got nothing.

They never did have—other than naked fraud and duplicity; preplanned failure and “surrender” to the Left; eternal futility; forked-tongue promises of “fights” and “victory”; pointless never-ending wars; and chin-pulling, condescending lectures about “principles” they constantly betray themselves. Meanwhile, as Kelly says, Trump is still in there working at the thankless task of trying to hack back the Deep State/Uniparty weeds as best he can, beset on every side by Ruling Class Clowns. To hell with the venomous, despicable Decepticon phonies, every man Jack of ’em.

The new rules

Posted on 12/31/201812/31/2018 by Mike

The most sidesplitting photo I’ve seen all week.

But…but…but…why is a DUDE rasslin’ a CHICK, you ask? Easy-peasy: because he believes he ain’t a dude, and whatever he wishes reality to be, that’s what it must be, that’s why. Ace says:

The transgender is actually biologically female, but “transitioning” to male via male hormone injections. Which, you may have heard from professional sports scandals, are considered an illegal and unfair advantage in sports.

The problem is that Texas is making this female wrestle as a female. The rule should be changed to reflect the idea females are special category in sports, and that anyone who was born male or who is taking male steroids for whatever reason must compete as a male. Whether xe identifies as male or not.

Nope, no way. Sorry, but these are the New Rules, and if we must be forced to live by ’em, then so must they. The situation is not without its layers and layers of toothsome irony:

For the second year in a row, a transgender wrestler has won the Texas girls’ Class 6A 110-pound division.

Mack Beggs, an 18-year-old senior from Euless Trinity High School near Dallas, entered the tournament in Cypress outside of Houston with an undefeated record. He beat Chelsea Sanchez — whom he beat for the title in 2017– in the final match Saturday.

Back to Ace for the ironic bit:

Chelsea Sanchez would thus be a two-time female wrestling champ if she had not been forced to compete with someone who is using male hormones. Something she would be banned from the sport if she were found using.

Tough noogies. I do kinda feel sorry for the female wrestler, sure. Doesn’t matter. Liberals are making a better world. All of them, better worlds—whether we like it or not; whether their reckless, lunatic tinkering makes sense or not; even whether they’re actually better worlds or not. Ours not to reason why, people; ours but to take what we’re given, shut the fuck up, and live with it.

So everybody repeat the New Rules after me: gender is fluid, malleable, a matter not of biology but of simple preference. There is no meaningful difference between males and females—physically, mentally, or in any other respect. Traditional gender roles based on common sense and objective reality: BAD. Capricious destruction of them: GOOD, no matter the real damage done to both society and individuals trapped within it. These are but a few of the Rules, and there will be more. Learn ’em, live ’em, love ’em. Or else.

True to form, true to nature

Posted on 12/31/201812/31/2018 by Mike

The other day I said this regarding the tragic, untimely death of Bre Payton:

And may the horrid, evil Lefty ghouls somehow restrain themselves from dancing on her grave like they usually do, just this once.

Of course, we all knew when I wrote it just how likely that would be.

Vile, loathsome, evil, worthless motherfuckers. Every goddamned one of these subhumans should be held underwater until they stop kicking, their carcasses stacked into a pile and burned to noisome cinders. The world would be a much better place for it.

That’s right, I fucking well said it. And what of it? Somebody had to.

Lennonism

Posted on 12/30/201812/30/2018 by Mike

At first glance I thought it was a typo. It’s nothing of the sort.

I have a friend who is a retired public school teacher. She is very likable and in some areas an independent thinker. One day in conversation she brought up the terrible poverty and near-anarchy that prevails just on the other side of America’s southern border. It quickly became clear that she believed America was at fault, that America’s prosperity was somehow the cause of Mexico’s problems. When I asked her what the solution might be, she replied without hesitation that we should get rid of that border, and not stop there but get rid of all borders. Then, she said, people everywhere could live in peace.

If I could capture for you precisely how she said this, you would hear as I did John Lennon’s “Imagine”forming her thoughts:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace…

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man.

The simplest explanation of what happened to the modern progressive Baby Boomers is that they found for themselves a new national anthem, one they like much better than that old and out-dated one that asked them to be brave if they expected to be free.

In conversations with my progressive friends, I find they see America as the problem. They place their hopes in the world beyond America’s borders. When Kerry said America needed France’s approval to conduct foreign policy, his assertion made perfect sense to Lennonists. When Bill Maher said if half the country wants Trump as president then the United Nations needs to intervene, he spoke for American Lennonists everywhere.

You have to admit that American Lennonism has a certain logic. If America is the problem, then getting rid of America’s borders is an important and even an essential step toward a better world. But if America is not the problem, if America deserves to live, if there are still many Americans who want America to live, then not so much. And if getting rid of America turned out to be a mistake, it would be a mistake impossible to undo.

Oh, I think it’s safe to say those of us who didn’t know that already are now beginning to realize it. Personally, I like to imagine a world with no John Lennon, and his destructive Leftard influence on our world completely undone.

The personal EVERYTHING is political

Posted on 12/27/201812/27/2018 by Mike

My, but she really IS the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t she?

On Christmas Day, Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) repeated the old liberal canard that because Jesus was a refugee, attempts to secure the U.S. border and limit illegal immigration are anti-Christmas. While Jesus was a refugee, Christmas has nothing to do with immigration policy. Furthermore, the very baby-killing event Jesus was fleeing has a tragic echo in abortion clinics today.

“Joy to the World! Merry Christmas everyone – here’s to a holiday filled with happiness, family, and love for all people (Including refugee babies in mangers + their parents.),” socialist darling Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

Contrary to another beloved Christianity-hating-liberal shibboleth, Joseph and Mary weren’t homeless, either. But hey, even the birth of Christ isn’t exempt from being used by Progtard scum as a tool to score dishonest political points, I guess. As Warner Todd Huston so pithily puts it: “It all amounts to fake news that is over 2,000 years old.“

Easy-peasy

Posted on 12/27/201812/27/2018 by Mike

All this confusion and angst over such a simple, obvious fact.

Two Princeton groups recently held an event celebrating menstruation where students were told that menstrual periods are not limited solely to women, and that people other than women can menstruate. However, the groups refused to comment or expand on this argument. Princeton feminist groups contacted by The College Fix also declined to discuss the issue.

At the recent “Menstruation Celebration,” hosted by Princeton Students for Reproductive Justice and Princeton Students for Gender Equality, the organizations were “urging people to stop referring to menstruation as a women’s issue, since transgender and non-binary people get periods as well.”

Menstruation, a monthly biological event in which the uterus sheds its lining if there is no embryo present, is widely understood by biologists and scientists to be a phenomenon that affects only females.

“Widely understood”? It is to laugh. Since the definition of “female” can be reduced to “homogametic (ie, two X chromosomes), ovaries, fallopian tubes, and a uterus,” then mentally-ill people such as “transgenders” and “nonbinaries” who possess those characteristics are, BY DEFINITION AND ACCORDING TO SCIENCE, female, and their fantasies, desires, and/or delusions be damned. The only—ONLY—exceptions would be true hermaphrodites, which are quite rare.

Why, oh why, do libtards hate Teh Science™ so?

Then we lapse into some real hilarity:

Neither Princeton Students for Reproductive Justice nor Princeton Students for Gender Equality responded to repeated requests for comment from The College Fix on the position that individuals other than women can menstruate. The Fix also asked the groups whether or not other topics commonly seen as “women’s issues,” such as abortion, should no longer be referred to as such.

Princeton is home to a wide array of women’s and feminist groups. The College Fix reached out to several of these organizations to see if they had differing opinions on menstruation being strictly a women’s issue. All eight organizations failed to comment, including the Princeton Association of Black Women, Princeton for Women in Politics, the Graduate Women of Color Caucus, Women’s Political Caucus, Wym’on Stage, and SpeakOut.

Well, naturally. You microaggressed ’em, dude. That always sends ’em screaming off to their safe spaces to curl up into a fetal ball and tremble for a few hours.

The umbrella organization for these feminist groups, the Princeton Women*s Center, has lately promoted LGBT ideology in its programming and events. This past October, the Women*s Center began coordinating two “Queering the Color Line” events each month to create “an affirming space for LGBTQIA Students of Color to meet and share a meal.”.

Explaining why the Women*s Center uses an asterisk rather than an apostrophe in its name, the organization writes on its website: “When you come upon an asterisk in your reading, you recognize it as a [sic] indication that there’s something more to learn. We use the asterisk to suggest that we are much more than our name implies: the Center is not just for women nor is it just about women. We welcome and engage persons of all genders here, including genderqueer, nonconforming, transgender folks, and cisgender men.”

Like I always say, you just can’t parody these goofballs anymore. Lucky for those of us who still occasionally try, though, they’re doing it themselves.

Sabotage

Posted on 12/27/201812/27/2018 by Mike

Ask a silly question: “Is The Fed Trying To Kill The Trump Boom?”

So we’re supposed to believe that declining inflation and dramatically slower growth bolster the argument for three rate hikes?

The Fed’s Powell has hinted it’s near the “neutral” rate of interest. What would that be, exactly? No one really knows, since it’s a moving target.

Yet, since Powell shocked markets on October 3 by saying that interest rates are “a long way” from neutral, the Dow Jones industrial average has fallen 13%, and other major gauges by similar amounts. The markets are doing what they always do: reassessing growth based on new information. The markets tell the story: They think the Fed is dismantling the Trump boom.

The Fed’s Powell basically acknowledges the Fed’s uncertainty: “There’s significant uncertainty about the — both the path and the ultimate destination of any further rate increases,” he said, in remarks after the Fed’s Wednesday rate hike. “Inflation has remained just a touch below 2%. So I do think that gives the committee the ability to be patient in moving forward.”

More Fed-speak. Would the “ability to be patient” include two more rate hikes next year after the one this week? Or one? Or none? Based on the best immediate growth bellwether we have, the stock market, more rate hikes won’t be good for the economy.

No, we’re not predicting a recession. We’re not in the prediction business. But we can say this, for certain: Since World War II, every recession has been preceded by a series of Fed rate hikes. So at bare minimum, the Fed has significantly raised the chance of a downturn for President Trump — after keeping rates at record lows for the two terms of the previous president.

Sure, Trump has made a number of snarky, critical remarks about the Fed, even though Trump nominated Powell for the post. And Powell of course denies any political motivation for the rate move.

But we’d be surprised if at least some of the sub rosa rationale for this unneeded rate hike came from Powell and his Fed colleagues wanting to show markets they’re independent of Trump. They won’t be bullied. Hey, it worked for Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan.

If so, here’s a modest monetary proposal: How about a Fed-White House detente? Trump stops talking trash about the Fed, the Fed stops unnecessarily hiking interest rates, and average Americans get to keep their booming economy. Sounds like a deal.

Here’s an even better one: get rid of the Fed entirely, go back to the gold standard, and decouple the economy from the strangling hand of a too-meddlesome federal government to the greatest possible extent.

Yeah, I know, I know. But a guy can still dream, right?

Dem JOOOZ!

Posted on 12/27/201812/27/2018 by Mike

An oldie but goodie from Derb, wherein he reviews a treatise by Kevin McDonald making the standard-issue, Mark-1 Mod-0 complaint about the Jews controlling everything, and destroying it all for their own Jew reasons.

The Culture of Critique includes many good things. There is a spirited defense of the scientific method, for example. One of the sub-themes of the book is that Jews are awfully good at creating pseudosciences—elaborate, plausible, and intellectually very challenging systems that do not, in fact, have any truth content—and that this peculiar talent must be connected somehow with the custom, persisted in through long pre-Enlightenment centuries, of immersing young men in the study of a vast body of argumentative writing, with status in the community—and marriage options, and breeding opportunities—awarded to those who have best mastered this mass of meaningless esoterica. (This is not an original observation, and the author does not claim it as such. In fact he quotes historian Paul Johnson to the same effect, and earlier comments along these lines were made by Arthur Koestler and Karl Popper.) MacDonald is very scathing about these circular and self-referential thought-systems, especially in the case of psychoanalysis and the “pathologization of Gentile culture” promoted by the Frankfurt School. Here he was precisely on my wavelength, and I found myself cheering him on. Whatever you may think of MacDonald and his theories, there is no doubt he believes himself to be doing careful objective science. The same could, of course, be said of Sheldon, Rhine, Kinsey, et al.

It is good to be reminded, too, with forceful supporting data, that the 1924 restrictions on immigration to the U.S. were not driven by any belief on the part of the restrictionists in their own racial superiority but by a desire to stabilize the nation’s ethnic balance, which is by no means the same thing. (In fact, as MacDonald points out, one of the worries of the restrictionists was that more clever and energetic races like the Japanese would, if allowed to enter, have negative effects on social harmony.) MacDonald’s chapter on “Jewish involvement in shaping U.S. immigration policy” is a detailed survey of a topic I have not seen discussed elsewhere. If the Jews learned anything from the 20th century, it was surely the peril inherent in being the only identifiable minority in a society that is otherwise ethnically homogeneous. That thoughtful Jewish-Americans should seek to avoid this fate is understandable. That their agitation was the main determinant of postwar U.S. immigration policy seems to me more doubtful. And if it is true, we must believe that 97 percent of the U.S. population ended up dancing to the tune of the other three percent. If that is true, the only thing to say is the one Shakespeare’s Bianca would have said: “The more fool they.”

Similarly with MacDonald’s discussion of Jewish involvement in the Bolshevik takeover of the Russian Empire and the many horrors that ensued. This was until recently another taboo topic, though the aged Alexander Solzhenitsyn, presumably feeling he has nothing much to lose, has recently taken a crack at it. I believe MacDonald was driven by necessity here. Having posited that Jews are out to “destroy” (this is his own word) Gentile society, he was open to the riposte that if, after 2,000 years of trying, the Jews had failed to accomplish this objective in even one instance, Gentiles don’t actually have much to worry about. So: the Jews destroyed Russia. Though MacDonald’s discussion of this topic is interesting and illuminating, it left me unconvinced. As he says, “The issue of the Jewish identification of Bolsheviks who were Jews by birth is complex.” Paul Johnson gives only 15-20 percent of the delegates at early Party congresses as Jewish. If the other 80-85 percent were permitting themselves to be manipulated by such a small minority, then we are back with Bianca.

The aspect of Macdonald’s thesis that I find least digestible is his underlying assumption that group conflict is a zero-sum game rooted in an evolutionary tussle over finite resources. This is not even true on an international scale, as the growing wealth of the whole world during this past few decades has shown. On the scale of a single nation, it is absurd. These Jewish-inspired pseudoscientific phenomena that The Culture of Critique is concerned with—Boasian anthropology, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School, and so on—were they a net negative for America? Yes, I agree with MacDonald, they were. Now conduct the following thought experiment. Suppose the great post-1881 immigration of Ashkenazi Jews had never occurred. Suppose the Jewish population of the U.S. in 2003 were not the two to four percent (depending on your definitions) that it is, but the 0.3 percent it was at the start of the Civil War. Would anything have been lost? Would America be richer or poorer? Would our cultural and intellectual life be busier or duller?

It seems incontrovertible to me that a great deal would have been lost: entrepreneurs, jurists, philanthropists, entertainers, publishers, and legions upon legions of scholars: not mere psychoanalysts and “critical theorists,” but physicists, mathematicians, medical research- ers, historians, economists—even, as MacDonald notes honestly in his new preface, evolutionary psychologists! The first American song whose words I knew was “White Christmas,” written by a first-generation Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant. The first boss I ever had in this country was a Jew who had served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps. Perhaps it is true, as MacDonald claims, that “most of those prosecuted for spying for the Soviet Union [i.e., in the 1940s and 1950s] were Jews.” It is also true, however, that much of the secret research they betrayed to their country’s enemies was the work of Jewish scientists. The Rosenbergs sold the Bomb to the Soviets; but without Jewish physicists, there would have been no Bomb to sell. Last spring I attended a conference of mathematicians attempting to crack a particularly intractable problem in analytic number theory. A high proportion of the 200-some attendees were Jews, including at least two from Israel. Sowers of discord there have certainly been, but on balance I cannot see how anyone could deny that this country is enormously better off for the contributions of Jews. Similarly for every other nation that has liberated the energies and intelligence of Jewish citizens. Was Hungary better off, or worse off, after the 1867 Ausgleich? Was Spain better off, or worse off, before the 1492 expulsions? “To ask the question is to answer it.”

Now, Kevin MacDonald might argue that he, as a social scientist, is not obliged to provide any such balance in his works, any more than a clinical pathologist writing about disease should be expected to include an acknowledgment that most of his readers will be healthy for most of their lives. I agree. A scientist, even a social scientist, need not present any facts other than those he has uncovered by diligent inquiry in his particular narrow field. He is under no obligation, as a scientist, to soothe the feelings of those whose sensibilities might be offended by his discoveries. Given the highly combustible nature of MacDonald’s material, however, it wouldn’t have hurt to point out the huge, indisputably net-positive, contributions of Jews to America, right at the beginning of his book and again at the end. MacDonald has in any case been fairly free in CofC with his own opinions on such matters as U.S. support for Israel, immigration policy, and so on. He is entitled to those opinions, but having included them in this book, his claim to dwell only in the aery realm of cold scientific objectivity does not sound very convincing.

This is, after all, in the dictionary definition of the term, an anti-Semitic book. Its entire argument is that the Jews, collectively, are up to no good. This may of course be true, and MacDonald is entitled to say that the issue of whether his results are anti-Semitic is nugatory, from a social-science point of view, by comparison with the issue of their truth content. I agree with that, too: but given the well-known history of this topic, it seems singularly obtuse of MacDonald not to try to calm the troubled waters his work is bound to stir up.

Of course he’s obtuse: he’s just another Jew-hating crank grinding away on that same old worn-out wheel—a guy who sees a big hooked nose and a yarmulka lurking behind every problem or setback. It’s exactly the same sort of easy, comforting deflection practiced by the dismaying number of black Americans eager to blame Whitey (or the Chinks, or the Mexicans, et al) for all their woes. People who really, truly believe that all the world’s problems can be laid at the feet of a sinister cabal of Dem JOOOZ! are intellectually lazy at best, and should probably get out more.

(Via Zman)

The Trump Filibuster

Posted on 12/24/201812/24/2018 by Mike

Long may it wave.

When the Republicans shut down the Government under Obama, he cynically set up barriers to prevent people from visiting the World War II memorial and the Martin Luther King monument. That was consistent with his vicious narcissism that animated so much of the Lost Decade from January 2009 until the Trump inauguration of 2016. There was no need for Obama to close down those monuments and memorials, just petty cynical politics. Those sites did not require funding to stay open. President Trump can keep them open simply by not going out of his way to shut them down. And many other national treasures also can remain open, only with the Tourist Welcome Centers closed. Inasmuch as the security of the nation is at stake — big deal!

Know the part I never got? The idea of “non-essential government employees.” If they’re “nonessential”, then WHY THE FUCK DO THEY HAVE THOSE JOBS IN THE FIRST DAMNED PLACE?

Of course, that question is purely sarcastic. The government is in large part no more than a jobs program for shiftless, worthless, incompetent minorities, especially blacks. If you don’t believe me, head on down to your local offices of any government bureaucracy you care to name and try to get a straight answer about something—anything. Then get back to me.

Otherwise, this Trump Filibuster is a necessary urgency that has virtually no downside. CNN and MSNBC — Fox News, too — will need to fill their programming with “news” for 24 hours daily, seven days a week, so they will make the Trump Filibuster as ridiculously overblown and dramatic as possible. Someone somewhere will die, and they will blame it on the shutdown. They will blame global warming on the shutdown. Freezing blizzards on the shutdown. They will blame tornadoes, hurricanes, and Kevin Hart’s tweets on the shutdown. They will blame the Trump Filibuster for Michael Moore gaining weight and for Ocasio-Cortez being unable to remember whether she was elected to Congress, the Senate, or the New York State Assembly. But it all will be stuff and nonsense. None of it matters. Every three minutes on Fox, there will be a loud clang followed by “Fox News Alert.” Even Fox aficionados long ago learned to tune those out; they never amount to anything.

Nothing has changed, and nothing is going to change. The furloughed federal workers all will get their back-pay in the mail as soon as the Government reopens. Mueller will keep doing that thing he does. His funding reliably is there, if he likes, through January 21, 2024. The House Democrats will have no problem getting federal payments made to their dozens of investigators and lawyers as they ramp up the next two years of non-stop investigations into Trump’s taxes, Trump’s hotels, Trump’s golf swing, Trump’s hairspray. The Democrats still will have the money to fly to D.C. every Monday morning and to fly back home for weekends. The shutdown is all a big nothing. Or, in the spirit of the season: Bah humbug.

But here is what is not humbug: If this President backs down on building a Wall, there will be a Democrat sweep in 2020. You can take that to the bank, no matter what interest rates the Fed sets. Caucasian ethnic blue collar voters in the Rustbelt — states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan —voted for him in 2016 because they felt he would be a different kind of politician, namely one who honors and fulfills his promises. That is, they believed he is not a “politician.” In so many ways, he has rewarded his constituents’ faith. But the Wall is the biggie; it is his cardinal promise: “Read my lips, No new crossings. If you like your border, you can keep your border.” That Wall is his defining pledge.

If he backs down on the Wall, even after a year, then President Trump will be signaling to those who had not voted for years, people who essentially boycotted elections because “they all are crooks and liars,” that he is one more charlatan in the mix. But if he stands his ground on this one, he will engender an enormous loyalty of people who will vote in 2020 on the passionate belief that “he has been fighting for us, and now we have to fight for him.” It is that simple and is a narrative that this country’s heartland loves: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington.

Whether he backs down or not, there ain’t gonna be no wall. But the shutdown brings with it other benefits beyond whatever usefulness it may have as a border-control-negotiation prybar—benefits perhaps not obvious at first glance.

Thanks to the ongoing shutdown theater, two things are now obvious.

First, Republican leadership in Congress had no intention of even trying to fund Trump’s wall, much less actually doing it, despite repeatedly promising to do so.

And second, Trump is being exactly who he said he was, and doing exactly what he said he’d do, and all of greater Washington is still shocked—shocked!—by it.

Establishment Washington has believed for years that it can run on platform issues like repealing Obamacare, defunding Planned Parenthood, and reforming the immigration system, but then provide dozens of excuses as to why these objectives can’t be met.

First, Republicans said, they needed the House. Then the Senate. Then the White House. But of course, once all of those were delivered, it still wasn’t enough. Now they need 60 votes in the Senate or nothing can happen! They believe that voters are, in fact, dumb enough to keep buying what they’re selling.

Gone unmentioned, of course, is the fact that establishment priorities somehow never face that “need 60 votes or it ain’t happenin’” hurdle.

The GOP still managed to pass tax reform last year without 60 votes, and in the face of significant opposition from Democrats. McConnell spent months pushing the farm bill over the finish line to get a special carve out for industrial hemp in Kentucky—again, without 60 Republican votes. The giant increases in defense spending, opposed by Democrats? They pass every time, always without 60 Republican votes.

Moreover, there are strategies available to McConnell to get around Democrat obstruction. He simply chooses not to use them. McConnell made the baffling decision this year not to use a reconciliation vehicle, which passes the Senate at 51 votes (the same vehicle used to pass tax reform in 2017, and which Democrats used to pass part of Obamacare in 2010). This is akin to failing to fire a silver bullet.

That’s because, as is now so clear as to be beyond debate, he and the rest of the Uniparty Decepticons never really wanted the werewolf dead. Incredibly, though, Paul Ryno somehow manages to make even Vichy Miche look good in comparison:

Ryan has done such a poor job that it has become impossible even for the paid sycophants of Conservative, Inc. to whitewash his record. As House Speaker, Ryan failed to fund the border wall, repeal or replace Obamacare, de-fund Planned Parenthood, or even curb porous immigration policies in any perceivable way. While Trump has used his bully pulpit and executive power unlike any Republican in history to advance his agenda, backup support from the House hasn’t been there. Ryan’s lack of will has even made Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell look meritorious by comparison. At least McConnell fought for the justices.

Much of the Republican faithful were dumbfounded upon the Democrats performing so strongly in last month’s elections despite engaging in unprecedented histrionics in the months prior. Republicans have alleged voter fraud, which may have happened in certain areas, but that does not explain the trend as a whole.

House Republicans underperformed due to Ryan’s sorry leadership. Trump supporters, many of whom hate Republicans and only switched over because of allegiance to the president, thought to themselves, “What difference does it make?” and stayed home despite their hero’s pleading for them to do otherwise. While Trump’s campaign rhetoric may have been exhilarating, the results in Congress have not quite matched up.

Nope. They were never intended to. And as long as the professional politicians remain in charge, they never will.

King Cuck

Posted on 12/22/201812/22/2018 by Mike

What with the benevolent guiding hand of federal government now temporarily (and very, very partially) absent from our lives, I’m sure that you all are trembling with fear and waiting for the relief of Death’s sweet embrace, just as I am. Either that, or you’re scrambling around witless, bereft and without purpose, like ants whose comfy hill has been kicked over. Not to worry, though, Deep State Mitch feels your pain and is working diligently to restore business as usual toot sweet.

With several senators not yet back in Washington, Vice President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote for the Senate to begin consideration of the House bill that provides more than $5 billion for a border wall.

Senators vowed to not vote on a bill until there’s an agreement between leaders. The House adjourned Friday and was not planning to come back for Saturday votes.

“Mitch, use the Nuclear Option and get it done! Our Country is counting on you!” President Trump tweeted.

Despite Trump’s Twitter pleas for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to deploy the nuclear option that would do away with the 60-vote cloture threshold, McConnell made clear on the Senate floor Friday evening that “any eventual solution will require 60 votes here in the Senate.”

“It’s been clear that from the beginning that two things are necessary: The support from enough Senate Democrats to pass the proposal at 60, and a presidential signature,” he said. “As a result, the Senate has voted to proceed to the legislation before us in order to preserve maximum flexibility for productive conversations to continue between the White House and our Democratic colleagues.”

“I hope Senate Democrats will work with the White House on an agreement that can pass both houses of Congress and receive the president’s signature,” McConnell added. “So, colleagues, when an agreement is reached, it will receive a vote here on the Senate floor.”

Wonderful, and well said! This bipartisan spirit and willingness to compromise with his great and good friends across the aisle in the Democrat Socialist Party is inspiring, and exactly what is needed to heal our tragic national division once and for all. The Democrat Socialists will no doubt be eager to resolve this minor policy difference for the good of all Americans—fairly, honestly, and with the greatest respect for the views of the nominal opposition. Come Nancy, come Chuck, come Maxine—let us reason together! Then you can all get back to work at your primary, your sole concern: doing the business of the American People.

Are we not all Americans, united in our bedrock belief that our government must remain on the job without foolish, irresponsible interruption? That it must at any and all cost retain unrestrained power to decide what’s best for all of us—that we must rely on the sure knowledge of its unelected experts to act on their superior knowledge, experience, and ability? That a wrongly-elected President must not be allowed to childishly wreak havoc on our cherished institutions, arbitrarily shutting our precious government down for no reason more compelling than personal petulance and spite?

ENOUGH, I say!

A grateful nation bows its head in thanks to its wise and omnicompetent Ruling Class, and especially to perhaps its foremost statesman Mitch McConnell, for his noble insistence on adhering to established precedent regarding the rules of order in the Senate. Oh, some less-worthy and thoughtless sorts among us may profane our national debate with angry, hateful talk of “winning,” “fighting back,” even “war to the knife.” Pay them no heed, Mitch; ignore their unpatriotic urgings to violence and treason. No so-called “victory” is ever worth the price of your dignity, nor the sacrifice of comity in the hallowed halls of Government—a government unique in all the world for not only the elevated character of debate therein, but for its fair, just, and compassionate treatment of its sadly benighted and incapable subjects.

Guide us, O Great One! You, Nancy, Chuck, and Maxine are easily worth ten thousand—nay, millions—of those of us who are fit only to observe your sober deliberations from outside your sacred temples without input or influence, and who await your further orders with humility, fealty, and gratitude. We exist only to serve you, and to honor your sacrifice for the purpose of leading us unworthy souls into your Utopia. We’d be lost without you; we NEED you, desperately, for without you we are indeed without hope.

*spit*

Schumer shutdown update! Vichy Miche McConnell, are ya listenin’? Chuckles just spelled it out for ya.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans need to “abandon” border wall funding if they want the government to reopen, just less than 24 hours into the partial shutdown.

Schumer, who has strongly opposed funding President Donald Trump’s border wall, saidthis on the Senate floor Saturday afternoon as the federal government is officially in a partial shutdown after Senate Republicans failed to receive enough votes to pass a short-term spending bill Friday that included funding for a border wall.

The New York senator also said Democrats are “open to discussing any proposal as long as they do not include anything for the wall,” showing Democrats are not willing to compromise on border wall funding.

Bold mine, and quite dispositive proof that McConnell’s word-salad hope that “Senate Democrats will work with the White House” is no more than smoke and subterfuge.

Of course, the chance of getting the wall or any other border security improvements of any remains at exatly, precisely zero since idiot American voters saw fit both to hand the House to the Democrat Socialists and refuse to increase the GOPe Senate majority, but you gotta love Trump for continuing to battle on all by his lonesome anyhow. Those people who tsk-tsk’ed about Trump’s “poor character” and immorality ought to take a pause from flapping their yaps and consider: he’s fighting a hopeless battle purely because he knows it’s the right thing to do, and no other reason. When’s the last time you saw one of your precious principled “True Conservative™” stalwarts do that, pray tell?

Sic ’em update! Tucker pwns a shitlib. Another shitlib, I mean.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson discussed the ongoing battle between President Trump and Congress over border wall funding with liberal radio host Chris Hahn on Friday night.

“We can secure the border through modern technology,” said Hahn as he discussed alternate ways to secure the border and why he believes walls won’t work. “Put a ring video doorbell that would do better than a wall. A wall didn’t work for China. They got overrun when they had a wall. It’s not gonna work for us.”

“Does it work in Israel?” Carlson asked. “Does the wall work in Israel?”

“In places,” Hahn said. “Look, there are places where …”

“Oh! I thought they didn’t work!” Carlson responded. “Wait, hold on. I’m a man of moderate intellectual means here. Literally 30 seconds ago you told me walls don’t work. It’s medieval. People dig under them. I said ‘what about Israel?’ Which obviously nobody wants to criticize. And it kind of does work. So the question is does a wall work or does it not work?”

“Why?” Carlson pressed when Hahn tried to respond by wondering about the “first $1.3 billion.” “Not because the wall doesn’t work, because it does work, as you know. It’s not because it’s too expensive. No it’s not. What is the real reason?”
Hahn diverted again to Mexico paying for it.

The conversation ended with Carlson laughing at the fact that Hahn is for “American troops in Syria” but “not at the border.”

No wonder they hate Tucker’s guts and are trying to destroy his and his family’s life, as is their standard tactic. He just keeps doing this to them again and again, sinking his teeth in and locking his jaw like a pitbull; fighting them, in other words, instead of harrumphing in embarrassment, rolling over, and showing their bellies like they’re accustomed to from good, housebroken Republicans like Vichy Miche.

It’s a ruse update! Sundance sees through the obscuring fog of McConnelldygook:

Think carefully about what Mitch McConnell is doing here. It’s not President Trump’s job to write legislation. McConnell is desperately trying to retain a UniParty ruse, by passing the buck to the White House. McConnell doesn’t want the American people to see republican senators supporting a bill against voter interests.

Wall Street, corporate and special interest lobbyists own the legislative process. Lobbyists actually write the laws. Lobbyists pay congress to sell laws they write. Lobbyists funding both left and right wings of the UniParty do not want border security. This is ultimately what McConnell is trying to hide.

Look at what he’s doing. Senate Leader McConnell is telling the executive branch (President Trump) if they want an appropriations bill, the President must write the legislation with his democrat colleagues.

Amusingly, Sundance refers to “Uniparty Decepticons” in the post’s title, which made me laugh. You’ll be seeing that material again round these parts. Meanwhile, a commenter links to a stark warning from Michael, Son Of Ronnie:

Ronald Reagan’s son Michael tweeted to the President Thursday that this is his “last chance for a wall” and warned that he “must act now.” He linked to an article he wrote detailing his concerns and another at The Washington Examiner.

“Hey @POTUS in 1986 my father made a deal with the Democrats Amnesty for Border Security my father is still waiting,” Michael Reagan tweeted Thursday. “U have no choice its now or never..#BuildTheWallNow.”

Michael Reagan’s father always regretted his deal with the Democrats in 1986. He was tricked and he counted it as one of biggest mistakes.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 allowed any illegal immigrants who had been in the U.S. since 1982 to receive temporary legal status and eventually become eligible for green cards if they learned English.

Reagan thought he approved 400,000 farm workers but the numbers rose to 2.7 million because there was no cap. Many received their amnesty fraudulently. It turned the red state of California blue.

Now it’s an open borders, socialist state in decline.

Which is no accident, and is what they intend doing to the entire country. Reagan’s timely plea for action, with its open acknowledgment that his dad got himself rolled by the Lyin’ Left, merely confirms that this is all part of a broader long-term strategy. Trump really ought to tell Chuckles to take a flying fuck at the moon, and leave the FederalGovCo shutdown in effect till the devil straps on ice skates.

Coulter cucks out

Posted on 12/22/201812/22/2018 by Mike

Aesop rips her high, wide, and deep.

Poor Ann Coulter. After another epic pointless rant about how President Trump is “gutless” and “cares nothing about a wall”, then the “gutless” President bends Congress over, refuses to sign a stop-gap spending bill without funding for a wall, and squeezes a $5B last-minute concession out of the House of Representatives.

Y’know, like presidents who are serious about something do.

It must suck to be nothing but a shrill harpie with no clue about how the government actually works, and then go on the biggest bitchfest of this administration, to the delight of only the liberal Trump-hating media (but I repeat myself), and then be shown to be 180 degrees out from reality in less than 48 hours.

If only President Trump had vowed to shut down the government over this issue, berated the Democrat leadership about it publicly, on camera, and finally wrung concessions out of the legislative branch, and outgoing House Speaker Quisling.

And then there’s the small matter of whose job it is to get a wall built.

Ann Coulter, former law clerk in the Eighth Circuit, and Michigan Law School grad, yet total constitutional blithering idiot:

“Article I, Sec. 7: All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur on Amendments, as on other bills.”

ZOMG! It’s almost as if there were some sort of separation of powers, or some such shit. WhoTF knew???

Maybe Ann was sick the day they covered the US Constitution in law school…?

If Ann Coulter voted for Trump because she thought he could seize the government, and rule as Caesar, god-like, from the Oval Office, or thought he was going to pay for the wall out of petty cash and poker winnings himself, she’s a world-class fucktard.

Meanwhile, find me her scathing rejoinders to Paul Quisling Ryan and Bitch McConjob’s dithering on a wall, non-stop, any time in the last two years.

Go ahead, post them all.

I’ll wait.

Wait, what?
Nothing?
You’re sure about that?
How can that be…?

Wow, it’s almost like she’s the one who claims to be conservative, but can’t seem to get her foot out of her mouth when there’s a whole do-nothing GOP Congress who voted for wall funding twelve times – until they had a president who’d actually build a wall.
And then all took early retirement rather than facing the wrath of the voters.

Yeah, seems to be a lot of that sort of thing going around these days. His point ahout Trump having no real power as President to build the wall—since the power of the purse is a function of the House, as explicitly spelled out in the fucking Constitution—is well-taken, seeing as how I’ve said so myself here I don’t even know how many times. That bit about Trump seizing power and ruling as a Caesar, though, is one with which I must quibble a mite; sad to say, things are getting to the point where I almost wish he’d do just that.

As for Coulter, out of all the sad cases of NeverTrumpTard derangement currently extant out there, hers just might be the most disappointing. Her bare-knuckles bashing of libtard fuckwittery and dementia in years past was always amusing, at least. But Aesop is right: she’s aligned herself firmly with the conserve-nothing “conservative” class, and it would seem whatever usefulness she might once have had has now come to a screeching, smoking halt.

Reality bites bitten

Posted on 12/20/201812/20/2018 by Mike

Wahddya, some kinda science denier or something?

In yet another blatant attack on science, a newly-approved education guideline in the United Kingdom says that all genders can menstruate, not just girls.

The new guidelines from the Neighbourhoods, Inclusion, Communities, and Equalities Committee of the Brighton & Hove City Council advocate a “period positive approach” when talking about menstruation to students, an approach that basically teaches children the exact opposite of what actually happens, according to LifeSiteNews.

The guidelines state that students as young as age eight and nine will be taught “age and development appropriate period education within a planned programme of relationships and sex education.” It also calls for “single gender sessions” when “appropriate and with careful management” while suggesting that inclusive language when referring to “girls and women and others who have periods.”

As noted by LifeSiteNews, the cities of Brighton and Hove have been pushing an extreme transgender agenda for some time now. Back in October, the school released a “Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit” that compared not calling someone by their preferred pronoun to harassment while calling for “safeguarding procedures” for parents who refuse to endorse their child’s gender identity.

“In 2016, the Brighton & Hove City Council angered parents by sending them a letter telling them to ‘please support your child to choose the gender they most identify with,'” reports the outlet. “The letter went to parents with kids as young as four.”

The new guidelines echo the words spoken by Angela Ponce, the first trans Miss Universe contestant from Spain, who recently said that a woman does not have to have a vagina.

Well, that’s Once Great Britain for ya; thank goodness such an absurd, moronic thing could never happen here…uhh, that is…I mean, well, uhhh…

Oh.

While the Trump administration here in the United States has been fighting the transgender movement by disallowing them from the military and by recognizing gender by a person’s genitalia at birth, teachers still face harsh censoring if they so much as use the wrong pronoun when addressing a trans student.

Just this month, a teacher in Virginia lost his job because he refused to call a transgender student by their preferred pronoun.

Give him a tampon and tell him to stick it wherever he likes. Poor ol’ Alice Cooper must be feeling mighty embattled right about now.

How long before the Badthink Police catch up with this despicable hate-criminal, I wonder?

Straight dope

Posted on 12/18/201812/18/2018 by Mike

American elections, the envy of the entire world.

When Donald Trump was running for office, he raised the issue of fraudulent votes. As with everything else Trump has said, it was instantly attacked and ridiculed by the media. Since then, the idea has been dismissed by MSM journalists who have insisted that there have not been any cases of illegal voting.

Recently, though, the novel possibility of fraudulent votes in favor of aRepublican candidate has made the MSM do a 180o while reiterating that such things have never happened favoring Democratic candidates. As with many other topics, MSM journalists have blatantly lied.

Follows, a voluminous list of Democrat Socialist electoral fraud, corruption, and malfeasance, which is by no means whatsoever all-inclusive. As Villalobos concludes:

Keep in mind also that these are just a tiny portion of detected transgressions. How many more illegal acts have occurred that have gone unnoticed? After all,voting illegally is child’s play, with no checks and balances and a minimum of negative repercussions. Since Republican voters are almost always the victim and the Republican Party is without doubt the Stupid Party, this stomach-churning travesty will continue.

They aren’t the Stupid Party, and I really wish people would stop saying that. They’re active participants in a perennially rigged game, the Washington Generals of American politics, and this squalid state of affairs suits them just fine.

A tale of Obamacare

Posted on 12/17/201812/17/2018 by Mike

Let’s not get too excited, folks. Sad as that is.

The loud and proud state of Texas announced the longed-for ACA death Friday night after a federal judge ruled it all unconstitutional. Here’s how it went down.

US District Judge Reed O’Connor of Fort Worth found that since there’s no more penalty for not carrying health insurance, there’s no more tax support for the ACA. His argument stems from the original 2012 ruling in which Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., declared Obamacare to be constitutional. Why? Because the penalty is a “tax.” And, in the words of Roberts, Congress “does have the power to impose a tax on those without health insurance.”

However, last year congressional Republicans passed a bill that eliminated the penalty for not carrying insurance. And voilà! No penalty means no tax. Which means that Obamacare is gutted.

Until John Roberts gets ahold of it again. Hirsch goes on to tell her own Obamacare horror story:

Obamacare has been the bane of my life for years now. I’m sub-contracted as a speech pathologist to a local rehab agency, which means I must carry my own health insurance.

When I started in 2009, I was able to carry a Health Savings Account policy for about $200 per month. Easy-peasy, no problem.
That was then. Wanna guess what my 2019 premium would be using the Healthcare Marketplace?

Try over $1000 per month for a policy with a $7200 deductible. I have no red flag pre-existing conditions, other than aging, which happens to us all.

“Oh,” but the ACA supporters would tell me. “Have you applied for a subsidy?”

Sorry, but I don’t qualify. I make too much money, even though I work part-time, and my monthly income fluctuates. And we’re hardly wealthy.

So my agent managed to find me a short-term policy, which technically doesn’t fulfill the ACA requirements, but it’s actually affordable and will take me through 2019. What will happen in 2020 is anyone’s guess.

Thanks, Obamacare. My agent tells me that prior to the ACA, my state had 17 insurance companies offering individual health insurance. Now there’s just two. And yes, it was the ACA that drove insurance companies out and increased my premiums.

Ahh, but as I keep saying: Obamacare is here to stay, I’m afraid. Or, more accurately, government-controlled healthcare is, however much it may or may not end up resembling O-care itself. That much was obvious the moment Republicans pulled the ol’ rhetorical switcheroo from vowing to “repeal” Obamacare to “repeal AND REPLACE” it instead. Right then it should have been clear to all that it wasn’t Obamacare that was dead—it was any realistic hope of restoring a market-driven, efficiently run, high-quality, innovative, and affordable system, short of violent revolution.

So far as I know, there has never yet been an example of a First World nation placing its healthcare system into the hands of the central government and then reversing it. Once government gets its mitts in…well, into just about anything, it’s extremely rare for it to withdraw them. Instead, it just goes right on tinkering with it, mucking up the works worse and worse, making things more complex, difficult, and expensive for everyone involved, and then “solving” the problem by arrogating even more power over it to itself.

So it will be with healthcare. After another few years, government health care will be so entrenched it will be damned near unthinkable for most of us to even begin to imagine doing things any other way. In fact, the notion will seem preposterous to most, particularly younger generations who have never experienced anything else. Meanwhile, health care will get worse; costs will soar; callous, inflexible, and unaccountable bureaucracy will flourish; the wait for treatment will lengthen—and we’ll continue to delusionally boast that “America’s healthcare system is the BEST IN THE WORLD!”

Then we’ll all agree not to make much fuss when we have hundreds of people a year starving and/or thirsting to death in our hospitals. Just another facet of that Heinleinian “bad luck,” don’tchaknow.

Actually, as our First World cousins continue their own shambolic descent into decrepitude and futility, and the undeveloped world remains mired in hapless misery, our system might actually BE the best in the world without ever again approaching the best it can be. “Best,” after all, is by definition a relative term.

Farewell to Texas

Posted on 12/16/201812/17/2018 by Mike

The beginning of the end.

The prospect of a purple and eventually blue Texas thrills progressives who see the Lone Star State as the key to their drive for post-Trump domination. Before draining their champagne glasses and filling their bongs, the coastal crowd should sober up enough to consider what happens if the Texas miracle comes to an end.

Many Republicans, meantime, have come to consider Texas their sovereign territory, a deeply conservative place where even Democrats were generally pro-business and growth was the prevailing religion. This last election ended what remained of that hallucination. In virtually every big metro—the increasingly dominant geography of Texas—the Democrats grabbed control.

In the election for Senate, the uniquely unattractive Ted Cruz lost the 25 largest counties to his challenger, media darling Beto O’Rourke, by a combined 700,000 votes. Only the hard-right remnants of small-town Texas allowed Cruz to claw out a narrow victory. Due in part to slate voting, large counties also turned control over to Democrats, as in Harris County, the home of Houston, which is now led by 27-year-old -progressive Lina Hidalgo, a 27-year-old part-time student with almost no work experience.

Several factors seem to be driving this change, including a growing population shift to large metropolitan areas, a diversifying economy and, most of all, rising migration both from abroad and from the rest of the country. This changing electorate—younger, more ethnically diverse, better educated—has shifted the state’s politics away from a Republican Party operating under the shadow of Donald Trump and his fellow travelers.

Ironically, the arrival of these newcomers is changing the policy environment that created the conditions for this migration.

The rest of America should care if Texas abandons its model. Without it, we will increasingly resemble European countries—like France—where all power and wealth is concentrated in the largest, densest and most established cities, while everyone else is on the outside looking in.

Well, yeah. That’s the plan. It’s exactly what they want, it’s the whole idea—and not just for Texas, either.

And the country will have lost its premier safety valve for young people and families priced out of the coasts.

Tough shit for them; since they’ll be the ones who caused it by insisting on the exact same policies that ruined the places they migrated from, well, let’s just say my sympathy is VERY damned limited. Let ’em enjoy the fruits of their stupidity, and to hell with ’em.

The new Texans might not like Ted Cruz (who does?) but one wonders if they would welcome a policy regime like that in California, where the middle and working classes are confronted with an ever more feudalized reality.

Of course they would, and will. When have they not? In fact, as the rest of the article makes clear, they’re doing it already.

America can endure, and even thrive, with a New York or a California to service the rich and employ their servants. But it also needs a place for upward mobility and the chance to buy a house. If Texas stops providing that, we may be running out of dynamic states where the less than affluent can achieve their aspirations. America needs a Texas that is still Texas, not a big, flat, dry place trying and failing to impersonate San Francisco.

Sorry, but with the incoming plague of liberal locusts swarming in to eat out Texas’s substance and demand a rerun of the same wetbrained Progressivist folly that turned San Francisco into a literal shithole, that’s exactly what we’re going to have.

“America needs a Texas that is still Texas”? Maybe so. But much more than that, America needs an America that’s still America. Unfortunately, that just ain’t on the menu.

Shut. Him. DOWN

Posted on 12/15/201812/15/2018 by Mike

Better still: investigate this corrupt, crooked, lifelong Deep State malefactor to within an inch of his miserable life, prosecute him, and throw him in Stoney Lonesome for a good, long time for his crimes against the American people.

That’s if the sorry son of a bitch isn’t found guilty of outright treason and hung forthwith for his role in attempting to cripple and/or overthrow a duly-elected President, I mean.

Two events this week could provide acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker enough reason to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller: The egregious case against General Michael Flynn and the mishandling of cell phones used by FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

According to the federal statute governing special counsel investigations, “the Attorney General may remove a Special Counsel for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause, including violation of Departmental policies.”

Since Mueller’s obvious conflicts of interest have been overlooked—including his ties to former FBI Director James Comey, his service under the Obama administration, and a team of biased prosecutors—“other good cause” could be the failure to produce court-ordered documents related to the Flynn case or the special counsel’s office scrubbing the iPhones used by Strzok and Page during their brief time on the team, or both.

First, the Flynn case. More than a year after the three-star general and former national security advisor pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI, Flynn is set to be sentenced on December 18. Mueller’s team, citing Flynn’s cooperation and service to the country, recommended a sentence on the “low end” of the guidelines, which means no jail time. It appeared that Flynn, who lost his home paying for lawyers, only would have to perform community service.

But Flynn is not going down quietly. Not only did his response to Mueller’s sentencing memo contain explosive details about potential misconduct by FBI officials, public comments by former FBI Director James Comey further exposed how his agency cornered—if not entrapped—Flynn during the very first days of a tumultuous administration under siege by the media and Obama holdovers.

Some of us out there are talking excitedly about the “collapse” of the open-ended, unrestrained Mueller witch-hunt. Example: “THE RUSHED MUELLER INVESTIGATION IS ALREADY FALLING APART,” although in this particular case the post is a good bit more sensibly circumspect than the headline leads one to expect. Those folks should maybe ask Flynn or, say, Michael Cohen who they think is winning here. Cohen is going to have plenty of time starting in March to carefully compose his response; Flynn has likewise had his life destroyed completely already, no matter what outcome he might face this week.

Myself, I prefer to wait until Mueller is tossed out on his ass, the aborted investigation into the Hillary/Obama/FBI/DoJ coverup is resumed, and the REAL criminals are visibly sweating a bit at the prospect of “rockin’ orange” before making any grandiose claims about who’s going to be laughing last.

Who investigates the investigators?

Posted on 12/15/201812/15/2018 by Mike

An idea whose time has DEFINITELY come. And, probably, gone.

Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office (SCO) destroyed a potential treasure trove of evidence about the “insurance policy” Trump-haters Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were implementing against the Trump administration as it prepared to take office and establish itself in its first few months. Whatever the purported lovebirds texted each other and others during the tumultuous period, the SCO thought it was not worth scrutiny by outsiders not on the team.

Given the scandalous earlier texts between the two released by the OIG, this claim is so arrogant that it would be laughable, but for the profound implications of a rogue law enforcement operation covering its tracks, secure in its belief that it will never be prosecuted thanks to Deep State operatives throughout the FBI and DoJ.

This is absolutely outrageous coming from team Mueller, so anxious to construe crimes related to the president, but blithely deep-sixing whatever data it wishes, telling the public to trust them.

Mueller’s office is thumbing its nose at us. The MSM will bury this story. How about a special counsel to investigate the Mueller special counsel?

Those ebullient chants of “Lock her up!” during the 2016 campaign ring mighty hollow now, as time marches on without the slightest likelihood of seeing justice done at last ever rearing its battered, bloody head.

An army of one

Posted on 12/14/201812/14/2018 by Mike

When is enough enough?

When does Trump say, “Enough is enough!”?

Enough can have two meanings here. One meaning is the junkyard dog being taunted until it bares its teeth and attacks ferociously. Trump has that power as President. Assuming Huber and Horowitz have been doing more than playing board games with their reams of lawyers and investigators for the past year, there should be indictments and prosecutions. Not to mention releasing FISA warrant applications and similar documents.

From the Clinton Foundation to the Spygate scandal. From Hillary Clinton’s emails to bogus FISA warrants, there is much for the junkyard dog to attack. When is enough? When does Trump go “scorched earth[TL1] ” through transparency against those conspiring to destroy him?

Declassify the FISA warrant and expose the collaboration of his Deep State enemies with foreign intelligence agencies. As the Clinton Foundation scandals become public, hammer away via tweets and public comments. If Trump believes he is going down, he will bring half of Washington, DC with him.

T’is a consummation devoutly to be wished for sure. But in light of Black Tuesday’s disastrous outcome, I’d say it’s way more likely he’ll throw up his hands and say “screw this” rather than waste his time, money, and energy on running for reelection in 2020—an election he has no chance at all of winning. And even that assumes he isn’t sitting in prison by then, which is starting to look quite damned likely at this point.

What a daily drag for President Trump to pick up the newspaper or watch a bit of cable news and hear a constant drumbeat of how he is evil incarnate and about to be removed from office and sent to prison! Not simply disagreement over policy, but personal vitriol and hatred toward him and his family. How many of us could withstand such an onslaught from all directions, day after day, without saying enough is enough?

The fact that Trump is still upbeat and optimistic, accomplishing more in a day than his predecessors did in a week, is beyond amazing. But at some point, the human spirit breaks. How many slings and arrows will Trump take before he’s had enough?

Trump is tough as nails, all right, and one can only admire him for it. But with the entirety of the Deep State fighting a true death match against him, including not only both its Uniparty wings but a plurality of the Amerikan sheeple right along with ’em, he’s all but sunk. However pugnacious and stubbornly confident he may naturally be, sooner or later he’ll have to admit to himself that he’s fighting a losing battle on behalf of a corrupt and unworthy nation more than half full of unappreciative nimrods who just don’t care.

Harshing your mellow since 9/01

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