Terrorists

695 thoughts on “Terrorists”

1. What we are mostly and have ALWAYS been is mutts.

   At one point in our history many families simply choose to write out parts of the family tree in order to maintain the pretense that they were white of the finest pedigree. (Meaning they also admitted to none of the lesser European blood included as well.) This was further encouraged by the period when social Darwinism was embraced by the Progressives.

   1. as a former boss of mine said “My family is very old French/Creole (the original Creole of French/Spanish mix, but the Spanish side was long long ago), So old about a full quarter of them that show up for a family reunion are black”.
      My personal family is much younger here in the US, so it is a bit easier to pick out nationalities, but there are still a large number of different ones.
      Bet my nose is cold.

   2. Well, my nose usually is cold so I’m probably a mutt. 😉

   3. That’s something that amuses me about the Alt-White, and white supremacist in general. Where in the heck are you going to find the pure white race? Defending the purity of the white race is akin to defending the purity of the English language, or the virginity of a experienced prostitute.
      Look at the history of Europe, and it’s a racial blender set on puree.

      1. If you look at the evolution of Mankind, we all came from Africa anyway.

      2. I believe in the power of culture. Northwest Europeans in general, and the English in particular sussed out the rules of thriving. They were so good at it that the rest of the world figured we must be cheating. Obama certainly believes it. As our hostess says Western Civilization lost its mojo after WWI. We few are fighting for it. The Libtards are dancing on the wreckage fighting over scrapes.

         People like Thatcher and Reagan come along and jump start the Western Civ juggernaut and everyone is amazed. But most Western leaders have never had drivers ed and drive full steam into a cul de sac or over a cliff.

         I think Trump has found the jumper cables. Now let’s see if he can can read the Adam Smith map and throws the Marx map in the trash bin of history. I’ll gladly pay for an incinerator. It’s heresy, I know, but some books really be burned. Or at least used for toilet paper.

         1. “Northwest Europeans in general, and the English in particular sussed out the rules of thriving.”
            Yep- find out what works, and assimilate the *#$%^@ out if it.

            1. Cultural assimilation. It’s what we do. It’s our culture. Were glad to share the good ideas. But then there’s the horses and water thing.

         2. “I believe in the power of culture. Northwest Europeans in general, and the English in particular sussed out the rules of thriving. They were so good at it that the rest of the world figured we must be cheating. ”

            Copying this. Thanks, oldgriz.

      3. Look at the history of Europe, and it’s a racial blender set on puree.

         Which likely explains my aunt’s permanent tan in a family of lily white German-Russians

         1. When Larry tested with a lot of English genetics, he was surprised. I wasn’t. Eventually I’ll get the test — probably — and I wont’ be surprised at same. the North of Portugal is where Englishmen sent their ne’er do well sons before they had an empire.

      4. Be careful, it is so easy to defeat their position because you have created a strawman. I’m not familiar with the term Alt-White, perhaps you could explain what that means and maybe you’re correct about them. But the sort of people referred to as ‘white supremacist’ these days covers a broad swath of thought. No doubt you could find some who would rail about defending the purity of the white race, but you’ll also find some with very thought out and difficult to argue against points about the unfortunate reality of what happens to communities as they diversify vs. the fantasy of “diversity is our strength”. If you think you can dismiss them all with a wave of the hand as incorrect, then you are dangerously overconfident. Many of them are much better grounded in reality than the wish-fulfillment stuff our academics pander as our national received wisdom.

         1. Most of them, at least on the internet, do tend to go on and on and on about sexual stuff. It’s a little weird, honestly.
            And the problem is that they don’t get that thought patterns are not, in fact, genetically encoded. They look at a country that has done its level best not to inculcate values like rule of law and hard work into children, and concluded that this means one cannot inculcate those values.
            They also tend to forget that most of the people Theodore Dalrymple dealt with were white.

            1. Yep. It’s insane.

            2. They think learned behavior is genetic.

2. Is there a lot of this going on? I have been seeing online comments from a woman about how her daughter has been having emotional meltdowns and she will not forgive anyone who caused her daughter distress. I have been resisting the urge to tell her that teaching children that adult political choices should be dictated by the fear of making them unhappy is a good way to create the kind of monsters Mao had in the Red Guards. Even on a benign interpretation, we don’t give the vote to high schoolers or younger children; why should adults set aside their political judgment to avoid causing them emotional distress? But I didn’t realize that this sort of emotional armtwisting was widespread. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

   1. Yes. It’s all over.

      1. Well, I don’t think it would help much if I commented that her stance rather makes me wish I *had* voted for Trump, because putting emotional pressure on me gets my back up.

         We were on the way to a doctor’s appointment a couple of days ago, and we passed a young man holding a “Not My President” sign. I had a brief impulse to go over and ask him what he would have said had Clinton won, and he passed an older person holding a sign that said, “Clinton is not my president.” But I don’t suppose it would have done any good; he probably had never encountered dialectic, and I’m not sure he could have understood a false-to-fact hypothetical, as a lot of people fail to get them. (“What do they teach in the schools these days?”)

         1. (“What do they teach in the schools these days?”)
            They tend to teach just what you are seeing there. For the most part it is why you get the need for safe spaces at College, and fools like the leaders of OWS who complained they couldn’t get a job to pay off their student loans and it was somehow Wall Street’s fault Puppetry Major isn’t a big positive in nabbing a high paying job.

            1. Timing is everything. Puppetry Major is typically only in real demand during presidential campaigns.

               1. And Communist regimes.

            2. Part of that is undoubtedly what you’re told in high school – namely, “It doesn’t really matter what you major in because nine times out of ten, you won’t be working in your major anyway. All that matters is that you get a degree.”

               1. right. and any councilor who tells kids that needs to be keel hauled

            3. But wasn’t the Puppetry major a Masters degree? Surely that should have guaranteed him a starting salary in the low to mid six figures.

               I think my favorite OWS schadenfreude moment was when some girl reported to the police that her expensive laptop had been stolen. She went there to agitate for the redistribution of wealth, and her wealth was redistributed. She should have been happy.

               1. I think it might have been,
                  And I too giggled at the whole stack of irony when they complained about “theft” of their stuff. While protesting for wealth redistribution, and against all corporations because they are evil, their wealth was redistributed and they should have been happy to not have to carry around the product of an evil corporation.

               2. Well, actually, the fundamental problem there is that he couldn’t get a job as an apprentice, as he would in a sane world.

                  But people need to cope with insanity.

      2. And it’s not new.

         There was a version of this turned up on a blog post at Ace that I think dated back to when Dubya was in office. A loving mother wrote in to a periodical to state how concerned she was because her eight year old daughter was so distressed by the actions of the Republicans and couldn’t comprehend why the Republicans were doing whatever it was they were doing (I can’t remember exactly what they’d done wrong this particular time).

         It got parodied a LOT in the comments.

         1. Odd how all these kids distressed by politics are 8 years old.

            1. In fairness, I had picked a political side to back, all on my own, when I was eight.

               Okay, my choice was crappy, I’m ashamed of it, and with what I know now it was inconsistent with the rest of the values I think I held strongly at the time.

               1. I had a side picked when I was seven. It helped, though, that I knew abortion was bad, and so all I had to do was back the presidential candidate that opposed it.

               2. What kind of idiots document their child abuse and put it on youtube?

                  This might be staged for putting online and going viral, but I doubt that kid has the acting chops to carry it off.

                  HT: NRO, gangblog The Corner.

                  1. That was profoundly disturbing.

                  2. That poor kid. I think CPS should be abolished, But I wouldn’t object to them taking action here.

                     1. THIS is exactly how I feel.

                        1. Thankfully http://www.wfaa.com/mb/news/mom-investigated-after-video-goes-viral-sparks-outrage-1/351325223

                           1. Unfortunately, I have seen heard that the police investigated and will do nothing, it was just a joke.

                           2. Pathetic

                           3. Just a cruel, sick, perverted, sadistic joke.

                              Invert the politics, say make it a mother exiling a daughter for voting Hillary …

                           4. A joke?!!!!!

                              If that was what it really was, and it was not simply what she said when the police called her on it, there is something seriously wrong with that woman’s sense of humor.

                              Isn’t that what we hear from so many people when they are called on meaness? Hey, I was just joking.

                           5. Really,a book for all occasions:

                              Proverbs 26:18-19

                              Like a maniac shooting
                              flaming arrows of death
                              is one who hurts his neighbor deceitfully
                              and says, “I was only joking!”

                  3. That may be the single most cruel thing I’ve seen in my 56 years. How in God’s name does a kid EVER recover from this?

                     1. That will likely be wound in the relationship for a long time.

                  4. She said it was a Joke? What a (I’d better not type it). That was no joke that was child abuse!

               3. True, but it’s never nine or seven or five, always eight.

                  1. yep

               4. Once upon a time I was liberal…then I got into grade school.

            2. Age of reason. Old enough to understand what is said, too inexperienced to have the judgement to identify highly questionable claims.

            3. My 12 (almost 13) and 10 became passionately interested in politics during the primaries this year. So they’ve learned that politics is heartbreak and the candidates you like most never make it to Indiana.

               Then, I agreed to let them watch election returns (on PBS because yeah, they’re biased, but I figured they’re be the least likely to go PG-13), and they cried when McMullin didn’t win Utah.

               Kids interested in politics are aggravating. Why would you ENCOURAGE it?

               (At least the school board election went their way! Because even though they are homeschooled (or perhaps because of it) they read the newspaper and developed VERY STRONG OPINIONS.)

               1. I was a political animal from the age of 11. now, in my case there were reasons, but still. The number of times my parents said “leave the politics alone. Go do something age appropriate!”

                  1. And you wandered off to read books aimed at adults…

                     1. Like the Road to Serfdom. I wasn’t all there, as a kid, you know?

                        1. Well…you aren’t all there now.

                           *Ducks*

                           1. And carps.

                           2. Achievement unlocked!

      3. FWIW, It’s not going on around here. Even the liberals call the “spoiled brats” and are thinking about how a president is not a king and there’s another election in four years. We also didn’t run into what you did following the 2008 election. That may have been because politeness is still valued here, and there are simply things that just aren’t done.

         I’m not saying there aren’t chuckleheads going on about it on the net and elsewhere, or that you didn’t experience what you did. I’m just pointing out it’s not going on around here, which implies it’s not universal. I have a strong suspicion it’s not anywhere near the level the mainline media claims it is, particularly the Clinton News Network.

         Sure, it’s something to keep an eye on. I was expecting something to go down regardless of who won. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m not worried.

         1. It probably isn’t going on in more than a few areas. Those areas, however, are all bastions of Democrat Party depravity. Red states, even red COUNTIES, are virtually immune. The lawlessness has only been seen in places like New York, Portland, OR, Seattle, San Francisco, etc. And of course, on college campuses where nominal adults are still allowed to act like, and be treated as, immature children.

            1. A lot of it online. But in opposition states you figure out that the opposition party is not running boxcars. But in bubbles you start to drink your own ink.

   2. I have seen a lot of “Oh, how will I comfort my poor children who are terrified of Trump?” posts.

      Here’s an idea–don’t tell them scary stories and them blame other people when they get scared.

      1. THIS.

      2. Yep.

      3. Sage advice, but we live in an age where many believe that they are not obligated to grow up simply because they’ve become parents.

         Parents: Stop Scaring Your Kids About the Election
         [SNIP]
         What isn’t appropriate is the many posts I saw from parents both then [after the 2012 election] and today that were so unhinged and distraught that they were unable to conceal their stress and grief from their kids. In fact, many parents invited their kids to share in a family freak out.

         [SNIP]

         It was clear to me that many parents were forgetting they were parents first, partisans second.

         Along with the other parenting basics—providing a stable environment, keeping kids fed, clothed, sheltered—parents need to keep and make their children feel safe. Safety means more than just locking the doors at night and making sure they don’t run into the street. Safety means not freaking them out the day after an election by sobbing in their arms and making statements like, “Your future is doomed” (yes, that was on my feed too).

         In addition to talking calmly to your children about the election, parents can also use it as an opportunity to teach kids a little about American history. First, try putting Trump’s victory (or if Hillary had won, Hillary’s victory) into perspective by telling them the many challenges the American people have faced and survived. Here are just a few good examples: Our fight for independence from a powerful adversary, the Civil War, slavery, institutional racism, denying women and blacks the right to vote, the Great Depression, Woodrow Wilson, two world wars, Japanese internment camps or American Indian reservations, Vietnam, market crashes, terrorism . . . When one considers these tragedies, it makes sobbing about Trump seem a bit of an overreaction, no?

         Second, Presidential elections are always a good time to explain the phrase “loyal opposition.”

         [SNIP]

         This is a concept naturally fit for kids. Kids live in authoritarian regimes run by their parents. They have very little control over their own lives and they aren’t allowed to oppose their overlords (or they’ll get sent to their rooms). Telling a child that in our form of government, people are allowed to argue and disagree without fear of reprisal or punishment is a great way to explain how our democracy works and why the election of a president doesn’t spell doom and gloom for those who oppose the winning candidate.

         Do your kids a favor now that Election Day is over: Be a parent and choose history over hysterics.

         1. This is what parents ought be telling their kids.

            Saw this posted a lot at conservative blogs after 2012.

         2. The other point here is, no matter how the younger ones are reacting now, those young ones will themselves become inevitably older, plus there are older kids watching now. Older kids are perfectly capably of forming an opinion independent of parental hysterics. A vast majority of those will end up adding this distasteful episode to everything else they decide their parents did ‘wrong,’ and conclude that their parents were frelling hysterical morons for having such a cow at voting for the losing side of a Presidential election. After all, they will observe, pretty much half of the electorate has this happen every four years, and you didn’t see Jane’s parents doing this to their kids all those times their candidate lost.

            My advice to these parents is: You will do enough things that your kids will blame you for later – do not add something you have the complete power to absolutely prevent to their inevitable list.

   3. She needs to look deep into the mirror and slap the person she sees silly fo causing her daughter distress.

      1. I don’t know…

         It seems that the person has already been slapped silly in the first place. While “fight fire with fire” does have its applications (counter-burns to create fire breaks for heading off even bigger forest fires, f’rex), that kinda sounds like dunking something in water to get it dry. 😛

   4. Or things like the abundance of politically-savvy 8 year olds who think Trump’s election is a horrid, horrid catastrophe?

   5. Do not resist the urge to give these infantile people a stern dressing down. It may not have any effect on them, as their psyches are perhaps irreparably warped by their leftist delusions, but it will address any onlookers who might be wondering if they have any legitimate point. If we don’t answer them, their lunacy goes unchallenged.

      1. THIS.

   6. Day after the election I met my first person trying to pull that.

   7. One of my friends–a gosh-darned *grandmother*–was whining piteously about how people she thought she liked voted Trump, despite knowing it would hurt her feelings. They say they care about her still, but she can’t actually believe it after they did such a thing.

      …

      I wasn’t able to find exactly the right way to ask what the hell she bases her vote on, if her emotional frailty is supposed to be such an influence on others.

      1. Here’s the way. Say, “So you believe that people should choose who to vote for based on whether or not your feelings would be hurt? Do you really consider yourself so important that keeping you happy should be a bigger concern for everyone around you than choosing the best candidate for an office based on their best judgment? How incredibly narcissistic of you! And how do you decide who to vote for–is there someone you want to ingratiate yourself to who you look to for approbation? You’re acting like a child. Grow up.”

      2. I know two women who said they voted for (Bill) Clinton because “he has nice hair.”

         Well, that’s what they claimed, then and later… and somehow, I don’t think they’re prevaricating.

         1. I recall a poll done about Sarah Palin a bit over eight years ago, presumably to see how much mud was sticking.

            After months of coordinated attack from all points the political spectrum, the number one reason people listed as being unwilling to vote for her was “her voice/accent is annoying”. The number was danged near 40% of the people surveyed.
            Everything else barely even registered.

            I lost a lot of hope that day. We were not (and still are not) a sensible people.

            1. I lot of people make decisions with their gut

            2. I think 2016 was Sarah’s revenge in a lot of ways. She settled into a position that was in many ways even deadlier to her opposition – the role of a god-tier kingmaker. This is what I told my dismissive liberal friends, and they laughed it off. That was several years ago. They’re not exactly full of mirth now.

   8. She must really hate herself…..

   9. It’s been done by parents, schools, and media, until the victims of these terrorizing influences are having meltdowns all over social media. My older son mostly has friends who are older than him, and pretty much keeps the crazy at bay, but younger son has been trying to explain to his friends that they are not going to be hunted down and put in camps, etc.

3. Reblogged this on Pending Something Witty and commented:
   VER well said! An excellent commentary by Sarah Hoyt!

4. Oh, I am so sick of Gay “allies”. They just love the cute little mincing dolls that will dance on cue in exchange for treats, but as soon as you step off their reservation you get lumped in with all the other “haters”.

   Don’t tell me that you support my lifestyle, okay? I don’t care. Your support or lack of it makes no difference to me.

   1. Well yes if you are gay, or black, or a women and don’t mouth the right things then they declare that you are not gay, or black, or a women.

   2. I mostly don’t care. If YOU are a person worth knowing, I’ll cultivate a friendship. If you aren’t, I ignore you. Gay, straight, purple, striped or whatever.

      1. Moo. }:o)

         1. I still like you!

            1. Oh, I know. Just doing my part as part of the “or whatever.”

         2. *offers Orvan cookies* Not just for homosapiens. (Or whatever the current taxonomy is)

            1. Ooh. Why, thank you.

         3. Yes, or even Ox.

      2. I think you’re lying, Sarah. Trump-voters don’t care about purple people.
         Colorist! 😛

         1. No, no, the colorist comes after the penciller and the inker. And they all come after the author, and that’s Sarah.

         2. Not about “purple people” per se, no. But if a one-eyed, one-horned flying beast were to start eating purple people you can rely on Trump voters to fight it.

            1. Don’t fight him. Teach him to play his horn. All sorts of strange is expected in musicians.

               1. And goalies in hockey… A one-eyed, one-horned flying beast minding the net would give pause to even the boldest of wingers

   3. I kinda accidentally came out at work yesterday. As some of my coworkers were bemoaning the election, and how terrible it was for the gays, I chimed in that I’d had to deal with worse all morning, and here’s the stupidity some of my ex-girlfriends were espousing. After I’d taken the soapbox away from the resident Sanders supporter and bitched about how great this country is on gay rights and tolerance compared to most of the world, they briefly simmered down before falling back to the next knee-jerk talking point. So it’s not like it changed their minds.

      On the other hand, they haven’t brought up the ‘worried about the gays’ point since. So, eh, one down.

      1. They’re not actually discussing anything, they’re playing the “Ain’t It Awful!” game…

      2. Can you point out where Trump planned to genocide gays? I’ve been hearing fear all over the place and am lost. I don’t think I am crazy in that aspect.

         1. he never even said anything AGAINST gays, and gays were integral parts of his campaign. Dot knows that. Her exes and the frigging crazies on line…

            1. Didn’t mean to insinuate it. Just trying to see if anyone can point to something other than Pence’s opinions. (A rational person can see where he comes from even if their fact weightings are different but those seem fewer and fewer)

               1. Read somewhere that even Pence’s opinions were rabidly misconstrued. His ‘changing sexual behavior’ wasn’t aimed at stopping them having gay sex, but rather changing from ‘having unsafe sex’ to ‘how to have safe sex so you don’t get infected or spread HIV.’ And that this was supposedly aimed at people who were already affected by HIV.

                  The latter, which makes sense, is of course not newsworthy. Also, ‘offensive’ to the #ShoutYourSTD types as ‘discrimminatory.’

                  1. Rabidly misconstrued? Are you suggesting that our enlightened old-souled betters, the people who attempted to ensure the safety of porn actors by imposing legal regulation requiring condoms, would misconstrue anything a Republican said? And that our MSM would not only condone but aid and abet such misrepresentation?

                     Go sit in that corner (the one behind the bar) and think shame on yourself. These people are so enlightened they know what we mean far far more than we do because they understand the underlying deep patriarchal and racist structure which renders us incapable of comprehending our true privileged awfulness.

                     1. I shall not say that the legacy media are to misconstrue such things. Instead I will say they are apt to outright fsck it up, if not flat-out lie about such things.

                        Rye, please.

                     2. *giggles and cuddles the wallaby* You’re lucky my coffee is still a touch too warm to drink.

                     3. Sad part is I think the impetus behind condom law in CA was not for safety but to change viewers thinking. If condoms are even in fantasies they think they will be everywhere

                        1. Or to drive the porn industry out of the state.

                           A good-sized chunk of the US industry is based in California. Part of that is the climate, and part of that is a sympathetic court ruling that didn’t go all the way to the US Supreme Court (so it’s not binding in other parts of the country). With the new law, if a company wants to retain the option to film without condoms, it’ll be forced to do so out of state.

                  2. This is admitted by even sane gay publications. BUT hey, he was a good way to scare voters into voting for the horror.

                     1. Truth isn’t what seems to be important these days. Narrative uber alles fur der volkenspiel.

                        1. This will probably help Trump get reelected. All he has to do is quote these people today, point out how there aren’t any concentration camps, the KKK isn’t running anything, and WWIII hasn’t started, then ask what they’re lying about now.

                           Plus breaking the back of the Democrat fraud machine.

                           1. I wouldn’t bet on no WWIII, but the chances are less with him than with Hillary.

         2. Just remember that there were people who were convinced that Romney wanted to ban birth control back during the 2012 election. I don’t mean there were people who were worried that they’d lose access to the free birth control provided by Obamacare. These people sincerely thought that Romney wanted to outright ban it and make it illegal.

         3. I saw a tweet claiming that Pence wants to electrocute gays to cure them.

            Somehow, I don’t think they understood the concept. 😛

            1. Shocking!

            2. no, seriously, ECT is still a thing.

               1. http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/electroconvulsive-therapy#1

                  What Is Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)?
                  ECT is among the safest and most effective treatments available for depression. With ECT, electrodes are placed on the patient’s scalp and a finely controlled electric current is applied while the patient is under general anesthesia. The current causes a brief seizure in the brain. ECT is one of the fastest ways to relieve symptoms in severely depressed or suicidal patients. It’s also very effective for patients who suffer from mania or other mental illnesses.
                  ECT is generally used when severe depression is unresponsive to other forms of therapy. Or it might be used when patients pose a severe threat to themselves or others and it is too dangerous to wait until medications take effect.
                  Although ECT has been used since the 1940s and 1950s, it remains misunderstood by the general public. Many of the procedure’s risks and side effects are related to the misuse of equipment, incorrect administration, or improperly trained staff. It is also a misconception that ECT is used as a “quick fix” in place of long-term therapy or hospitalization. Nor is it correct to believe that the patient is painfully “shocked” out of the depression. Unfavorable news reports and media coverage have contributed to the controversy surrounding this treatment.

                  1. There’s more at the link, but I thought three paragraphs was about enough.

                  2. I THINK — not sure, because well, I don’t get it — most of Robert’s research right now is in this field. Not for gay therapy, for depression.

               2. In any case, his position is that “gays who don’t want to be gay should be helped to become not-gay”.

                  The PC position is “you’re gay and you shouldn’t try to change that” and of course “if you want to help gays change, you’re a hater”.

                  1. Sooo… What do they imagine the B stands for in all their LGBTPQC4ISR acronyms?

                  2. I thought the Proglodyte position is that if you’re a boy and want to become not-boy or a girl and want to be not-girl, then the gummint is obligated to making life conform to you, so why not so not-gay desires?

                     1. Do you expect them to make sense? [Puzzled Smile]

                        1. Of course not — but I find amusement in pointing out their failures.

                     2. Because the former are enlightened positions of tolerance, while the latter is a wrong-think unscientific position of repression and hatred.

                  3. Apparently his position wasn’t even that, Paul. At least not officially (I don’t know what his PRIVATE position is nor do I care.) He just wanted them to use protection and have fewer orgies, back when AIDS hit.

                     1. Yes, I heard about That position but he also had taken the position that if gays wanted to be “cured” then they should be given help.

                        1. Apparently, no. It’s all from that one “He wanted to divert funds to change sexual BEHAVIOR” — not orientation, behavior. Yes, from that they got electroshock therapy. This is why I despair of our opponents, sometimes.

                     2. http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/10/stop-calling-mike-pence-homophobic/

                        With other links in the article; if that helps, I guess.

               3. Yes, but this said, “electrocute,” which is what I was snarking on.

            3. But they’ll resist anyway.

      3. Wait, you’re gay? How am I supposed to reconcile that with what you write on the blog? Should I be reading this with a white wine spritzer in my hand? I need to go clear my head. where’s my safe space?/s

         1. Nah, I’m bi. And happily married to my male husband, although that is a source of friction with some of the rabid self-proclaimed arbiters of the “gay community.” Most bi folk are easier targets for switching to log cabin republicans or libertarian, just because we’ve experienced the “tolerance” and “diversity” of being lectured that there’s no such thing as bi, and need to “just admit that we’re really lesbian” and “stop denying it by falling in love with men!” Pfui.

            Did anyone see which way my eyes went, when I just rolled them too hard?

            Personally, I prefer mead or brandy, but if you want a white wine spritzer, that’s fine by me!

            1. *passes them back with a sigh* Amazing how they want to normalize men with the most extreme sex drive as standard for everyone, innit?

               I kind of wonder… given how women are known to have much more flexible, on average, notions of what is attractive*… if this might not be part of the ‘to be a fulfilled woman you have to be a total ass of a man’ thing.

               Or maybe it’s just fanatics getting angry and lashing out at someone who doesn’t fit the theory.

               1. If nothing else, Huma and Hillary have proved beyond the shadow of a doubt the stupidity and self-sabotage of marrying a beard who lives down to your worst expectations of men, eh?

                  1. Hah! Well put.

            2. Yeah, Bi just effs up their “We are born this way!” argument. Binary thinking is limiting. There are so many gray areas. Especially in one’s gray matter.

               1. What I look forward to, with vicious glee, is the disintegration of the gay community over the next two generations. Ostracization creates and maintains balkanization; normalization with the rest of society disintegrates it. With the ability to get the same tax & inheritance benefits as more standard sets of partners, and with social media making it easier to reach out and find interested and interesting people, there’s not much to hold the ‘community’ together as a physical or political force anymore, nor to force the standards of behavior or voting on us that the self-proclaimed arbiters so desperately desire.

                  Note: the more that the vast majority of America proves that it really doesn’t care what consenting folks do in the privacy of their own homes, the more shrill and extreme the people who want to cling to power become. But the more extreme they become, the faster they lose their grip, because it becomes more and more obvious that they’re way out on the fringe. Thus, the America that elected Obama twice “is going to put gays in concentration camps!”… My best response to that is to flip my wrist, and say in my most pitying tone, “Oh, honey. When you grow up, you’ll realize we’ve all heard this temper tantrum before. So put on your big girl panties and stop having hysterics. Do I need to get you a little paper bag to breath into?”

                  1. Yeah, hilarious that The Advocate has declared that Peter Thiel is not a ‘real’ gay.

                  2. The danger is the seizures that come with the wild flailing.

               2. For the past several years, my thinking on the subject of sexual attraction has been coming around to the following theory. I posit that just about everyone can, with effort, add a category of sexual attraction in their brains — but it’s practically impossible to remove a category. This would explain both the success of groups like Exodus Ministries (a Christian group that tried to help gay people who wanted to train themselves to be attracted to the opposite sex), as well as the fair* criticisms of Exodus (e.g., that their graduates who claimed to be successful consistently refused to take an attraction test to measure whether they had any same-sex attractions). If it’s possible to, basically, train your brain to be bisexually attracted — but NOT possible to train your brain to LOSE attraction to any given sex — then all is explained. The gay men who graduated from Exodus’ program able to sustain attraction to women, and were able to marry and have kids, may have still felt attraction to guys — but as long as they didn’t act on that attraction, their Christian conscience was satisfied. (I don’t know if Exodus also worked with lesbians who wanted to become attracted to men). This theory would also explain the reputed behavior of many** sailors and prison inmates, who would settle for homosexual relations if nothing else was available, but once on shore or released from prison would (almost exclusively) look for companionship of the opposite sex.

                  Such a theory would, of course, have elicited screams of rage from the SJW contingent had any social studies researcher proposed looking into it. Though I hear that now, the conventional “wisdom” (and yes, those are scare quotes) is shifting away from the “born this way” argument a little. So who knows — maybe some research will be done on that theory after all.

                  * They received plenty of unfair criticisms, of course, but I won’t dignify those with a mention.

                  ** Some, of course, would choose to refrain from any sexual activity, due to religious conviction, faithfulness to a spouse back home, or whatever.

                  1. This also makes sense in terms of guys finding their wives attractive after 70 years, and the behavior of those who were subject to “grooming” by predators. All the attention gets on the kids in that situation, because it’s extra horrible and there are fewer ways for them to escape– but we all know adults who get “trained” to look for the wrong type of person, and are hurt by it, no? Maybe there’s a way to actually help folks like that…..

                     Also suggests that the “sex ed” classes are seriously child abuse.

                     1. I’ve mentioned before that I taught myself to systemically distrust, because I thought it would counter sexual predators doing what we now call grooming. My reaction to sex ed was that it showed some of the indicators of same, and that they could take their behavioral suggestions to /dev/null.

                  2. I suspect that the different wiring in men and women extends to sexual attraction, as well. Quite a while back I read an article about a small sub-set of the female population that was primarily interested in a monogamous relationship. The gender of the person that they were in a relationship with wasn’t as important as the fact that they were in a relationship. A lot of these women were apparently in a steady relationship with another woman while in college, but later ended up in a happy marriage with a man.

                     The article noted that a lot of lesbians were in denial that this particular sub-set of women existed.

                     I do have one bit of anecdotal evidence about men. Someone I trust told me about an unidentified man who had been living with his boyfriend, moved out and became celibate when he decided to start attending his church again, and then a while later (I don’t know how much later) accidentally discovered that he now found women attractive. I think it’s important to note, though, that when the man in question went celibate, there was apparently no expectation on his part that he would eventually become attracted to women. It was completely unexpected.

                     1. The last one sounds like evidence of something I’ve been telling folks for years– we’re really hurting a lot of folks by telling them that if they admire someone, or if they don’t fit in some sort of “normal” profile, then they’re “really” gay, and that’s an essential element of their being.

                        No wonder there’s such a high suicide rate. 😦

                        1. Add in the nonsensical idea that all desire is prima facie sexual desire …

                           1. Or, fo the matter, that finding someone physically attractive (e.g. ‘he’s got a nice smile, he has nice ass / she’s got legs! oh, she’s pretty’) automatically equals sexual desire.

                              Removes the rather harmless, but pleasant, ability to pay someone a compliment / receive compliments / harmless flirting. *shakes head sadly*

                  3. but it’s practically impossible to remove a category.

                     I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. If the category is, say, “Married men” and you tell yourself “Nothing less attractive than another woman’s man” and “I don’t poach” for long enough, it can become an automatic defense against developing an attraction for (or responding to attention from) any given member of that category. Which, if it’s not removing a category, is the next best thing.

                     It’s definitely easier to re-direct attraction or lust (“Hubba hubba, I’d like a closer look at that piece, ifyaknowwhatimean”) into admiration or aesthetic appreciation, (“That is one well-formed [man/woman, delete whichever is inappropriate] and very pleasant to look at. Full stop, end of message.”)

                     1. It’s a modification of the Christian (and maybe Jewish?) traditional teaching against objectification– if you get yourself in the habit of seeing someone as a person, at least partly, then you’re less likely to see them sexually.

                        IE, a guy who’s a grandfather and so now “sees” women his grandkids’ age in terms of his granddaughter will respond differently, though if he’d let himself think about it he’d still be going “wowza!”
                        (Can work for kids, too, but the gap for grandkids works more reliably. I had a classmate in high school whose parents had a 20+ year gap in their ages, had something like six marriages combined before that and I think her mom was 35 before they married.)

                     2. When I was on my mission for the LDS Church, we used to quip the following for what to do when an attractive woman was spotted –

                        “Look once, you’re a man. Look twice, you’re not a missionary.” *beat* “So make it a good long first look.”

                     3. I have learned a certain equanimity can be attained by learning to focus on imperfections — of which all have many — than imagining perfections.

                        Difficult to think of any concrete examples at the moment, but if you look past the “shaping” and direction of the eye caused by lingerie, most of the Victoria’s Secret “angels” are pretty much without curve. They might look as if they have hips, waist and busts but that is mostly an illusion of the garmenting.

                        1. N.B. – it also helps to be aware of the tricks a camera lens and lighting enable, such as the way a turned torso can create the appearance of a waist, or how lens choice can flatten features. Suddenly the cute but slightly sharp-featured model resembles a ferret.

                     4. For the matter, there is nothing wrong with appreciating someone visually. “Nice to look at / easy on the eyes” – and just looking for the pleasure of looking without feeling the need to do anything about it is something I think, that has been removed from society to the detriment of both sexes.

                        1. Franklin: “Just look at her, John!”
                           Adams: “I am!”

                           1. Haha!

            3. Yeah, apparently that’s one of the dirty little secrets of the LGBTQ community. Officially, they’re all one big happy family of non-straight individuals. Unofficially, plenty of them will happily knife the members of one of the other letters.

               1. Honey, you have no idea…

                  1. Did that come with a dismissive hand flip? Otherwise they will have to dog ear your card.

                     1. I don’t know if Mischa did a dismissive hand flip. Myself, I’ll take my fully dogeared card, and go for the painful laughter.

                        One of my earliest loves (She’s an absolute sweetheart and I love her still, but we realized we weren’t as good for eachother as a couple as we were friends) is an exboyfriend who became an ex-girlfriend. While she was still transitioning, we got attacked one day by a rabid would-be arbiter of the community, who wanted to ascertain if she was going to be straight (said with a sneer) or lesbian afterward. The implication being quite clear on which would make her unwelcome among others on the dance floor.

                        1. Omfg. I will refrain from how I would have responded. It would have involved head, colon and puppet.

                           This is the thing that drives me nuts. Most people I know just want to live their life. But lots want to micromanage and that poisons both sides

                        2. Omfg. I will refrain from how I would have responded. It would have involved head, colon and puppet.

                           This is the thing that drives me nut

                        3. Misha, I apologize for mispelling your name. All other mispellings are just par for the comment, but I do apologize about your name. Sorry!

            4. “stop denying it by falling in love with men!”

               Just tell them he’s your beard. 🙂

               1. I’m cranky. Telling them that would keep their smug self-righteousness and delusion intact, therefore…

                  What? I’m helping educate them to reality! They should thank me!

   4. That’s what collectivism does- it turns people from individuals into the interchangeable parts of a group- objects.

   5. Heh. I care so little, I have no idea how many gay friends I have in person (as opposed to almost exclusively on social media). I know three for certain, because it’s’ been specifically brought up, but I’m sure there have to be more.

5. ‘Trumphausen by proxy’ is a brilliant phrase.

   1. Aye, that it is. I shan’t be forgetting it anytime soon.

   2. Neither shall I. I’m still waiting for the screaming tantrums from the campus garbage babies to die down, though.
      I have only briefly dipped into Book of Face this week . Still waiting for some of my kin and friends to calm the F**k down.

   3. It is.

      Of course, IMO, so is “cuckservative”. There are any number of self-titled conservatives who will attack you mercilessly for trying to press an advantage against or counterattack a Leftist.
      The Leftist can be as brutal as they want, but just try to effectively defend yourself, and your self-proclaimed “ally” will happily shoot you in the back.

      David Brooks, is, of course, the Ur example. But the yesterday’s essay by David French on National Review Online is an excellent example of the type.

      1. We have had so many high minded gracious losers. How many times must you lose graciously before you realize is that you are a LOSER!! And the nasties have four more years of idiocy in power.

      2. However, IME the insult “cuckservative” gets thrown around with reckless abandon, to the point where I’ve developed a rule of thumb that has never yet steered me wrong: if someone throws that term around, their opinion is not worth listening to — because they are someone who will attack others without evidence, claim that not voting for Trump meant you want Clinton to win*, and so on. In other words, they will act like precisely the kind of bully that I find most contemptible.

         * Saying “not voting for Trump is effectively a half-vote for Clinton, so if you’re in a battleground state, you can’t afford that luxury” is fair. Saying “if you don’t vote for Trump, you want Clinton to win” is completely unfair and unfounded, and many people instantly lost my respect for saying the latter.

         1. Wanton throwing of insults should get one ignored. Occasional usage to make a point works. Unfortunately there were too many reckless @sshats at both extremes of the spectrum this year.

            1. Wanton throwing of insults, i.e., ad hominem argument, is not generally an effective form of suasion.

               Now, when a group self-identifies (e.g., SJW) it can hardly be an insult to use their label of preference. This is especially so when the group advocates radical submission of personal views to the views central to the group identity.

      3. I find ‘cuckservative’ an ugly, badly formed neologism that serves chiefly to identify Alt-Right jerks who think that the only answer to racial-grievance identity politics is a different colour of racial-grievance identity politics. It’s been many years since I heard a new word that I so devoutly wished would die a swift and unmourned death.

         1. “who think that the only answer to racial-grievance identity politics is a different colour of racial-grievance identity politics.”

            It isn’t the only answer, but it is an answer.

            UNTIL we remove the legal institutions, such as affirmative action, and minority set aside contracts, or that some groups voting privileges are more worthy of protection than others, that enshrine identity group politics as a good thing, any group would be fools not to organize to counter it, and that organization will inevitably include its’ own identity.

            1. It is not an answer, anymore than what we have is an answer.

               1. Sarah, the difference is that we know the difference between using a dangerous tool long enough to remove the need for it and loving “the bright sword for it’s sharpness, or the arrow for it’s swiftness”. We love that which they defend.

                  1. EVERYTIME that was done, Steve, EVERY TIME from Roman times on, the tool destroys the user. AND what the user loved.

                     1. So does history record that appeasement works?

                        1. Sane fighting is not appeasement. Our constitution gives us tools. Yes, the right has been scared of the press. They had reasons. I watched the entire history of the Reagan presidency re-written when Clinton won. They haven’t moved as fast as they should mentally. Few people have. circumstances are changing very fast. This makes them neither appeasers NOR cowards. Just a little slow catching up. Hopefully that has changed now.
                           MEANWHILE, embracing the alt-right because “they fight” ignores what they fight FOR. What you’ll be left with is that tiny, regional party no one votes for, because they alienate everyone.
                           I’ve watched the alt-right and their “dark enlightenment” destroy ALL of the values of western civ. What you’re left IF THEY WIN is a feudal society with slightly different parameters than if the Stalinists win. And their taking over the GOP makes it more likely the stalinists will win.
                           WHY would you fall for that ploy because “they fight”? They don’t fight for anything you want!

                           1. Then again, let’s us not demonize the Alt-right when they happen to be pushing in the same direction we are. One of the left’s effective tools is getting the reasonable right to denounce the ‘unacceptable’ right. One does not need to ally with them. I’m not sure how we do this. I’m an engineer because I find it easier to deal with machines that people.

                           2. Oh, sure. The alt-right encompasses people who simply think we should preserve Western society, the “casual alt-righ” to the fricking insane ones. And some move to insane, like the Volksdeutsche expatriate who is now indistinguishable from stormfronters except for maybe drooling a little less.
                              By all means, calling yourself alt-right is not reason to look down on anyone. Being a biologically and historically retarded fucktard, is.

                           3. I’m willing to accept that the alt-Right and I have common enemies. However, that simply makes us co-belligerents, not allies, and I’m well aware that they want me dead too.
                              Confusion on this point caused us a lot of problems during the 1940s, and I’d rather avoid that.

                           4. The power of the Democrat operatives with bylines is collapsing; witness the recent grovelling by the NY Times. Changing from a winning slowly strategy to burn it all down tactics seems to express a lack of confidence in the power of one’s ideas.

                              To save the Constitution we had to destroy it has a certain hard to deny flaw at its core.

                        2. There’s a lot of space between nuclear carpet bombing and appeasement.

                           1. And Americans could have carpet bombed Germany or Japan.

                           2. And I haven’t advocated nuclear carpet bombing. But you keep fighting Strawman SDN.

                           3. You haven’t. But the boys you’re defending have been.

                        3. Containment worked to restrain the Soviets until we could blow out their economy. Arguably that is preferable to nuclear Armageddon but different folks, different tastes.

                           1. Oh, and the Chinese used appeasement to successfully vitiate and eventually absorb Mongol invasions.

                  2. Sarah, the difference is that we know the difference between using a dangerous tool long enough to remove the need for it and loving “the bright sword for it’s sharpness, or the arrow for it’s swiftness”. We love that which they defend.

                     You’re not using a sword; you’re using Sauron’s Ring, and many of you are giving good evidence that it corrupts anyone who wields it.

                     1. Why don’t you explain that to the people who forged it and are still using it? I’m sure they’ll spare you.

                        http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/14/cnn-commentator-freaks-out-oh-my-goodness-poor-white-people-video

                        “What do you say to the people who dragged a poor white guy out of a car and beat him?” Higbie countered.

                        “Oh, my goodness, poor white people!” Sanders exclaimed. “Please, stop. Stop it, Carl.”

                        1. Why don’t you explain that to the people who forged it and are still using it? I’m sure they’ll spare you.

                           WordPress doesn’t let me draw crayon diagrams, so I hope you can follow plain written language if you try hard enough: I’m neither going to submit to Isengard to fight Mordor, nor ally with Mordor to repel Isengard.

                        2. I have no intention of explaining it to them. I have every intention of cutting the ring off their hands and casting it into Mount Doom.
                           Better to be Gandalf than Isildur.

            2. Lately I’ve been fielding a barrage of attacks and insults from Alt-Right clowns who staunchly maintain that (1) the only way to save any Western country from socialism is to restrict the vote to white landowners, and (2) Irishmen don’t count as white. Needless to say, they call me ‘cuck’, ‘libtard’, and other childish insults. You call that an answer?

               1. THIS. This is crazy bullshit.

               2. This happened to me earlier. I’m also an “invader American” — eventually these crazy people will make everyone hate them. Do we want the GOP identified with them? (And no, it’s not right now, because we’re coming to realize they’re as few and as crazy as the SJWs.)

               3. No. Do you call it an answer to grant the franchise to 4 generations of failure to support, of whatever race, just because they have a pulse and are here?

                  1. Neither are an answer. So start looking at removing the “this race gets benes” instead of replacing it.

                     1. ” So start looking at removing the “this race gets benes” instead of replacing it.”

                        Which is precisely where I said we should end up.
                        This is all depressingly familiar. It’s exactly the treatment the Tea Party got from the GOPe.

                        This is where it got to as a response to them.

                        

                        I shudder to think where we go next. But you keep fighting Alt-Right Strawman SDN too.

                        1. Yes, it IS what you said but if you read the alt-right sites, that’s not what THEY say. Steve, I don’t think you’ve read them. I’m not fighting a strawman, I’m fighting people like the lovely gentleman who attacked me in absentia and made up tweets of mine threatening him WHILE I WAS AT A CONFERENCE. Also, for the funsies, accused me of being open borders. Read him, if you haven’t in a while. He’s gone over the edge into “only white people.” And white by his (and the alt-right’s) definition is rather narrow. (What race has to do with anything, I don’t know.)
                           It’s NOT ME. It’s what a considerable portion of the alt-right, themselves, say. Now is this all of them? No. But the most vocal are.

                  2. According to the people who have been insulting me, having one drop of black blood, or one drop of Latin, or one drop of Middle Eastern, or one drop of Jewish, or one drop of Irish, means you automatically deserve the presumption that you are guilty of ‘4 generations of failure to support’ and must have your franchise revoked.

                     These are the people who chiefly throw around the label ‘cuckservative’.

                     And you are sticking up for these people. Fortunately, you are doing it by making an obvious motte-and-bailey argument – making a tiny and unobjectionable claim instead of their large and indefensible one, and then pretending that I am opposed to the tiny one.

                     Sorry, that dog won’t hunt. The taxidermist took care of it.

                     1. Yet one of the voices of the Alt-right claims both American Indian and Mexican heritage. At the same time that he claims genetics over all. He, at least, accepts mutts. Anyone who says that there are clear, hard, simple, absolute, rules to follow in the complicated world is, IMHO a pin head.

                        1. He works really hard at squaring the circle. BUT more and more he doesn’t believe in mutts or accept them.

                  3. No, but that does not excuse race as a criteria. I will post my proposal which is along the line of more responsibility performed, the more votes.

                     1. Article II The People of the Oath

                        A. The Oath of Responsibility
                        1. The Oath
                        “I, N., before witness, declare myself an adult, responsible for my actions, and able to enter contract. I accept the legitimate debts heretofore contracted in my name and my obligations as a Freeman/Freewoman of the Free State.” “so help me God” or “this I affirm upon my honor”.
                        2. Conditions
                        A Person wishing to take the Oath of Responsibility must show that he is at least 13 years of age if he takes the Oath with his guardian’s assent or at least 21 years of age if taken without the consent of his guardian.
                        The Oath maybe taken before the judge of any Governing Agency, the Hundred Meeting of which Hundred the person is a member, before a judge of a Shire or Quarter Court, or before the Assembly of a Shire or Quarter.
                        A judge, meeting, or assembly may refuse the Oath only if it has probable cause to believe that the individual is mentally deficient or is not in his right mind, in which case the judge, meeting, or assembly can postpone the taking of the Oath by up to one month. During that month, the judge, meeting, or assembly must submit the question to a jury, which may by unanimous verdict find that according to the tests below that the person in question is mentally deficient or insane. In the absence of such a finding the Oath must be allowed.
                        For the purposes of the forgoing a jury may find a person mentally deficient if they are unable to read the first six paragraphs of this constitution on the rights to Life and Liberty and are unable to answer two multiplication problems from the multiplication table through 8*9, where the questions shall be generated by drawing two numbers from a hat or box with 9 slips of paper bearing the numbers one to nine.
                        For the purposes of the forgoing a jury may find a person mentally insane if after each of the twelve jurors has a five minute discussion with the person on the law of cause and effect and any delusions the person might be suffering from (i.e. voices that no one else can hear, waking visions, or dreams which might cause the person to act irrationally despite their understanding of cause and effect) they conclude the person is under normal circumstances incapable of understanding the meaning and consequences of the Oath.
                        The fact that the question of a person’s mental fitness to take the Oath has been previously adjudicated and found wanting is not binding on any future finder of fact: judge, meeting, assembly, or jury.

                        B. Dependants
                        1. Of Minors
                        All persons under the age of 13 and all persons ages 13 to 21 who have not taken the Oath of Responsibility are Minors who’s legal acts can only be made with the consent of their guardian, in accordance with the normal course of the Common Law.
                        2. Of Non Minor Dependants
                        All persons older than 21 who have not taken the Oath of Responsibility are Non Minor Dependants who’s legal acts can only be made with the consent of their guardian, in accordance with the normal course of the Common Law. Unlike Minor Dependants, Non Minor Dependants owe reasonable compensation to their Guardians, except that persons age 21 have six months from the time they turn 21 to take the Oath of Responsibility, before they owe compensation.
                        3. Of Guardians
                        Guardians shall generally be governed by the common law regarding guardians, but at the termination of their guardianship they shall make accounting before the court for their guardianship and guardians of Non Minor Dependants shall make such accounting once every five years.

                        C. Freemen and Freewomen
                        1. Generally
                        All persons who have taken the Oath of Responsibility are legal adults with the responsibilities and privileges thereof.
                        2. Nationals
                        Those who have taken the Oath of Responsibility may also take the Oath of Allegiance and become a National of the Free State. This entitles them to: voice and vote in the Hundred Meeting, to hold the Offices of Moderator and Witness of their Hundred, and the right but not the obligation to be veniremen.
                        3. Oath of Allegiance
                        “I N. a freeman/freewoman of the Oath, do absolutely renounce and abjure any allegiance or fidelity to any Prince, Potentate, State or Sovereignty of whom or to which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen and that I will support and defend the Constitution and Laws of the Free State of X, and that I take this obligation freely without reservation or menial evasion,” “so help me God” or “this I affirm upon my honor”.
                        4. Contract of Agency
                        A Freewoman or Freeman who takes the Oath of Allegiance is obliged to enter into a contract of agency with a Governing Agent.
                        5. Sojourners
                        Those residing in the territory of the Free State who have taken the Oath of Responsibility but not the Oath of Allegiance are Freemen or Freewomen, but they only have right to voice before their Hundred of Residence and the right but not obligation to enter into contract of agency with a Governing Agent.

                        D. Citizens
                        1. Antecedent Requirements
                        To take the Oath of Citizenship a person must be at least three years a Freeman or Freewoman and two years a national of the Free State, and must not have been convicted of any felony within the last ten years and if he has ever been convicted of a felony, he must have discharged his sentence more than five years previous to taking the Oath.
                        2. The Citizens Oath
                        “I N., a Freeman/Freewoman National of the Oath do solemnly swear/affirm that I shall pay the head tax to the Treasury of the Free State and that upon necessity, defined by law, give my Governing Agent and the Free State my honest council in matters of law and right and my arms in time of war,” “so help me God” or “this I affirm upon my honor”.
                        3. Obligations of Citizenship
                        A citizen is obliged to be registered for conscription until his 64th year. A citizen is obliged to be registered for jury service until his 74th year. A citizen is obliged to pay the head tax, not to exceed 20 pennyweights of silver per annum, as established by law.
                        4. Rights of Citizenship
                        Citizens are entitled to: voice and two votes in their Hundred Meeting, to at least two votes at the Assemblies of the Shire, Quarter, and Free State, to earn additional votes as noted below, and to hold all the Offices of the Free State not reserved to Governing Agents.
                        5. Veterans
                        Any person who: in time of declared war serves in the Armed Forces of the Free State for 391 days, or in time of peace serves a three year term in the active duty Armed Forces of the Free State or a five year term in the reserve forces of the Free State or serves a term in the Militia of the Free State which includes 782 days on active service (including all training and maintenance), shall have an additional vote in their hundred and the assembly’s of the their shire and quarter and in the state assembly for each such period of war service or term of peacetime service, up to a total of five additional votes, to be exercised only after they have taken the oath of citizenship. Days of war time service less than 391 may be converted into equivalent time served in peace time at the rate of one day of war service equals two days of peace time service.
                        6. Income Tax Payers
                        Any citizen who pays the voluntary income tax, not to exceed 10 percent of income per year, established by the Assembly of the Free State earns an additional vote thereby so long as they continue to pay. They may pay twice or three times the amount of the tax and gain two or three additional votes as long as they do so.
                        7. Parents and Guardians
                        Any citizen or citizens who: sire, bare, or adopt before the age of 5, a child and act as the child’s guardian until it takes the Oath of Responsibility will when that person takes the Oath of Citizenship, divide one vote between them. That is to say, if there is one guardian he gets the whole vote, if there are two guardians they each get half a vote, if three guardians then a third of a vote, etc. Up to three votes may be earned in this way.
                        8. Valor in Battle
                        Any person who earns the Free State Medal for Valor in the first or second degree, shall upon taking the Oath of Citizenship have an additional vote.
                        9. Public Acclimation
                        A citizen publicly acclaimed for virtue by the Assembly of his Shire or Quarter or by the Assembly of the Free State gains an extra vote. Each Assembly may acclaim only one citizen per year.

                        E. Governing Agents
                        1. Nature
                        A Governing Agent is one who holds a Governing Agency and has a contract of agency with at least one other Freeman or Freewomen.
                        2. Requirements for Holding a Governing Agency
                        To hold a Governing Agency a person must be five years a citizen of the Free State and hold five or more votes, at least one which must be for military service. Further no person convicted of a felony can hold a Governing Agency. If a person’s number of votes falls below five or they are convicted of a felony, they must immediately divest themselves of their Governing Agency.
                        3. Creation of New Governing Agencies
                        A new Governing Agency may be created when the proposed new governing agent and at least thirty Freemen or Freewoman, three of whom must be citizens appear before the Assembly of the Shire or Quarter, the proposed governing agent having previously requested an assessment of his wealth, and the proposed governing agent paying into the treasury of the Free State four fifths of his wealth, and having shown that the remainder of his wealth is in land and the securities of the Free State, or any subdivision thereof, he takes the Agent’s Oath, and the 30 Freemen make a contract of Agency with the new Governing Agent.
                        4. Agent’s Oath
                        “I N., a Citizen of the Oath here by undertake to: uphold and defend the constitution and laws of the Free State of X, that I will give good and honest government to my Principals, that in union with the other Agents and the Delegates of the Shire I will work to preserve the peace and uphold right, and that in time of war my arms shall defend the people and government of the Free State.” “so help me God” or “this I affirm upon my honor”.
                        5. Sale and Purchase of Governing Agencies
                        A person wanting to sell his Governing Agency must appear before the Assembly of the Shire, and there auction his Governing Agency, selling to the highest cash bidder. He must immediately pay a quarter of the sales price to the treasury of the Free State.
                        6. Limited Heritability of Governing Agencies
                        A Governing Agency is an asset of a decedent’s estate, but it must be sold by the executor by the same procedure as in the forgoing paragraph, paying the same amount to the treasury of the Free State, at the next Assembly of the Shire following the decease of the Governing Agent. Until that time the executor of the estate shall act as Governing Agent as hereinafter described.
                        7. Limits
                        A Governing Agent may not own more than one Governing Agency in the same shire and a Governing Agent may not own a Governing Agency in more than three shires.

      4. Do consider I’ve been called this, and also communist.

         1. A male mormon cuckservitive communist space princess. Your title is getting as long as larry’s

            1. Wow. All I get called is “silly” it seems.
               And I am not silly. The Universe is silly. I just notice.

      5. With all due respect, given what French has had to put up with from the alt-Right, I’m willing to cut him some slack.
         Also, BTW, there’s a big difference between “taking advantage of your enemy’s failure to protect his flank” and “firebombing your enemy’s cities when precision munitions are available.”

         1. I am no longer willing to cut any slack to those more interested in the good opinion of those whose earlier form called me baby killer (over a decade after ‘nam) than in advancing their claimed agenda.

            David Cameron resigned after Brexit despite increasing the Tory majority so they didn’t need a coalition last election. French and Frum championed W, Romney, and worst of all McCain and lack the self awareness to stop lecturing us after all that.

            Frum even complained about the Tea Party being out of line. He earned his treatment from the alt right.

            I even respect Kevin Williamson more than those two.

            1. Frum I have no brief for. Forget him.
               French has half a clue, AFAIK never complained about the Tea Party, and thinks that–horrors–getting the center is necessary to maintaining long-term power so you can get your agenda through and maintain it long enough to see it entrenched.
               Part of getting the center in normal politics, which we’re still in, is making sure you don’t scare them more than your political opponents.

               1. French has worn the uniform in Iraq and, as a past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has fought to legally defend our Civil Liberties. He is paid to bloviate. I am not paid to pay any particular attention to his bloviation and feel no cause to “read him out” of Conservatism.

                  As Ronald Reagan put it, “Somebody who agrees with me 80 percent of the time is a friend and ally, not a 20 percent traitor,” The trick is knowing how to tell the 80 percent from the other twenty.

                  1. Two things:

                     1. McCain wore the uniform and then made the center of his political career trying to gut the 1st Amendment. I’m a veteran and unlike a lot of people I realize the lot of us are as human as non-vets (insert rant about a lot of the things like having vets stand up and that which just bug me). While that might give me some initial reason to respect French he has to keep it long term.

                     2. On the 80/20 thing, if the 20% of the time they disagree it is with a knife to your back then, yes, they are a traitor.

                     1. Yeah, my universal response to people telling me I’m unpatriotic because I’m disagreeing with so-and-so “who’s a veteran and a war hero” is “So was Benedict Arnold.” Amazing how people forget that quote from Kipling:

                        “We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
                        But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
                        An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
                        Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;”

                     2. You can’t just count items in a list and figure a percentage. Items in the list must be weighted.

                        1. Also how they behave in “not sharing” that 20%.

                           If they viciously attack all disagreement… even if they agree 100% right now, they’re an enemy.

            2. HerbN, French had his adopted daughter called a Niglet, and was himself threatened. I think it’s time to stop cutting terrorists slack. And the alt-right is neither.

               1. “his adopted daughter called a Niglet”

                  And THAT is inexcusable. By anyone.

                  1. That may be true here but in the broader context of American politics I’ll believe that when people on the left are driven out of polite society for their version of such behavior such as a sitting Vice President claiming his ticket’s opponent would like to bring back slavery or columnists who write, in mainstream publications, that white women have proved by voting for Trump they will sell their own freedom for white supremacy.

                     Otherwise I’m going to continue to work on the belief that much of the intellectual right is more concerned with correct class flagging to their liberal counterparts than a commitment to their supposed ideals. Unti that is done any victory by the right which be pyrrhic at best because as soon as they are looked on with disdain the intellectuals will bolt (see the Bush years).

                     Hell, making Jonah Goldberg (who, I will note was anti-Trump) editor of National Review will be a good start. He has never shied away from describing the left for what it is (and has made a career of it).

                     If that demand that we attack our opponents as much as our own makes me alt-right then so be it. I do, after all, score highest on loyalty on the Haidt’s moral foundations test, even higher than conservatives.

                     1. This.

               2. So because his opponents are bad we have to accept his behavior?

                  No, He considers the good opinion of people who have called me a baby killer, blockaded me on base as a protest, and routinely insult me despite being my nominal ally as the key virtue.

                  Much of National Review has revealed, contra Buckley, they’d rather be liked by the Harvard Faculty than not to the point of preferring rule by the Harvard Faculty than the first 100 people in the Boston phone book if that’s what it took.

                  So he was threatened by the alt-right and his daughter called a Niglet…maybe if he and people like him hadn’t stood by for eight years and demanded we play nice while that was being done to large swaths of his nominal allies we wouldn’t be here.

                  Your two posts, quite inadvertently I know, give a prime example of how the alt-right is gaining strength.

                  It is wrong to call French’s daughter a Niglet but the treatment you described seeing when Obama won didn’t get 1/10th the condemnation. The Tea Party was called racist and dangerous by some Republicans but what has gone on since Tuesday is still reported as protests, not riots. For my own safety I may have to cancel something I’ve been looking forward to for month and was, when asked what I wanted for my 50th birthday by friends, was the only thing I mentioned. But for some reason that isn’t as bad as when I went to a Tea Party rally which was racist, sexist, etc.

                  French, Frum, and their ilk embraced identity politics in 2012 as the response to Romney’s lose in their drive for amnesty and courting Hispanics. Let me say it again, much of the GOP mainstream embraced identity politics, specifically Hispanic identity politics, in hopes of winning this year to the point of sabotaging their own 2014 victory visa via executive amnesty.

                  Do I want to live in a world governed by identity politics? No.

                  Does the left? Yes.

                  Do large parts of the GOP based on their post 2012 strategy of defending lawless activity of one ethnic group in order to get its votes? Yes.

                  Is any person with half a brain going to see white identity politics coming as the likely result? Yes.

                  Now, is decrying white identity politics developing on your own side while still remaining silent about anti-white identity politics on the left and the right’s own embrace of Hispanic identity politics going to give less eyeballs to the alt-right or more?

                  If the mainstream right wants to stop the alt-right step one is to actually spend less time being embarrassed by your own base and more time trying to put a stop to the place where identity politics has become policy both de jure and de facto.

                  Or, you know, We can wonder where the hell they came from to take over in a few years like a lot of us did when Trump became the likely winner for the nomination but at least the leftists will pretend to like us.

                  1. I see one of the big problems is thinking politics is not a cultural thing. You can’t change an immigrant’s politics without changing his culture. Too many Conservative Pundits an GOPe politicians seem to think the only way to reach them is to water down our principles. NO! We must teach them our values. Why do they want to make immigrants citizens before making them Americans.

                     As Pournelle says immigration without assimilation is invasion. No pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

                     1. This…and when the GOP embraces it we should not be surprised to see white identity politics as the result.

                     2. Yep. THIS. I assimilated. On purpose.

                        1. Which is why if I got a magic wand to make one change to the immigration debate in the US it would to be make the iconic immigrant or someone you designate who did the same work but you consider more marketable with the provision they come from a non-English speaking nation. I think that is the first market we have to lay down…no more “press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish” more than 50 miles north of the border.

                           1. Yep. “Must pass a certain level of English before naturalization is a given, as well as answer REAL history questions, not “which country did America achieve independence from?”
                              Look, I’m not an idiot, and I know how things work, and I’d even be able to entertain “first generation immigrants can never be real citizens, never vote, etc” I think it’s a bad move, because if the exam is done properly, we’re fine. BUT mostly I think we need the schools to turn out americans. We don’t care where you came from, you’re going to speak English, you’re going to learn history with a Pro-American slant. Yeah, sure you can bring your home dishes for show and tell, but the cafeteria will serve US dishes, whatever is mainstream at the time. American flags will be displayed. Don’t like it? Go home to the country of your choice that will accept you.

                           2. There are three kinds of people who come to the U.S. legally:

                              1) People who come here to work, but not to become citizens: expats, or resident aliens. (This is the category that I’m in in the country where I currently live: I’m here to work, but I intend to remain an American citizen.) While most of them will require some competence in English to do their jobs, I have no problem with accommodating them with translators, etc., if it’s needed. (I also have no problem with restricting this category in many ways, like only allowing unlimited resident aliens in STEM jobs, and restricting guest-worker programs in other jobs to X number of people per year. But that’s a bit outside the point).

                              2) People who come here because they have no choice: they’re refugees, fleeing war, or a tyrannical government that is murdering their ethnic group wholesale, or whatever. (Here I’m talking about genuine refugees, not economic migrants who claim to be refugees in order to game the system). I also have no problem with trying to accommodate them with translators, etc. — and unlike resident aliens, refugees did NOT plan to come here, and so they are very likely to arrive knowing little or no English. Hopefully they feel gratitude towards America for saving their life, but they don’t want to lose the language of their home country because they want to return as soon as it’s safe, so I don’t feel that we should force them to switch languages or anything. (We SHOULD, of course, force them to abide by our laws, which is where Germany is failing miserably right now.)

                              3) People who come here to become citizens: immigrants. These are the ONLY ones who should be voting, and they SHOULD be required to learn English. No multilingual ballots! A multilingual ballot is an admission that you want non-citizens to vote.

                           3. ” like only allowing unlimited resident aliens in STEM jobs”

                              We have NO shortage of American citizens for those jobs, just a shortage of Americans who will take indentured servant wages in exchange for admission to the US.

                  2. The boys and girls at NRO have frequently talked about the perniciousness of leftist identity politics, and have gotten gigged for it in the process.
                     I’m sorry that you think trying to keep the center is trying to keep the good opinion of the Harvard Faculty, but I think even Buckley would have said that his statement regarding the relative virtues of the Harvard faculty and the Boston phonebook might not apply if all of them were collectivists.

                     1. Also, none of those people have the good opinion of the Harvard faculty. AND THEY KNOW IT. Just as I knew I was never going to be one of the darlings of science fiction.
                        They’re rather trying to keep the alt-right from turning everyone who has one drop of blood, or whose ancestors haven’t been here for at least three generations against the idea of the right. It is needed.

                        1. And a good chunk of those whose families have been here for more than four generations.
                           Like me.

                           1. Or Dan.

                           2. Hmm. All four of my father’s grandparents were not born in this country.

                              Of course,three were born in Canada.

                        2. A lot of those people are still chasing the TV and column gigs from the equivalent of Tor instead of trying to build independent conservative networks.

                           For all I really have wondered about Glenn Beck the past eight months or so in terms of mental stability at least he isn’t trying to cowtow to that intellectual world (which he showed by moving to DFW to do his indie work).

                           As for stopping the alt-right from turning people against the right the alt-right MIGHT, MIGHT have power in two months. The mainstream right has had power from 2003-2007 and partial power from 2010 to now and they did a damned good job of turning people from the mainstream right to Trump which gave the alt-right its opening. No small part of that was making clear how embarrassed they were on issues like gay marriage (I was almost blown over by the collective sigh of relief from NRO and TWS when the SCUS declared gay marriage a constitutional right).

                           Bill Kristol, who I rank with Frum and much worse than French (and no small source of French’s problems) was demanding Trump denounce all the anti-immigrant and Muslim hate crimes since Tuesday that, based on history and what we already know, are likely 100% fake or close enough. He did not demand Obama or Hillary denounce the riots…excuse me, “protests” that have been running for days.

                           Why the hell, as someone on the right or as someone who doesn’t want to see race be the deciding factor in our politics, give Kristol the time of day. He is continuing the “it is only racist if white people do it” standard that gives the alt-right types moral authority to do what they do. If I am a white person watching rioting in my city why should I not think the alt-right understands what I’m seeing more than the mainstream right with actinos like that?

                           More than Trump support that’s a good litmus test: if you are demanding more action from a not yet in power Trump over mostly if not completely fake hate crimes than you are demanding of Obama and Hillary over actual riots you are doing the right more harm than good.

                           1. Amen!

                           2. They won’t have power in two months. Of the people most likely to be disappointed by Trump, they’re right up there. What I’ve been getting through back channels, Trump will be closer to Reagan than to the King-Emperor they want.
                              Which is why we have to be aware of what they’re doing in comment sections and that they’re not ultimately the friends of liberty in America.
                              Yes, the left is going off the deep end (and always would have) but the alt-right is giving them excuses. (By alt-right I mean the online, comment section and some blogs crazy fricking racialists. Not people who don’t know a heck of a lot about that group and admire the “energy” and the “interest.”)

                     2. The published Williamson’s line about the white working class needing to die. Yes, I know it was taken out of context and Williamson’s argument was that what we supposedly won’t tolerate from the inner city poor (read black) we shouldn’t tolerate from the white poor.

                        However, they would never publish that sentence or even an article with that much disgust out of fear of being called racist.

                        That is what I mean about wanting the good opinion of the Harvard Faculty. They don’t want to be embarrassed in front of their peers by those yokels in their base. I was working a metaphor but not a literal goal but it appears I was too subtle.

                        1. I find it interesting that what Trump promised the working class (not nearly or even close to all white, if you look at those states) JOBS. Not money, not benes, jobs.
                           I don’t want to break that spirit as they’ve done in England.

                           1. That is an important distinction…and one I wish more of his opponents on the right had made…his first pass policies at how to get said jobs might not be the greatest but he did maintain that core distinction.

                           2. actually, if you dig, a lot of his policies MIGHT work.

                           3. Which is why this one over at Powerline cost me a monitor AND a keyboard:

                              

                           4. Depends on how you define “white”. It’s pretty much a blanket term for “I don’t see anything I recognize as marking them as part of a victim group I recognize.”

                              Racial stuff is BS, yeah, but “white” (followed closely by “black”) is even more so. It’s easy to find folks talking about, say, that whole to-do about the new Disney movie with the Islanders not looking like three famous examples they came up with (all of which were only half that– I think it came down to two had white moms, and one had a black dad, either way greatly changes the build from standard Samoan etc) or someone whining about white-washing an Egyptian character…not knowing the actor they were complaining about is Egyptian…. or acting like an actor from Thailand is interchangeable with one from Japan and they’re both just like someone from the PI….

                           5. whole to-do about the new Disney movie with the Islanders not looking like three famous examples they came up with (all of which were only half that– I think it came down to two had white moms, and one had a black dad, either way greatly changes the build from standard Samoan etc) or someone whining about white-washing an Egyptian character…not knowing the actor they were complaining about is Egyptian…. or acting like an actor from Thailand is interchangeable with one from Japan and they’re both just like someone from the PI….

                              I’m… confused. What’s this now?

                           6. The Rock is cookin’… the voice of a demigod for the new Disney movie. In it, the character fished up the islands.

                              Somebody… I think from American Samoa, but who knows… made a rather funny crack about how he looked like he’d fished up the islands, deep-fried them and ate them.

                              For some forsaken reason, this started off a bunch of claims about racism and fat-shaming, utterly ignoring that the character looks a heck of a lot like old pictures of Peter Fanene Maivia, Dwayne Johnson’s grandfather, and using Mr. Johnson, the guy who’s playing Aquaman (Jason Momoa, his mom is “mostly German” from Iowa), and a half-Samoan wrestler I’d never heard of (I think his mom’s from Kansas) who’s done a few bit parts as examples of “real Samoans in Hollywood.”

                              The guy who folks were flipping about as “white washing” an Egyptian role was Rami Malek.

                           7. I’ve seen pictures of the “character” and I wouldn’t want to mess with him in “real life”. 😉

                           8. *feels her brain twitch*

                              Have they SEEN Samoans? They’re physically BIG and their bone structure seems to play a big part in that. I remember regularly reading about how they have the 9-10 pound babies – I read about that, and wince, but that’s normal for ’em.

                              What Egyptian role were they freaking about about?

                           9. My dad’s cousin married a “tiny” Samoan lady– she makes our male Paiute cousins look little.

                           10. I have no idea bout the Egyptian role, I’m guessing it’s from Night at the Museum.

                           11. They ruin everything because they can’t enjoy anything.

                           12. The roundness of the character IS a bit exaggerated, but they don’t depict him as being flabby, they depict him properly, as being the kind of build that a massive dockworker or some other person who does a LOT of lifting and carrying heavy things has. Basically, like someone who might be seen in a “World’s Strongest Man” competition.

                           13. AKA, like half of the guys that sing at my parish.

                               They look like guys who have muscle and actually need to use it for something besides looking good on TV.

                               Part of why I admire Dwayne Johnson so much is that he’s managed to keep looking fairly well defined; it’s something a lot of wrestlers manage these days, at least while their income is from performances.
                               My brother says it has a lot to do with being able to “graze”– so you can tell if an older SEAL is doing a lot of deployment stuff because he’ll “look fat,” while if he’s on a period when he’s in the office a lot he’ll look cut and scary.

                           14. For those who do not know what a Samoan looks and sings like …

                               IIRC, the first non-Japanese Sumo wrestler to achieve major success was of Samoan descent.

                           15. A wider variety, although not as good of resolution:

                               The short ladies there are probably about 5’8, 5’10, and they very obviously didn’t have a pureblood requirement.

                               Lilo and Stitch did a pretty good job of showing really young folks….

                           16. Thats what I meant by big.

                           17. Now that I’m back at the keyboard – I didn’t mean they look flabby. Big-boned, big muscled, solid looking is how I remember them looking when I saw some Samoans.

                               As in, could probably pick up a person and throw them a hundred yards. Or flip over a car.

                           18. I think I would staunchly oppose anything taking the franchise from Thomas Sowell, Walter E Williams and many similarly hued folks.

                           19. They’re not black because they “act white.” (Why that term is used for “behaving like really smart guys who will work their rumps off,” I don’t know.)

                           20. Because they can’t have minorities proving that they can take care of themselves, or else they won’t be able to buy votes with entitlements if too many get the notion that they don’t need their nannies.

                        2. When you are attempting to persuade somebody it is generally useful to avoid pissing them off, just as when you engage in political argument it is prudent to avoid handing your opposition a cudgel with which to thrash you.

                           I very much doubt anybody at National Review cares what the Harvard Faculty’s opinion of them might be, but they are concerned about reaching the people who haven’t yet recognized what posners the Harvard Faculty are.

                     3. Buckley also famously led the movement to “no platform” the Birchers.
                        We found out that the Birchers had been almost entirely correct when the USSR fell, and Yeltsin opened the archives.

                        But somehow, I haven’t heard an apology.
                        (Quite the opposite, in fact.)

                        1. Somewhere around the time you accuse Dwight D. Eisenhower of being a tool of the Soviet Union, you’ve gone off the rails.

            3. alt right is neither alt nor right. It’s an incarnation of a very old idea, the idea that if you flip communism on its head you’re “right” instead of another flavor of socialism.

               1. They’re leftists who’ve picked a different class of people to patronize and another class (classes, actually) of people to blame for anything gone wrong.

            4. No one on the conservative right likes Frum, either. It’s not as if disliking Frum is exclusively the province of the alt-right.

6. If you thought they were bad as cashiers, they were worse as customers. I think I perfected my pleasantly vacant face the two weeks after Obama was elected.

   1. After that they seem to have gotten a grip. The WORST was a woman in the post office, who took random one-hour breaks as the line grew, and when her supervisors tried to talk to her told them “We’re the boss now. We don’t have to do what you say.”

      1. My favorite was the woman complaining about how much something cost. “I don’t have to pay that. I’m gonna call Obama and he’s gonna arrest you for being racist.”

         It was a special time.

         1. And we got a repeat of it right after Obamacare went live.

            1. Yep.

         2. “Obama’s gonna pay my rent.” That video was all over the place.

         3. indeed

         4. That just hurts my head…

            1. Ya know, when I started expecting my customers to be crazy, it all started making sense. Basically assume they’re all feeling entitled to something and every now and then someone is going to dial it up to 11 and voila.

               1. There is a reason I went from retail to a job where I can tie down my ‘customer’ and knock them out

                  1. You’re an anesthesiologist?

                     1. Nah. EMS and engineer.

                  2. Most of the time, I actually like retail. Still trying to get to where I can work without seeing people for days on end, though.

                     1. Lol. I don’t see em at my full time but deal with their stupidity

      2. That’s a problem with identity politics for the ill-educated: it don’t work that way.

         First, Obama is (was, was, WAS) president — happy happy joy joy, in just under eighty days I do that dance for real … followed by my dance of despair that Trump is president. The two dances look the same. Being president does not make him boss.

         Second, even if it did make Obama boss, it still leaves you just one more ordinary mope of a citizen, with no more rights, nor any less, than any other citizen.

         If you must insist on being a fool there is still no cause to act the fool.

         1. Yeah, people don’t get that, as back in 2008, the US just picked their new employee.

            Not King. Not High Priest. Not Sun-God.

            Employee.

            And the parents scaring their kids and the white knights using individuals from designated victim groups as their human shields are doing all that because the new hire isn’t the one they preferred.

            1. To put it a little more in perspective for some people:

               The American Stockholders (citizens) have hired a new Chairman of the Board.

      3. Heh. It was before 2008, and it was a kid working in a burger joint, and he was acting like a jerk and then mouthed off at his supervisor. She gave me a little “He won’t be working here” smile, and the next time I came back, he was gone.

   2. We had one that I know of. She said that she had two people that would help her, Jesus Christ, and if He didn’t, she knew Obama would.

      While she was ranting, the person who drove her over slowly shook his head.

7. Buzzfeed’s article blaming themselves for Trump was really stupid, but as a catalog of times when the DC and New York establishments treated him like junk, it was useful. And no surprise that a self-made man who did real stuff for his living would tend to remember those occasions.

   It is amazing how stuff they air to make themselves seem big makes them look even worse, and Trump look better.

   1. Yeah, no matter how many times Trump or his businesses declare bankruptcy, he is still way ahead in experience on how to deal with things than the rest of 90% of our body politic.

   2. That’s where it was! I remembered it succeeded in making Trump sound petty but also made this seem like a highly understandable response to the author and his jerky social circle; honestly it’s one of the most sympathy-inspiring things I’ve ever read about him.

      …Also where some random quote claims he was Jewish. I wondered where that was too.

      1. His son-in-law, Jacob Kushner, publisher of the NY Observer, is Jewish, and his daughter (don’t recall which) has converted to match her husband.

         Trump is not, himself, Jewish. As if it mattered, eh? When you’re a Nazi eventually everyone looks Jewish.

         1. That’s what I’d read elsewhere. It was just startling, with everybody going “OMG Trump is antisemitic we are all DOOMED,” to run across “Oh, and in 1986 this woman said nobody wants Trump at parties because he’s Jewish and nouveau riche.”

         2. Oops – correction: It is Jared, not Jacob.

            You know how it is, all jews’ names sound alike.

            1. THHHHHHPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP (since I and my husband both have Jewish names. I tell you, no one ever confuses them.)

               1. While we’ve not been introduced, I have seen you and your husband at LibertyCon. You’d be hard-pressed to confuse the two of you.

               2. They both have ‘a’ as the second letter! That’s almost the same, isn’t it?

                  RUNS

                  1. Then there’s that two become one flesh thing . . .

                     Runs after Wayne

                  2. And if your handwriting sucks an “r” can look a lot like an “n”.

                  3. Still, mistaking their names would be a mistake of Biblical proportions.

               3. Maybe that’s how we just spent the last couple of years with a very loud group professing your maleness? The didn’t realize which one you were.

8. I am skeptical that Trump will be a good president based on what I’ve seen of his character (and lack thereof), but I was wrong about Hillary winning, so who knows? I do know that most of the things the Left is freaking out about almost certainly will not happen.

   This may be of interest:

   http://opportunitylives.com/chin-up-america/

   1. Nice.

   2. I don’t know myself, but I can take a break from caring until he actually misuses government power.

      1. this

      2. Trust, but verify? 😉

         1. Oh, always.

            1. The rules I have for trusting say I should not trust his words. It is two months too early to have any real data on his actions. Yes, we have personal history. Personal isn’t a perfect predictor of Presidential. Senator Obama could be described as voting ‘present’. President Obama was more actively harmful than merely ‘present’.

   3. Many of us voted Trump not figuring it was a Good Thing, but it was avoidance of a Worse Thing. “Trump will at least have real opposition” and at least some of it is real, even if a lot is.. orchestrated and instigated.

      1. Pretty much.

         I doubt that we’ve ever had two candidates with such high negatives before. And while some of the negatives were hyperbole, a lot of it was not. What’s truly disturbing is the number of Hillary supporters who seem to have still failed to wrap their heads around the fact that Hillary was a bad candidate.

         Of course, there’s ample evidence that if Trump had lost, we’d be saying the exact same thing about some of his supporters…

         1. As Twitter pushed away some and they fled to gab.. well, gab (at least as I am seeing it) has a certain decided bias by many (NOT all) users. And.. well.. it’s rather painful to see some of the.. er.. masturbatory celebrating of some. I suspect these will be very rabid in denunciation when plans of necessity get toned down significantly.

            1. Gab pushes that they don’t care what you think or say, they won’t censor by kicking you off.
               It always comes down to The Left wants you silenced if you disagree with them, The Right wants you to keep right on talking.

               1. Yep. Any bias I see is not a result of Gab itself, but that Twitter (etc.) remains a ‘safe space’ for some.

                  Myself, I still say that a safe space is where you install the Mosler.

         2. All I’m seeing from the left is “there was nothing wrong with Hillary, the emails were a non-issue but the media made a big deal of it, Trump rapes children.”

            1. This is the clue right here. To them, all the fraud, all the dirty politics, all the corruption, isn’t an issue because they are the ones doing it. Make of it what you will.

               1. And this is why I actively voted AGAINST Hillary.

                  1. Nods. It’s why a whole lot of us did.

                  2. My vote was not for Trump. It was for rule of law.

                     1. yep.

                        1. I will admit I am cautiously optimistic given position papers and names put forward. But A. Johnson had relations with the pooch and B. Hillary was a criminal. Full stop. I get security briefings every year even though no classified matl. Best outcome would be barred from all govt contracts. Likely would be making big rocks into little rocks.

                           1. This.

                     2. ‘rule of law’ means you’re racist, at least according to one of the talking heads at CNN

                        1. Add it to the list.

                  3. I was having a hard time deciding between holding my nose and voting Trump, or voting for Johnson. But as the weeks dragged on after the conventions, Hillary’s actions convinced me I had to vote against her. I think my decision finally crystallized after the “basket of deplorables” comment – and even then I stared hard at my ballot for nearly two minutes before I finally filled in the little box.

            2. No Mohammed raped children. Is it statutory rape if you are married to a nine year old?

               Sorry! I was triggered.

            3. That, and “Everyone does it!” “Trump is corrupt too!”

               Of course, the black humor in the above is that the primary charge leveled against Trump – i.e. that he’s a misogynist who mistreats women – is something that Bill Clinton is guilty of.

               1. Sadly, someone finally located an actual picture……

                  

                  1. BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA *goes and shares it with my mother*

            4. Also, doing what they do best: inflate numbers and make shit up.

               https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/797646288175169536

      2. I have been trying to explain to two astonished women about the post where I responded to:
         “You say you voted for Trump for reasons entirely absent from hatred, racism, and misogyny…”
         First, isn’t that classic. The main reasons for voting Trump are hatred, racism and misogyny, but if by some outside chance, you aren’t any of those and still voted for Trump, can you tell me why? OK, I replied I thought Hillary was a lying felon. Where is my proof?!?! was immediately demanded. I require no proof, you asked why and I told you. After additional whining, I tried this for the followup:
         In any event ladies, remember I was responding to the original post that first lumps me in with hatred, racism, and misogyny… and then DEMANDS I demand Trump condemn these people.
         Isn’t going to happen. My reason for voting Trump is I consider Hillary to be a lying Felon. I don’t need to show proof, my vote, my choice. And just like Progressives have groups like felons, mafia, illegal aliens voting on their side, guess what? All those people with -isms at the end of their name get to vote too.
         “Denouncing” them is just more of your PC BS. I also voted for Trump because I’m sick and tired of ‘safe spaces’ for little college children unwilling to face differences of opinions, of people rioting on the streets and the usual subjects giving them a pass and this general guilt by association that if David Duke supports Trump then all the rest of us must publicly disavow him. Guess what? I don’t care!
         Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go plot my next racist, sexist, patriarchal micro-aggression I am going to commit by cultural appropriation of eating a Pizza for dinner. And I have no intention of disavowing in public any of the tawdry behaviors you discover about Nestle (a Swiss Company).

         1. Yes, I don’t believe in guilt by association.

         2. Agreed. I decided I wasn’t going to do any “rituals of renunciation” just because some jackass managed to not be wrong about absolutely everything. I wasn’t going to do it for progressives, and I wasn’t going to do it for “my” side either.

   4. I love this from that link: “IF YOUR VERY EXISTENCE IS UPENDED BECAUSE DONALD TRUMP WILL BE PRESIDENT, THEN THE GOVERNMENT IS ABSOLUTELY FAR TOO LARGE AND FAR TOO INVOLVED IN YOUR LIFE”

      True. Completely accurate and true.

      1. https://twitter.com/1_Hoof_Hearted/status/797583542473478144

   5. I suspect he CAN be a good president, and likely will be a good-enough president. I’m sure he will be better than Obama and will be far better than Hillary could be. The lap dog media will cut him no slack, and will no doubt lie about him at times (having had so much practice in the last year, they won’t break the habit).

      1. I was considering earlier today that he has good economics advisers — Larry Kudlow, Stephen Moore, others — and the background to distinguish between good economics and Krugmanesque twaddle.

         If the economy goes right, as Billy & Newt proved in the last half of the Nineties, an awful lot of other things just don’t much matter.

         As for the lap dog media, I am resigned to a Jan. 21st return to prominence of stories about the Homeless Crisis In Amerika.

         1. He has had to deal with real economics. Politicians rarely do.

            1. You know the press will probably say Trump was just lucky that Trump came in to steal the glory of the long delayed ObamaBoom

               1. Of course.

               2. The Second Great Depression will start January 20th. 😉

                  1. That’s what Obama is hoping for.

                  2. Yep.

               3. The ObamaBoom would have hit nine years ago if not for Republican obstructionism.

                  1. Yeah, they needed at least another $200 billion of stimulus. Obama was a piker. We should have a $30 trillion debt. Haven’t you ever played Monopoly?

               4. yep. They did with Carter/Reagan.

               5. Back in 2012, a friend of mine told me about a rumor he’d heard. Specifically, the Obama administration was apparently freaked out that Romney would win the election, and get to take credit for the economic turnaround that the administration *knew* was just around the corner.

                  We all know how that worked out…

                  In any event, one thing to keep in mind is that economic recoveries rarely happen overnight. Reagan had a recession during his first two years in office. But the voters apparently decided that the following two more than made up for those first two.

                  1. Overnight economic recoveries are kind of like shovel-ready spending. It takes time for the bad investments to get washed out of the system and for people to figure out what will be good investments — and hastening the process does not improve the results.

9. So one of the ways these anti-Trump folks are virtue signaling is by following the lead of the Brexit folks who didn’t want it, either. They started wearing safety pins to indicate that they would “stick” with those who would be the most affected by these changes–the poor, the gays, etc. These folks really seem to like their meaningless actions that do nothing.

   1. Safety pin to indicate their diapers need changing?

      M

      1. you know, we should start a media campaign for adults to wear a miniature folded diaper with a safety pin. we’ll see how long before they collapse in tears.

         1. I saw an article earlier, about the Safety Pin as symbol of Standing United Against Intolerance.

            People are wearing safety pins to stand against intolerance

            Today… and until people I know and love can feel safe again #safetypin pic.twitter.com/c7jphNYhQf
            — BeTheChange (@honoraye) November 11, 2016

            In the wake of Trump’s victory on Tuesday, anti-Semitic vandalism, hate speech and violence have been reported across the country.

            The news isn’t unlike the aftermath of June’s Brexit vote, when immigrants suffered a 57 percent increase in xenophobic harassment and abuse. At the time, Brits started wearing safety pins to show solidarity and support for anyone who felt scared or in danger. Now Americans have adopted the same gesture.

            #SafetyPin and #SafetyPinUSA began trending on Twitter Thursday night. Users posted pictures wearing a pin attached to their coat, or sweater, declaring themselves an ally in the fight against intolerance.
            — — —
            RTWMT (Read The Whole Mindless Thing)

            So, empty pointless gesture of social moral preening as activism? It will probably work as well as pink ribbons prevent cancer or #BringBackOurGirls (complete with sad-faced selfie) worked against Boko Haram.

   2. The safetypin is something I prefer over the hoaxing shit they’re doing.

      people are doing shit like this because they know it will go viral, and that's not good pic.twitter.com/LI2kGNNJVH

      — Cassandra Fairbanks 🕊 (@CassandraRules) November 13, 2016

      1. Sadly, whoever had pasted up the ‘colors only’ sign the Melanin was correct in the statement ‘so this was taped above the water fountains in my school…’ If it was as Melanin portrayed it is an expression of prejudice and animosity that should be addressed. If it was manufactured by Melanin it displayed a deep seated prejudice and animosity on the Melanin’s part, and it, too, should be addressed.

         We need to teach people that such actions result in real consequences. Anyone who posts such a sign should be held accountable for their actions and any results, whether they act from adolescent stupidity or maliciousness. Throw ‘the book’ at them in as many ways possibly — starting with defacing the school property and going from there.

         1. “Throw ‘the book’ at them in as many ways possibly”

            When you consider the many frivolous things for which ‘the book ‘ does get throw these days …

            Sigh. I despair of humanity ever finding a sensible middle. Where once they penalized “one side” unfairly they now penalize the other side unfairly, as if two wrongs could make a right or the way to balance Karma’s scales is to perpetrate equal injustice all around rather than strive for simple justice now.

         2. A student replied to her tweet saying that s/he saw Melanin put the sticker and take the photo. Afterward Melanin blocked that person proving that student right.

      2. I was just looking for this to show to someone about how the hoaxes have been going on since the election, when I saw it while going through responses, and now I see that the original post of the water fountain was from January. So these kinds of things have been going on for some time, and we’re mostly hearing about them in large numbers now.

10. NO ONE took to Facebook in hysterics, to demand that everyone who thinks otherwise unfriend them. Not one of my friends decided their family was now the enemy because they voted differently.
    ————————-

    That’s because even you alarmists knew that Obama wasn’t as bad as Trump!

    Duh!

    If he *had* been as bad as Trump, then the conservatives would have been rioting in the streets! But the fact that they didn’t shows that their concerns were all really just racism on their part!

    /rolleyes

    1. We should find a way to harvest the energy of the spin…

    2. That’s when you just laugh at them and tell them, “You’re adorable when you stamp your little feet and make these nonsensical claims!” They really hate it when you let them know that you can’t take anything they say seriously.

    3. I’m sure that *someone* took to facebook and unfriended everyone and refused to go to Thanksgiving with the family. There’s always someone completely off their rocker.

       It’s a sort of rule.

       1. I had one. Typical empty-headed liberal in ultra-liberal college. She was also threatening to move to Canada if Trump won, but was all talk and no action.

          1. For which I wager a lot of Canadians are grateful.

             1. Perhaps Canada ought sue the celebrities who swore to migrate but don’t for breach of promise to recoup the (four, possibly eight) years of Canadian taxes foregone? (I am sure the Canadians will be happy to let the celebs take advantage of their generous public health care system, so no complaints about not getting benefits of Canadian citizenship.)

             2. Here’s hoping she goes to Europe, and suddenly discovers that her idealized version of the continent in her head bears very little resemblance to the actual laws, culture, or politics on the ground.

          2. Best part on that is that many of the requirements we want to see enforced on immigrants (Ellis island era stuff like skills, support, etc) Canada already enforces.

          3. She obviously has not looked at the Canadian Citizenship requirements. I imagine that Liberal Americans moving to Canada will be as popular as Californians moving to Oregon or the State of Washington.

11. c4c

    1. LMNOP

12. If called names, point out the white knight is guilty of […] either malice or idiocy (depending.)

    

    Or as the resident feline on Baen Bar’s Politics forum puts it, “embrace the power of ‘and'”.

13. Government employees starving in the streets…government employees starving in the streets… *kvell*

    1. Not seeing the downside…

       1. We’ll probably have to take on personnel to clear the bodies. Sure, it’s only temp work, but …

          1. Nah man, that’s no downside. Don’t hire temps, make folks pay for the privilege of having their very own stuffed former gov’t employee (and we’ll provide directions to the nearest taxidermist or instructions for the do-it-yourselfers)!

             1. Hell, the EPA’s got coyotes running loose in major cities now, they’ll clean it up…

                1. Yeah, but once they get a taste for garbage…

                   1. That’s easy. Just remove the rules on no gunshots within city limits, and put a small bounty on their heads. It can be a nice source of cash for kids with 22’s, and help create our next generation of sharpshooters.

                      1. But we could short-circuit the whole thing by putting the bounties on the heads of the gov’t employees. Maybe with a bag limit…

                         1. Gotta keep the population down.
                            We don’t want the poor things to suffer.

          2. We’ll probably have to take on personnel to clear the bodies.

             1. People just going crackers.

14. My hope for the next four years is based on Trump’s YUUGE ego and basic intelligence. He wants to go down history as a great president. One method to achieve that end is to restore normal growth to the economy. As a businessman he understands how red tape and over-regulation are throttling the American economy. Soooo many people I know believe that 1-2% GDP growth is the new normal. Getting the US back to 3-4% growth would result in a landslide reelection in 2020. Look who he has leading his EPA transition team. Ebell is an AWESOME choice.

    Alt-right @ssholes are calling for the ouster of Ryan & McConnell. Trump is savvy enough to deal with them to achieve a pro growth agenda. Obama is too stupid and egotistical to realize that he has been in over his head for eight years. I think that Trump is smart enough to hire good people.

    At worst the next four years will be better than with Hillary. At best, mentioning Trump and Reagan together will be an “Of course” instead of the joke many expect.

    I am cautiously hopeful.

    1. We shall see. Maybe I won’t be blinded. 🙂

    2. We know that all the presidents and presidential candidates from WWII to the last Bush plus McCain had 125-128 IQ by the test used by the US military for many years, and they all had the same kind of intelligence. Best hope here is that Trump is smarter than them and has a different kind of intelligence. (Obama seems to me just a confidence man with a slick routine.)

       1. IQ is certainly not a good measure because I know folks with high IQs I wouldn’t want running a lemonade stand. Also I thought Billy C was higher than 128. Not that he ever showed good judgment.

          1. Sure he did. He immediately triangulated when the Republicans took over the House.

             Bill’s problem was (and likely remains) poor impulse control. He also claimed to have a need to have his ego stroked, but what he showed of that was nowhere near as bad as the current occupant of the White House. So I’m inclined to disregard it for now.

             1. Something the Libbies tend to have trouble grasping: their unremitting praise for their anointed tends to suppress and tendencies toward reflection and self-critique, thus helping ensure their administrations will be less successful.

             2. it was not his ego that was being stroked

                1. Thank you. I was about breaking something not typing that.

                   1. Heh, when I read that I clicked to link to see other replies to check on who hit that hanging curve out the park.

                   2. But Sarah, why deny yourself the …

                      Oh bah. I know what you mean. I dug little grooves into my palms resisting the urge to yell “It’s NEVER lupus!” when I had a panel of diagnosticians standing around my hospital bed two pregnancies ago, trying to figure out why my left arm was turning into a purple web of veins. (Bonus points for the young Indian-descent doctor who suggested it to the blonde, blue eyed head doctor, who had a Canadian accent, and one of the Chinese doctors seeing me close my mouth and carefully bite on my lower lip. She hid a smile behind her clipboard – she knew what I’d wanted to say.)

                      (actual condition: Venous insufficiency due to pregnancy. Talk about weird and apparently, rare and more commonly affect legs, not arm.)

       2. My desire is not for smart presidents but wise ones.

          That’s a big part of why I couldn’t stomach the idea of a Hillary “Smartest Woman Evah” Clinton presidency.

          1. I was just thinking that she was just smart enough to enable possibly the two least qualified presidential candidates ever to get elected back to back.

             1. Why I loved seeing everyone posting that Trump has ‘no experience’. The job is as chief executive and I think his reputation is as a boss. And from at least some employees he is a very good one, not jumping on every idea and making sure his subordinates ideas are thought thru. He is following a guy whose last job was an ice cream stand. As an employee and a total of what, 6 yrs govt experience?

    3. Saw last night that the head of the EPA was calling for special efforts by all employees of the agency to get as much regulation passed as possible in the remaining time they have.
       I know it’s pro forma for all agency heads to offer their resignations upon turn over to the new POTUS. I expect this is one that will be accepted. Or if she refuses to resign I’m sure Mr. Trump has a phrase in mind to deal with that.

    4. The thing is that the Trump administration really doesn’t have to do anything to stimulate the American economy–they can make large gains by just stopping doing the things that stifle it. There are enough regulations that could be repealed without triggering the majority (some folks, of course, are going to go apeshit at any decrease in federal authority) that would encourage economic growth that I think Trump could end up with very favorable economic numbers by mid-term. For all his faults, he does understand how businesses work, and what kind of thing inhibits growth.

       1. This.

          If Trump can just slow down or if we’re lucky, halt! – the creation of new regulations for 4 years, the whole American economy will get a chance to breathe. That’d do more for the country than almost anything else.

          1. Have you seen the list of what he had pledged to do?

             If he manages even a quarter of that the country will be in such much better shape.

             1. True. But I’m setting my personal bar low ATM.

       2. Exactly.

    5. Oh, Vichy Mitchy got to go, but I never understood Ryan Derangement Syndrome.

       1. Gotta give Mitch credit for standing his ground on blocking any consideration of the Garland nomination. He could have caved any time when the polls looked so bad for Trump, and he didn’t.

          1. Yup. Kudos for that. And depending on what he does in the Senate during the next two years, I might be inclined to let him stay.

             Ryan’s popularity issues likely stem from the fact that he’s not doing every little thing that some on the right want. He also indicated that it would take him about a year to get start some of the stuff he planned to do, and too many on the right have no patience. Also, iirc he expressed some support for amnesty shortly after the 2012 election.

             1. I’ve seen two main routes, with a possible third:
                One, he’s an observant Catholic that in what little he has said is totally licit in his positions; this pisses off both the CINOs and the SoLibs, as well as being a serious threat to the “use religion to get bigger checks out of the gov’t for what we want” groups. It’s probably also a threat to the possible third group, the “Catholic Spring” sorts.

                Two, he hasn’t magically won, so all the fighting doesn’t count as trying.

                And that possible third is basically false flags who throw anything they think will stick at anyone they think is a threat.

       2. I prefer Mitch McClellan myself. He’s not actively treasonous, just far too cautious and ambitious simultaneously.

       3. I suspect Ryan is getting killed by the same guilt by association that made Cruz a lower choice than Trump for a lot of primary voters but in spades.

          The GOP Congressional leadership has been seen, quite deservedly IMHO, as sell-outs. While Ryan has at most been leader for one of those (most recent omnibus) and really only pushed on one thing (Import-Export Bank) I think he’s wearing a hair shirt that was sown for his immediate predecessor.

          I think Vichy Mitchy’s moment of truth will come when the Dems filibuster Trump’s nominee to replace Scalia. He will either have to invoke the nuclear option or leave after the 2018 elections.

          1. If Obamacare survives until 2018, McClellan needs to resign. At least as Majority Leader.

    6. From what I can see he is going to hire good people. Now he has to listen.
       BTW IMHO any one who becomes President is in over his head.

       1. That’s Scott Adams take. The smart ones hire good help.

15. I was expecting cuckservative to be pulled out again, so let me check my notes, because I may never have a chance otherwise.

    “Of course I was trained at Cuckwarts. Do you think my house was Reagandur, Buckleybirch, Mugglewump, or Neoconanon?”

    1. Trump just needs to pull the sword of Reagandur out of the sorting hat. Of course only true Reagandurs can do that. So it’s iffy.

    2. I actually understand the base reasoning for term in some cases. Mitch should have pushed for budgets, separate bills, etc but refused. In this case was as if Reid still ran Senate.

       1. Exactly this. And I am mightily amused at the Leftists and NeverTrumpers who are saying “Don’t worry, Congress will make sure Trump is neutered and governs the way we want”, without realizing that every time they do it, they will simply prove what we Tea Party Republicans have been saying since 2010: The GOPe could have stopped a lot more of Obama’s agenda, except they were too spineless, too corrupt, or too much in agreement with it to even try beyond pro forma. And now President Trump has removed their LAST excuse.

          And we’ll make them pay in 2018.

          1. Also, Steve, they didn’t have a majority or veto power. I understand you’re angry, but even anger needs REASON.

             1. 2010: House Majority. All money control — if they’ll use it. They won’t even try. Instead, it’s omnibus all the way down.

                2014 — All legislative control — if they’ll grow enough of a spine to nuke the filibuster and then write bills detailed enough to be clear what’s being funded and what isn’t. Again — don’t use it.

                2016 — 2014 plus Presidency. What’s the new excuse?

                2018 — Deguello.

          2. That presumes Trump will be the same as Obama in terms of blackmail, coercion, and unity of purpose. Obama seems to be a fanatic stupid enough to not anticipate consequences of sticking to his guns. We shall see if Trump is more apathetic ADHD.

    3. I’ve drunk my coffee, so I can’t do a spittake laughing, so there, Bob! =P

16. Most parents know that indulging childish tantrums ensures more such tantrums. We may be fated to be the adults in an adolescent society, but that does not require us to jolly the ill-humoured.

    “Protestors” are protesting Democracy and thus excluding themselves from democratic society. Their actions invalidate their complaints.

    1. Most parents know that indulging childish tantrums ensures more such tantrums.

       Conversely, there are “parents” who do anything, give in to any demand, to prevent such an embarrassing outburst in the aisles of the local Whole Foods.

       Lessons learned from that type of upbringing are on prominent display these days.

17. c4c

18. People have started to pull themselves together in this neck of the woods, as the initial panic settles and everyone realizes that no, Trump is not going to send minorities to the Mojave in cattle cars.
    Although we have had the Trumphausen by proxy people, and the activists talking about how their kids feel unsafe and are crying themselves to sleep and whatnot.

    1. I have no objection to minorities, or majorities, or for that matter sororities, having cars. I will be keeping mine for myself, however, thank you very much.

    2. Have you looked at the going rate for cattle cars? I figure, since he’s going to authorize pipelines as safest and most cost effective transport for NG there will be a surplus of tanker cars, so Trump will crush his foes into a slurry and send them by tanker car.

       I don’t quite understand the reasoning for sending them to Mojave internment camps; the logistics for supplying them would seem to be challenging, but I can go along with the flow.

       1. I was presuming that they wouldn’t be supplied, since we’re talking about HitlerTrump instead of RealTrump.

       2. I don’t quite understand the reasoning for sending them to Mojave internment camps; the logistics for supplying them would seem to be challenging, but I can go along with the flow.

          If you’ve got a good enough map– say, the sort you might want for getting around California traffic– you’ll see the largest chunk of land the Navy has, not too far from LA. (Well, “not too far” by the it’s-an-hour-to-McD’s trained figuring.) There are a decent number of military bases out there where there’s no water or good ground for growing, and a lot of measures to keep idiots from getting themselves killed (which frequently fail), so there’s a lot of empty space to stuff conspiracies into.

          1. Perhaps we could stack them in Alamogordo, NM? I here there’s vacant land aplenty there? Alternatively, I gather there is a nice military base located about 90 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada, called Area 51 …

             1. There is. I’ve met people who’ve been there.

             2. Oh HECK no, they– according to publicly available sources including after-it’s-become-useful-and-know statements from the military and related agencies involved– can still use that place to actually do SECRET STUFF effectively!

                Contrast with China Lake, where they can’t really do anything cool that has to be outside because…well, you can stand at the front gate and see hangars. Anybody nasty can reasonably be thought to have access to technology that would let them look and get information we’d rather they don’t have, in contrast to when my uncles were there and got to see “some really cool stuff.” (That’s all they’d say, and STILL all they’d say, because we all meant that stuff we signed about not saying we found out because of our clearances, including stuff that wasn’t clearance related but we figured we could trust because of clearances.)

                1. Last time we asked the government what my great aunt did during WWII, we were told “Don’t ask.” Though we know she had a couple fo battle stars.

    3. hey, we’re so broke we can’t afford cattle cars. Everyone in those categories (I’m in at least two) will have to line up and make choochoo noises as they go. IF you’re especially well behaved, I heard you get to do the whistle.

       1. I mean, from what I understand I’ll be in the next batch after you for being malcontent and defeatist.

          1. Indeed.

       2. Why does this make me envision Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam. Terry Jones, John Cleese and Michael Palin?

       3. Joe Bidens already in line, isn’t he

       4. Yeah, I’m so glad I’ve already finished my coffee.

    4. To go rock climbing?

19. A comment to my sister from one of our nieces:
    When my gay son gets killed by someone I’ll be sure to thank you Aunt Toni, we are done
    I felt compelled to respond:
    A lot of hate in that remark. Especially given that Trump was first Republican candidate to openly and publicly welcome LGBT citizens to the party. Someone’s been feeding Karen lies, but that’s what some dirty politicians do.

    1. I can’t decide which would be a better reply to that kind of nonsense:

       “Isn’t it a pity that we live in a country where citizens are not permitted to own any kind of implement that would enable them to use lethal force to protect themselves from militarized tyranny?…oh, wait!”

       Or

       “I’m so glad that you finally understand why we have the 2nd Amendment.”

    2. I can’t decide which would be a better response to that kind of nonsense:

       “Isn’t it a pity we live in a country where no one is allowed to own implements which would allow them to use lethal force to defend themselves from that kind of unconstitutional government overreach. …. Oh. Wait.”

       Or

       “I am so happy that you finally understand why we have the 2nd Amendment.”

    3. I can’t decide which would be the better response to this kind of nonsense:

       “Isn’t it a pity that we live in a country where no one is allowed to own implements which would enable them to use lethal force to defend themselves from such unconstitutional overreach by the government? ….oh, wait.”

       Or

       “I’m so glad that you finally understand why we have the 2nd amendment.”

       Note to admin: I got my email wrong (@aim.coom rather than @aim.com) the first two times I tried to post this comment, so I expect they are stuck in moderation. Please feel free to delete them ^_^

       1. If only someone were willing to halt the flow of people who believe in killing homosexuals into this country…

          1. But that would be racisssss, because of course, a religion is a race, since we’re born with our culture encoed in our genes. (something the alt-right also believes.)

             1. … I don’t suppose that you or your webmaster would be willing to delete the first two instances of this comment….?

                I mean, I think it’s a good comment, but three repetitions is a bit much….

                1. Featherblade, I COULD but do you mind terribly if I don’t wrestle wordpress to do it?

                   1. Can’t blame you for that. ^_^

                      Yeah it’s fine.

                      1. FBlade – thing is, it breaks the WP threading when she has to do that and all the comments come collapsing down. Makes a terrible mess.

                         1. I wonder if editing the first two to make them blank (or contain only a single space) would avoid blowing up WP?

                            1. It likely would, but since Sarah’s WordPress-fu is weak, fighting with it might trigger the berserker, and then the whole place would be destroyed. 🙂

                         2. Oooh.. yeah that’d be bad.

                            I’ve learned something today!

20. I was defriended on facebook this week by another liberal friend from high school. I’m 61. A lot of liberal projection. They defriend conservatives, surround themselves only with people who agree with them, then accuse conservatives of living in an echo chamber.

    I regularly read one of the blogs where “halfrican” and “cuckservative” are used. A lot. Along with other terms I find somewhat offensive. Thing is, a lot of the stuff in the comments and in the blog posts themselves actually makes sense. You have to separate the wheat from the chaff as you peruse the comments. And one of the reasons for perusing such blogs is also to keep an eye on the crazies to see what they’re up to.

    I’m sure there are liberal blogs with liberal crazies that could also be looked at on a regular basis. But when I’ve taken the trouble to look at some, the stuff there is virtually unreadable. No sense in them, no fact basis for anything. This letter fro Aaron Sorkin to his daughter published in Vanity Fair is a prime example of the garbage liberals spew. Opening paragraph describes Trump as a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn. Let’s contrast this with what I copied from elsewhere:
    Donald Trump is a billionaire.
    Donald Trump is a TV Star.
    Donald Trump is a best selling author.
    Donald Trump is runs one of the most successful real estate firms in the history of the world;
    and, Donald Trump with no political experience just wiped the floor with the Clinton Machine with an ad hoc group of political nobody’s.
    Well, there we have some facts. Let’s face it, a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn wouldn’t have gotten where he is today. That no curiosity to learn part is especially inapplicable. He learned and adapted throughout the campaign, from the time he started his run until election day.

    The next few yeas should be interesting. Some of his choices are already causing liberal hysterics. I saw that his proposed appointment for EPA administrator caused people to complain he was a “climate denier”. All I posted was I’ll bet they can not find any example of him ever denying that climate exists. Yeah, I know that’s not what they meant, but it’s what they wrote, and deserves mockery… And they don’t like it. There are several lists going around of his proposed appointments to major positions, and many are causing liberal angst, and I’m fine with that. Can’t wait to see where Sarah Palin actually ends up. He did say there would be a place for her in his administration. Secretary of State to show how it SHOULD be done is my thought. Department of Interior is what’s being bandied about. I can see liberal heads exploding as she open up ANWR for drilling. But if the proposed appointments keep making the right people blow up, I’m good with what he’s doing.

    1. I was defriended on facebook this week by another liberal friend from high school. I’m 61. A lot of liberal projection. They defriend conservatives, surround themselves only with people who agree with them, then accuse conservatives of living in an echo chamber.

       You know, if these folks were really truly afraid of reeducation camps and the appropriation of Orvan’s car to drive them there, they would not be putting together such a well-culled and well-backed-up list of known associates for use in the roundup as their book of face friends list.

    2. You know, maybe keeping them shrieking isn’t such a bad idea. The more they’re screaming and running around foaming at the mouths, the less time and effort they’ll have to spend trying to subvert the destruction of their evil administrative edifices.

       1. Except, as we’ve seen, they do evil while screaming hysteria. Title IX is a great example.

    3. Eh, I put his learning in the campaign about where I put Obama’s. He learned how to win a campaign. I don’t know if he knows how to be president.

       1. He at least knows how to hire and fire people.

          1. Given campaign staffing I’m not super convinced of the former.

             1. oh, he does. Kristie Kream has been sidelined.

                1. I read Chris was hiring in good old boy minions from the country-club wing of the party, and got caught. That’s why Pence is taking over.

                   I think the bet on an early appointment as Ambassador Christie is looking better and better.

             2. He went through three different campaign managers. And the last one, Kellyanne Conway, appears to have been a pretty good fit for the needs of his campaign. I’d say that he’s got the firing and hiring thing down pat.

                😛

                1. Check out Scott Adams” http://blog.dilbert.com/post/153040338656/while-you-were-looking-in-the-wrong-direction

                   “Meanwhile, over at the Trump campaign, we watched the best hirer-firer of our time replace Lewandowski with Manafort before replacing Manafort with Conway. Each campaign manager was right for a respective phase of the campaign. Lewandowski was the street-fighter that got Trump attention during a crowded primary. Manafort was the well-connected operator who could guide him through the Republican convention and the nomination.

                   But Conway took it home, against heavy odds. Her work was – as we can clearly see – insanely good.”

                   I think he will put the bad guys where they can’t do any harm and put the talent where it will do best.

          2. Which Obama doesn’t.

       2. Thing is, he’s not afraid to make mistakes, and then FIX them. I’m guessing he’ll do that pretty quickly.

    4. same here on the appointments.

    5. Can’t wait to see where Sarah Palin actually ends up. He did say there would be a place for her in his administration. Secretary of State to show how it SHOULD be done is my thought.

       Ambassador to the UN? ^.^

       1. Oh yes. Perfect.

       2. If this happens there must be a regular supply of popcorn established somehow.

          On that note, has anyone seen the Brianna Wu campaign ‘ads’ for 2020? I can’t tell if real or fake. (Considering the “It takes a real WUMAN” tag, I … still can’t tell.) I gotta admit, that my thought upon seeing it was “OH THE LOLS WE WILL HAVE.”

          1. Having her as the Democratic candidate would truly be a gift that kept on giving, as long as Trump could keep himself under control. She’d be one of the few people in the world who could make him look like a stable personality by comparison.

             1. Well, I’d be rather understanding if he either had a dumbfounded expression of WTF, you cannot be serious, or was unable to stop laughing for a while.

    6. I was nearly defriended by some one I knew from high school who though I supported Trump. I set him straight.

       1. We are both past 70.

21. I had to explain to a coworker all of the steps required for Trump to overturn Obergefeld – assuming he desired to do so – because she was nearly in tears over the idea that Trump’s election meant that her friend wouldn’t be able to PCS with his husband to Italy next year. And this is a college educated woman.

    1. Studies have shown that college graduates have less accurate general knowledge than they did upon entering college.

       So, “And this is a college educated woman” represents less of a contradiction than you might suppose.

       1. Thing to keep in mind with the population of “college educated people”– in my dad’s generation, that included both the folks who dodged the draft and those who served during Vietnam. (Popular history would have it “were drafted,” but I only know something like three folks in that population who were drafted…dad’s one of them, and he’s college educated. Totally not the same population that’s “college educated” now. Don’t get me started on his folks’ generation. I think his dad, the banker, did not have college; I know his mom, the reporter, did.)

    2. The way things are simmering (on the edge of boil in some places) in Italy and the rest of Europe, I’m not sure I’d want to move over there for an extended period, spouse or no spouse.

       1. aye. this worries me too.

       2. ESPECIALLY if the spouse was a gay one. Islamics have a certain track record, and they’ve imported a bunch of the most rabid.

       3. French primary elections start soon, and Italy has a major referendum in early December. Given how the bien pensants of the EU have crammed mass immigration down the throats of their countrymen, I expect the voters in France & Italy may be looking for a little payback. Stock up on popcorn.

          1. Popcorn and travel insurance. I’m still on schedule to go to Germany in June.

             1. Germany has 2 regional elections in May and parliamentary elections in Sept. Sounds like the local politics will be … interesting during your visit.

22. They just Ghostbustered Star Wars. From SFGate:”The writers who worked on “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” jumped into the political fray on Friday with not-so subtle anti-Donald Trump messages.

    “Please note that the Empire is a white supremacist (human) organization,” screenwriter Chris Weitz tweeted. Gary Whitta, who also worked on the film, followed up by adding, “Opposed by a multi-cultural group led by brave women.”

    Both writers also changed their Twitter profile pictures to the symbol of the Rebel Alliance with a safety pin through it. “

    1. There were signs earlier.

    2. So you’re telling me they’re going to be so concerned about message that they forget to have a fun story? *sigh* Well, there goes the value of the franchise, eh? Because message is boring, and it ages as fast as the positioning, messaging, and cause of the day does.

       1. Do not despair – this is a Disney brand after all. Note that the reshoots at the behest of upper management came after the script these guys wrote was completed and in the can.

          1. Disney can’t really afford to take the hit on this investment. Sure, the Marvel franchise has done well, and they’re fortunate to have shed of Joss before his GOTV commercial hit, but ESPN is bleeding big time and they don’t need to be shooting additional holes in the bottom of that boat.

          2. Have you seen ESPN?

             1. I have an ex-coworker who took a job at ESPN: It’s pretty much run as an independent satrapy under their Mouse overlords – at least as long as it keeps making money.

                Given the recent investors call I’m wondering how much longer that will last.

             2. My dad did his hey-the-Cubs-won-let’s-check-ESPN thing the day after the election.

                He hung around after the first two rich, black, guys in suits that cost more than our newest vehicle having name-calling temper tantrums about “racism” because he wanted to see what Shaq said (“it could have been worse”) and then a watch-the-crash curiosity to see what the one white guy said. (I think dad said he fluttered about Bernie; I left the room after I went “ESPN, they’re talking politics, this is bad.”)

    3. To those who played the ‘Jesus was a community organizer and Pilate was a Governor’ to explain their support of BHO vs Romney in the ’12 elections, my usual response was to state (at the risk of offending St. Godwin) that Hitler, too, was a community organizer. And that, according to my pastor, Jesus was in his time a community *dis*-organizer.

       1. I ofttimes am tempted to use this particular Jesus meme in an argument when what Jesus would do is brought up.

          1. And this one is also often appropriate.

       2. If Jesus was a community organizer, He kinda sucked at it– He was killed at the urging of the community; He didn’t organize “the community,” He called on people from all communities to follow the Truth…..

          On the other hand, let’s assume that they’re right. That would make the Pope the head of the longest running community organization, and so they’re as evil for opposing it as someone that disagrees with the NAACP. I expect to see them joining RCIA immediately before they can even suggest they’ve got a right to speak on behalf of the Jesus following community.
          /grin

    4. Um, wasn’t that one of those unspoken bits that went back to the Holy Trilogy and the original novels (Rogue Squadron and so on)? The vast majority of non-humans seen sided with the Rebels, which tended to strongly imply certain things about the Empire.

       1. The Empire didn’t show very many faces at all– you had Faceless Mooks and a handful of the leadership for the Nazi ripoffs, a crud ton of mostly not human criminals and a small population of a lot of humans with some interesting looking aliens in the mix.

          The part with the Empire having a lot of Human faces that we saw while the rebels didn’t would also be explained by the Empire stationing the same species on the same ships/in the same region (the kind of thing a military looking towards efficiency would do– avoids cultural and biological requirement conflicts, makes it so you only need one flavor of doctor on board, etc) while the rebels are taking a very small group from a wide number of places and trying to make them all hit strategically vulnerable areas. You’ve got most of the Rebel forces attacking a tiny fraction of the Empire.

          IE, sample bias.

          1. I was told that the British navy has English or Scottish ships not mixed. Unsure where the Welsh and Irish fit in.

          2. Point.

       2. I suspect it had more to do with film-making economics. During the first movie, the Imperials are exclusively human, probably to save on costuming costs. Fewer rubber foreheads to make. The rebels on Yavin were exclusively human, as well – probably for the same reason. Then Empire rolls around, and while Lucas has more money, he leaves the Imperial starship crews alone. As for the rebels, off the top of my head the only non-human rebel we see on Hoth is Chewbaca.

          It’s not until Jedi that the Rebel Alliance starts to go multi-racial. Humans still predominate. IIRC, all of the commandoes on Endor are human (though you can be forgiven if you forget that they exist), and most of the fighter pilots are as well.

          1. Lucas was stung by the valid criticism that everyone in the first Star Wars was white, so for Empire he added The Floating City of Ethnicity with Lando Calrissian as prominent non-white character A.

             The thing is, everyone in Lucas’ world was white. There were no black characters in what amounts to his autobio-pic, American Graffiti, his class at film school in the middle 1960s (he graduated from USC in 1967) was likewise extremely pale, and the Hollywood crowd he hung out with was as well. So, shooting at Shepperton Studios in England for all the scenes where Imperial (or rebel) faces can be seen, he would have had to make a special casting effort to cast black brits – and it never occurred to him.

             1. Everyone in the first Star Wars was white? I understood many of the Empire’s stormtroopers were BLM members.

                What kind of racist assumes that just because they wore white armor they had to be white underneath?

       3. IIRC, Michael Stackpole and Tim Zahn pulled that from the West End Games RPG background. How much of that was really Lucas’ intention I don’t know. Then LucasFilm tossed all non-movie, non-TV canon before a certain date. More recent productions have non-human Inquisitors – and will have an Imperial admiral named Thrawn.

          1. It’s a pity that LucasFilm didn’t also toss the prequel trilogy while they were at it. Although getting Thrawn involved earlier in the Star Wars timeline might partly make up for it . . .

             . . . And speaking of Thrawn: Precisely due to LucasFilm’s meddling with the canon, I elected to stay home and re-read Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy instead of going to the movies to see J.J. Abrams’ lame sequel. By everything I’ve heard, I made the right decision there . . .

    5. There has to be a cut sequence in the first prequel where the characters jump a giant space shark. It would explain so much.

       1. It happened while Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were driving their AMC Gremlin submarine through the highly impossible ocean in the core of Naboo. Remember what the big Q said? ‘There’s always a bigger fish.’ So they proved the point by jumping it.

          1. You nailed it!

23. “First, let me acknowledge that the fervent Trump supporters, the ones who started campaigning for him in the primaries, roughly a group co-valent with those calling themselves alt-right, often were bullies on line, and bullies in a particularly stupid way, where they thought inventing insults for various minorities was an argument.”

    I was horrified when this was going on!! And it seemed like they all came out of the woodwork. I tried to dismiss them as the same people who had made the social network rounds for Obama but couldnt get past the outright NASTINESS aimed at anyone who expressed the mildest form of ambivalence towards a candidate they didn’t know much about.

    Don’t be so sure its a passing thing though – I just discovered (yes, I know it was out there during the campaign but I had not used this particular resource of info in a long long time) a connection between Breitbart’s Steve Bannon and the alt-right, who are apparently populated by the Storm Front Types. This was a bit of a revelation to me because Id been seeing this type overrun the boards at Breitbart and was astonished and dismayed that none of the admins seemed to be particularly concerned about how it made Breitbart appear. Turns out Bannon is a leader for the alt right! On top of that Bannon was involved in Trump’s campaign! Whether or not Bannon will end up in Trump’s cabinet is yet to be seen, but this discovery has answered a whole host of confusions Ive had about a site that I witnessed the birth of when John Nolte left the Libertas blog and joined Andrew in the creation of a New Type of Media.

    Now Im concerned that the alt right is going to push to define what American conservativism is. A large part of why they will try is because conservatives have not tried to consolidate a definition…we’re too busy arguing among ourselves. That’s healthy for a country, to be sure. But it also leaves us open for abuse….don’t y’all think????

    Anyway, its good to know I am not the only one who noticed.

    1. Most Alt-Right have no love for a conservatism that, in their eyes, can’t conserve a drop of water. And most Stormfronters want little to do with the Alt-Right either.

       1. I was going to say that the stormfronters have associated themselves at times, but to tie the alt-right to it it’s guilt by association.
          OTOH the alt-right is enamored of socialism, and I did leave Europe once. Pfui. I think they’re going to be very disappointed. Some will get over it and say “better economy” and some will go as crazy as the left they resemble. In either case, it will be interesting times.

          1. I pretty much get all of my Alt-right info from the self designated Alt-west blogger who is cheering the ascendance of the God Emperor trump.

             1. and he is pretty much alt-white… (rolls eyes.)

                1. He is a total @sshat. But an interesting @sshat. Then again sometimes I need a shower after visiting.

                   1. I don’t find mental category errors amusing. those that confuse genes with culture and use “magic dirt” just like the other side, but with… duration. If all your ancestors are born on the magic dirt, three generations back, it changes you (really? For three generations we haven’t even TRIED acculturation of immigrants.) just piss me off. I get enough stupid from official sources.

                      1. One of the reasons I HATED bilingual education, back when I was a Californian, was the conceit that it was best for the children to keep them Mexicans instead of making them Americans.

                         1. Yep.

          2. I only made the correlation with Storm Front as a type (or attempted to…my bad for not being more clear), but that group of people was essentially who I at first thought were the ones populating the comment boards at Breitbart…I didn’t know how else to describe them at the time. Based on what I had personally observed of the Left + time Ive spent on Breitbart (years) + my own particular views of conservatives (NOT white-supremecist/anti-Semite – tempered with what I did know of current groups existent that were), I could only draw two conclusions: either the Clintonistas were employing some very clever psy-ops in well known social media circles or there was a group of white supremicists/anti-Semites who were emboldened by the victories against the SJWs and the Left in general. It saddened and distressed me very much to see them post after post with no response or control by the admins….only to find out that their top advisor was associated with them.

             1. Embrace the power of yes. And yes, I felt that way too.

       2. I noticed the scorn for conservativism as well, but they seem to think they are the “new”, the “answer” to it. We just got through beating back Leftism, now we swing the opposite direction?

          1. Except apparently not really the opposite direction. A similar direction that claims to come from somewhere else entirely.

24. Scott Adams has provided useful insights into this last year’s election process, and offers insight into this aftermath:

    The Cognitive Dissonance Cluster Bomb
    [SNIP]
    This brings me to the anti-Trump protests. The protesters look as though they are protesting Trump, but they are not. They are locked in an imaginary world and battling their own hallucinations of the future. Here’s the setup that triggered them.

    1. They believe they are smart and well-informed.

    2. Their good judgement told them Trump is OBVIOUSLY the next Hitler, or something similarly bad.

    3. Half of the voters of the United States – including a lot of smart people – voted Trump into office anyway.

    Those “facts” can’t be reconciled in the minds of the anti-Trumpers. Mentally, something has to give. That’s where cognitive dissonance comes in.

    There are two ways for an anti-Trumper to interpret that reality. One option is to accept that if half the public doesn’t see Trump as a dangerous monster, perhaps he isn’t. But that would conflict with a person’s self-image as being smart and well-informed in the first place. When you violate a person’s self-image, it triggers cognitive dissonance to explain-away the discrepancy.

    So how do you explain-away Trump’s election if you think you are smart and you think you are well-informed and you think Trump is OBVIOUSLY a monster?

    You solve for that incongruity by hallucinating – literally – that Trump supporters KNOW Trump is a monster and they PREFER the monster. In this hallucination, the KKK is not a nutty fringe group but rather a symbol of how all Trump supporters must feel. (They don’t. Not even close.)

    In a rational world it would be obvious that Trump supporters include lots of brilliant and well-informed people. That fact – as obvious as it would seem – is invisible to the folks who can’t even imagine a world in which their powers of perception could be so wrong. To reconcile their world, they have to imagine all Trump supporters as defective in some moral or cognitive way, or both.

    As I often tell you, we all live in our own movies inside our heads.

    Becoming the monsters they need us to be is to grant their “movie” dominance it hasn’t earned.

25. Did I do something wrong?

    1. Who wishes to join me in guessing that this is yet another case attributable to word press delenda est?

    2. ?

    3. Nah, just wordpress being wordpress. WordPress Delenda Est!

    4. Probably. Repent now and avoid the holiday rush.

    5. What’s most important is: Do you feel like you did something wrong?

       As you know, it’s all about the feelz.

26. I ask because a couple of attempts seem to have disappeared.
    This turned up on starving monkeys

    “What we are seeing forming out there is a huge misdirection campaign. We are meant to believe the following:

    The faithless elector campaign would be a harmless and reasonable extension of the popular vote.
    The faithless elector campaign is a grassroots social media event.
    Laws in some states prevent faithless electors.
    The House of Representatives will overturn an elector defection.
    The faithless elector campaign is unlikely to come to fruition in any case.

    Each of these is a deception, and the entire web of them is intended to distract us from the actual threat imposed by a significant elector defection. We need to review some fundamental principles, after which, the details will pretty much fall into place on their own.”

    1. If you do something wrong, I’ll TELL YOU. No, it’s wordpress insanity.

       1. Glad to hear it! “word press delenda est” quite describes it – press post and it all goes away, all those priceless thoughts and timeless prose – gone, lost forever!

          1. I have taken to doing a ctrl-A ctrl-C (command-A command-C for Mac people) on any post that’s even somewhat involved before hitting “Post Comment” for just this reason.

             I’ve decided there’s a brilliance monitor in WP, so whenever it eats an entire post of mine it must have been just too brilliant to allow through. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

             1. Another wordpress delenda est item. wordpress informs when someone replies to a post. When I’m on my iphone, the orange circle appears, i click the bell, and the eternal blue circle stays forever. I can’t view replies until I get back to my PC.

          2. Happens to me every single time I forget and post from my iPad. It looks like everything goes through… but the post never appears.

             Very frustrating.

    2. There are to my knowledge in this election cycle only 2 announced faithless electors. Both said they wouldn’t vote for Clinton. Don’t know, don’t care if they’re from states she won, they’re now irrelevant. As for wholesale defection from Trump- ain’t gonna happen. I strongly suspect that most of the people in the United States who fully understand and support the electoral college system are on the right side of the political spectrum. I even more strongly suspect that people who agreed to be Trump electors in the first place are more likely then not to be within this group.

       We do know for certain that the faithless elector campaign is not a grassroots social media event. We can also strongly suspect that if it went to the Supreme Court that the Laws in some states prevent faithless electors would be struck down as unconstitutional. Hopefully, we never get to the point where the SC has to render a decision on that…

       I had a dozen or so younger friends and relatives on facebook who were vocal against the electoral college system. A quick explanation of what it prevents- and they all, each and every one, changed their mind, and said so.

       1. Pure delusional wishful thinking, on par with the Truthers of 2008.

       2. Hope you are right. Some of my brothers and their spawn are circulating petitions and given how crazy the liberals get I found it a bit alarming. Rationality has nothing to do with The BLM movement and this has a similar smell – something sulfurish and Sorosy.

          1. The bad news about Trump winning: The left is going to be off-the-wall crazy for four years or maybe eight.
             The white supremacist portion of the alt right (it’s not all of them) will join them as soon as they figure out his picks (from what I’ve seen) are really more like Reagan.
             And we’ll have large schadenfreude banquets, but also get very exasperated.
             Yes, my darlings, imagines the last week for four or even eight years. (Hits head on desk.)

             1. Neither Islamic terrorists nor Russians have pasted anyone with nukes this week, and I’d be happy with that continuing for another four to eight years. Plus the Democrats aren’t pulling the trigger on a civil war, which is lovely.

                1. I’m a little worried about us getting hit before the inauguration.

                2. Bob, don’t you know they’re just too triggerphobic?
                   This is the real reason why we won’t have a civil war: we know that historically the losers shoot first in America. They’re too triggered by triggers to pull the trigger.

             2. Not to quibble, but the left was going to be off-the-wall crazy for four years or maybe eight whether or not Trump won.

                I’d rather they act it out this way than the way they do when in power.

             3. I’m not sure the left going off-the-wall crazy for the next two years is actually bad. The Dems have a whole lot more senate seats to defend in 2 years. 2 years of T. C. Mits seeing batshit crazy lefties could turn quite a few of those seats. Then, there’s still a few state legislatures up for grabs. And a governor or 3.

                1. And as someone pointed out: flip 6 state legislatures and we can get constitutional amendments through without possible contamination from the Left side.

                   1. Five state legislatures; the Republicans now have 33 and they need 38.

             4. The left is going to be off-the-wall crazy for four years or maybe eight.

                They have been for the second term of Obama (they did keep quiet for the first) so I’m not sure this is a chance.

                I am beginning to think they have slipped off the Democrat leash and are acting more and more without orders (just because they’re being hired and bused in does not mean the Dems are in complete control of that anymore).

                Assuming out hostess was right and OWS was an attempt to the equivalent of the various “peaceful” revolutions that have happened since the 1920s and that Obama and Hillary used to overturn their enemies in the Middle East (and that they saved their ally Iran from) they may have deluded themselves into thinking next year 2017 and the 100th anniversary is the time they will succeed.

                1. If the left is thinking of revolution, they are more delusional than I thought.

                   1. They MIGHT be. It’s the last huzzah of the sixties crazies.

          2. I believe ANSWER — a subsidiary of the Workers World Party (WWP), although you won’t read that in the news — has been sighted reactivating. It might be interesting to see what a RICO investigation turned up.

             Anti-Trump Protests Funded By Left-Wing ‘Charity’
             A left-wing charity organization with unknown sources of money is providing the funding for protests around the country — some of which have turned into violent riots — that have threatened a divided nation’s ability to unify after a contentious presidential election.

             The Progress Unity Fund is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization — the same classification as the Red Cross. The group’s mission is to “provide a progressive alternative to mainstream charities,” according to its IRS filings.

             The fund provides the financial backing for Act Now To Stop War & End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition, a left-wing activist group that began organizing “emergency protests” immediately after Trump’s election.

             Cities where ANSWER held protests included: Chicago, New York, DC and San Francisco, among others.
             — — —

             Of course, they are advocating on behalf of the people who denounced the possibility of Russian interference in a US presidential election and bewailed the expenditure of “Dark Money” groups, so there is that.

             1. 

             2. The URL of the advertisement is still valid as of this posting.

    3. I was thinking about this today. I can’t find anything unconstitutional in an attempt to lobby an elector. I don’t even know if laws that punish faithless electors are constitutional, because while the selection of electors is left to the states, I’m not sure if directing the electors how to vote is constitutional.

       Of course, about half of the states did hold a general election to pick pledged electors in 1788, so this flies in the face of tradition. But tradition isn’t the constitution.

       I will say this: If the electors overturns the votes of their states, it might be constitutional, but I really think it will trigger war.

       1. It would.

       2. It’s state law that bars most of the electors from defecting.

          1. State law that has never been enforced or tested in court. There are serious doubts it would withstand a First Amendment challenge.

             1. State parties choose the electoral slates from among their most dedicated partisans. The reason it has never been enforced or tested court is because there has never been cause to do so. Such cause arising now is as likely as bears starting to use port-a-potties.

                1. There is one Washington state elector, a diehard Berniebro, who has stated that he absolutely will not cast a vote for Hillary. Trump’s electoral vote margin might actually increase. Wouldn’t that be a hoot.

                2. You may be right. Doesn’t invalidate my point about whether such laws could ever be enforced.

       3. Found this on Instapundit; “Sardondi • 11 minutes ago

          Calming down your overexcited and panicky team is what losing presidential candidates – who were to a man mature, responsible adults who felt the good of the country was far more important than partisanship – have always done. It’s the grown-up thing. Which is precisely why Obama and Hillary, the most petty and resentful beings in recent political history, will do no such thing.

          Although it would be in Hillary’s interest to do so, because it puts Republicans even more at ease and off their guard, and therefore making them completely unprepared for the Elector theft that Podesta is at the moment engineering…”

          Wouldn’t surprise me even a little

          1. yep.

          2. I almost hate to bring this up, but has anybody looked into assuring the physical security of the electors? I fear the loonier left might attempt actual violence against them.

             1. Trump’s security team seems to be keeping a good eye on him and visitors.

                What do you mean by the electors? The people who voted for Trump?

                On a related note:
                http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3932876/PICTURED-71-protesters-arrested-fourth-night-violent-anti-Trump-protests-Portland.html

                1. The members of the Electorial College. (Who are real people, not just numbers)

                   1. Ah, thanks for that explanation.

                      Yeah, I haven’t got a clue, and uncomfortably, there is a good chance the loony leftists rioting will redirect rage and blame them. =/

                2. The Electors as in the US Electoral College.

                   IE The people who will actually vote on who the next US President is.

                   Fortunately, they never actually met in one place so while some idiots might think to threaten them, you’re talking about individuals spread widely across the US.

                   IMO it would take a massive conspiracy to be able to seriously threaten a large number of them.

                   1. Keep an eye on their emails, I say…

                   2. They don’t all physically meet in one place, but batches of them gather in 51 places (50 states + DC) on December 19. Physical security for them until their electoral vote has been officially made and certified seems like it may be warranted this year. We’re witnessing a mass petition/bribery attempt to get them to change their votes. We’re also witnessing episodes of violence. I worry somewhat that those two could converge in a dangerous manner.

27. The post election has been rather amusing and dismaying to watch on the book of face.
    Most of my friends and family are ardent Trump supporters, with the ladies foremost in their support. None of my black or gay friends have had much to say- I suspect one of my gay friends is ‘in the closet’ regarding her Conservative beliefs.
    Of the friends unhappy with the election, only one is doing the “whimpering, curl up in the safe space with the binky don’t talk to me” freak out thing. Two of them are Johnson voters/neverTrumpers. One, who is openly progressive, is actively engaging in conversation with an eye to keeping her friendships intact, and Uuuuuge kudos to her.

28. I suddenly have in my facebook feed posts saying that now in the total revised popular vote count, Trump is ahead. Then when I google search for latest updated popular vote count, I get some of those sites, and others saying her lead is growing, but I cannot find any two places with the same numbers, or any I’ve known to be reliable site with updated numbers since Wednesday morning. Odd.

    1. Remember what Stalin or Lenin said about counting votes.

    2. Interesting discrepancies, you’re right. A (presumably) conservative site ( 70news.wordpress ) claims Trump ahead in the popular vote as of Saturday morning, but at the Atlantic they are predicting Hillary will end up winning the popular vote by 400K, which would be a small percentage (about 0.333333%) of the total vote (estimating and rounded at 125,000K).

       Michigan seems to be Trump although some sites are not yet calling it with all counties received. Several sites — Politico, CNN, RealClearPolitics — seem to have ceded Arizona to Trump. The “big” difference in popular vote
       almost certainly stems from California, New York and Illinois, rotten boroughs in which the Trump campaign invested no effort and no advertising.

       Claiming a popular vote victory is as inane as declaring they should still be playing the World Series because each team had 27 total runs scored, or deciding the Superbowl on the basis of which team had the most yards gained regardless of the touchdowns tallied.

       Not that the complainants are interested in anything to do with logic; they live for a sense of grievance and will do almost anything to claim it.

       1. Michigan’s count was close enough to trigger an automatic recount. How long will they wait for straggling absentee ballots?

          1. Automatic recounts in Michigan happen only if the race is within 2,000 votes. I haven’t seen any numbers to indicate that Michigan is that close. Source?

             1. Was browsing recount rules at 2:30 am Wednesday. Might have mixed up states. I can’t swear to my memory.

             2. You probably missed the fine print, which says “Automatic recounts in Michigan happen only if the race is within 2,000 votes (or the Democrat is losing within the margin of fraud.)”

                1. Any candidate can ask for a recount at any time, and have it done in individual precincts even for a statewide election. Which means that a Democrat has plenty of time to rig the cemetery vote in precincts where the local polling officers are reliably simpatico. This process is conveniently not automatic. If it were automatic, the recount might happen before the necessary ballots are conveniently found.

                   Contrast this with the clear and simple law in Florida some years back, where a recount for any election meant recounting all the ballots, not cherry-picking particular counties or precincts. The Democratic Party hates that law with the fire of a trillion suns.

             3. The difference in votes reported between Trump and Clinton in Michigan at present is 11,423. Even without Michigan Trump still has 290 electoral votes, which is 20 more than necessary.

          2. Fortunately, she would need to flip more than just Michigan.

       2. And we know CA was where Democrats went for vote fraud:

          http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/03/voter-fraud-california-man-finds-dozens-ballots-stacked-outside-home.html

          “The 83 ballots, each unused, were addressed to different people, all supposedly living in his elderly neighbor’s two-bedroom apartment.

          “I think this is spooky,” Mosna said. “All the different names, none we recognize, all at one address.”

          His wife, Madalena Mosna, noted their 89-year-old neighbor lives by herself, and, “Eighty people can’t fit in that apartment.””

          Somehow, this gives me reason to doubt the honesty of our popular vote totals.

          1. We know there was no vote fraud because the Democrat Party, whose honorableness cannot be denied (no, really – just you try denying it) and the MSM, whose objectivity and fairness are legendary (just like Sasquatch) assure us there is no vote fraud.

             There are just undocumented voters, that’s all.

             1. My reaction to the word legendary is now forever warped.

             2. Yeah. Totally.

          2. Not saying you are wrong, but if California is where the Dems spent their money and time on vote fraud they are bigger morons than they now appear. I’m in California, and it’s a solid-Dem one-party-rule locked-and-key-thrown-away state. Any money the big-D machine spent here is money they should have spent in states they knew were “battleground” and thus where those stolen votes mattered.

             It very likely did happen, but it was really very dumb for them to do so when this elections major ballot choices were to make male porn stars wear condoms (failed) and to legalize recreational pot in a state where anyone can currently claim anxiety as a medical condition to get a medical marijuana card and buy and smoke as much as they want (passed).

             1. That particular example was in Issa’s district. They wanted him gone.

             2. You forgot that we had *two* plastic bag initiatives on the ballot!

                Clearly California has come a long ways when plastic bags are the most pressing matters of concern!

                1. yes, so now we’re stuck with using salmonella bags err i mean reusable bags. Because its ‘green’. Or at least that is the color you turn once you get food poisoning….

             3. California is where the Dems harvest money, not spend it.

                1. And screw up the already delicate traffic situation in Downtown Los Angeles due to the streets that need to be closed to allow the presidential motorcade to pass through.

                   /mutter

       3. The “big” difference in popular vote
          almost certainly stems from California, New York and Illinois, rotten boroughs in which the Trump campaign invested no effort and no advertising.

          This relates to my favorite response to “If we used the popular vote Hillary would have won”:

          How do you know?

          If the answer “she got more votes” my reply is then you believe politic campaigns have absolutely no effect on the vote because that is what they are saying. Both campaigns were not optimized for the popular vote but for the electoral vote. If it were otherwise Hillary would have bought no last minute ads in Nevada, for example.

          So, a popular vote world would have had very different campaigns. In that case to assume an identical vote would indicate campaigns do not matter at all.

          1. Also, if the nationwide total mattered, conservatives stuck in blue hell cities might be more prone to actually vote.

29. Oh? WordPressa Delenda Est? Is that what happened to my link to the duffelblog parody that claims Clinton would have won if Military absentee ballots hadn’t been lost? I thought my suggestion that it be used to troll Clinton’s Gate Cultists was rather amusing.

    1. Ah, duffelblog. Such a good site, working so hard to find parody in times when it’s chief competition includes CNN and the NYT!

30. c4c

31. “It has been suggested and, for all I know, it might be true, that a lot of these people, or at least those egging them on, were part of a Russian campaign AGAINST Trump. It’s plausible.”

    Sarah, what’s even more plausible according to video evidence is that the DNC reached out to the groups the Democrats founded.

    1. Ahhhhhhhhh

       1. To me, that was the real turning point of the election. I mean, we suspected it all along with the Tea Party plants, but bragging about it to someone they couldn’t have known long? Mic Drop.

          1. It’s what they always do. They get to feeling secure in their little cocoons until someone on the right airs the video footage that they secretly took at the local Planned Parenthood office.

             They always assume, “It won’t happen to me.”

             1. But what’s the point of being an evil genius if you never get to monologue except among the other evil geniuses? Especially as the other evil geniuses keep interrupting you with their own monologues.

32. In recent news, it’s suddenly now not all the fault of white male midwesterners without college educations – the Clinton campaign is now telling donors it’s the fault of “college educated suburban women” suddenly shifting to Trump:

    Democratic pollsters attributed Mr. Trump’s laser-thin victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – states that President Obama had won – largely to a drifting of college-educated suburban women to the Republican nominee at the last minute, because of the renewed focus on Mrs. Clinton’s email server.

    “We lost with college-educated whites after leading with them all summer,” a Clinton spokesman, Brian Fallon, said on Wednesday. “Five more days of reminders about Comey, and they gravitated back to Trump.”

    1. Guilty! You know why? Because Spirit cooking and felon running for the presidency. Hey, DNC, here’s my middle finger.

    2. I wonder how many of those “college-educated suburban women” were HillaryHellNo and lying to pollsters and friends because who has time for that crap?

       If you suspected even one of your friends being likely to react the way we’re seeing so many do, would you tell them about your voting intentions?

       1. I think I startled one of the ladies at my (Catholic!) homeschooling group, who assumed I was a pro-life Democrat. To be fair, most of them also didn’t realize I am a veteran, or a geek, or any other subjects that might make folks feel excluded or bored….

          There’s probably a manners gap here; conservatives tend to follow the traditional manners rule about not injecting politics into possibly mixed company, while progressives tend to view it as some sort of small-talk. The third rail folks are a mixed bag, with the biggest commonality I’ve seen being along cultural lines. (SoCon more likely polite, SoLib more likely to not hold traditional manners)

          1. Conservatives also do not consider their politics as central to their identity; politics is rather an expression of who they are and what they believe.

             With Progressives the politics is like a lodge handshake, identifying yourselves as whatever the heck they think of themselves as being. Enlightened or something, although I bet you dollars against doughnuts (although, at current prices it might be fairer to invert that offer — I can’t recall the last time I saw a lemon-filled jelly doughnut or even a French cruller at under a dollar) they cannot find a definition of what enlightened would be.

       2. People have been saying the Bradley effect is minimal or doesn’t exist. Between Trump and Brexit, there’s at least some strong evidence it does.

          Oh, and polling is absolutely DONE as a predictor. Anyone with two brain cells knows three things:

          1. They had to have at least your phone number to call you, and a database showing who got called so they don’t call twice; in person, they have hidden cameras and facial recognition software.

          2. Those factors mean that someone, somewhere, can find out exactly who you are, where you live, where you work….. and organizations and companies sell their data all the time.

          3. A major political party was caught on one of those same hidden cameras BRAGGING about hiring people to go to an opponent’s campaign rallies and cause violence. The person they were talking to couldn’t have been with the campaign long enough to be a close and trusted adviser; they were bragging about it to someone hired recently. It’s just common knowledge and acceptable if you’re supporting Democrats. Meanwhile, George Soros was caught red-handed funneling money to gin up Black Lives Matter to show up and start riots even in small towns like Ferguson. Those are just the most egregious examples.

          No one is going to give a pollster an honest answer ever again.

          1. I know I linked it already, but is this what you mean?

             1. Among other things yes.

       3. Probably didn’t help they were drinking their own ink if they were believing their own skewed polls.

          1. The big problem with polls is determining ‘likely voters’. The pollsters just didn’t get that 2016 turnout would not be about the same as 2012. Guessing who will actually vote involves voodoo or the reading of entrails.

             1. It wasn’t that hard as 3 of the polls managed this election cycle.

                1. No but it does require work, mainly a two step process:

                   1. Survey enough Americans to get representative samples of each subgroup you wish to measure on the topic of likelihood to vote using the questions of your choice. Do that every week and use that build your turnout profile.

                   2. Do an independent survey designed to get the voting profile you created in #1 (it cannot use the same dataset to avoid look ahead issues) to survey voting intentions.

                   1. Your point is taken. It required actual work to get the polls right. But as actively demonstrated by three different polls it wasn’t impossible.

       4. I wonder how many of those “college-educated suburban women” were HillaryHellNo and lying to pollsters and friends…

          Not even lying – just not answering the darn phone.

          “The end result does not match what we saw in our polling” emphatically does not equal “There was a last minute shift that happened too late for us to see with our otherwise fully reliable polling,” unless they still really have faith (or are trying to preserve said faith) in their oh so expensive polling.

          Notice the D team insiders feeding these stories do not say “Yeah, we saw that shift starting Saturday and we were all worried going into election night that that we had not had time to counter that move.” Nothing along those lines leaked out to the press, and none of the anchors (note the networks have their own polling) or insider types (who are presumably plugged in to the D private poling) ever looked anything but totally confident of a D win up until the polls closed and the bad news for them started. And they all looked equally poleaxed when those returns started coming in – which means they all thought they knew, with no doubt stemming from any rumors about ‘late polling’ looking bad for The Dowager Empress, exactly what was going to happen.

          If on the other hand they were to concede that their polling was worth exactly zero, and in fact caused them to redirect their campaign resources to the wrong places, they would have to say something like “Gee, reporter little buddy, I can’t really tell you what happened because the tools we used don;t match up with what actually happened with the votes, so we will have to go back to the drawing board.” Nobody that I’ve read on the inside is saying anything like that.

          I think the bottom line is polling only works when potential voters answer the phone, and potential voters who are being hammered by the press with “if you don’t support Hillary you are evil racist scum” messages are not going to want to talk to pollsters.

          1. I admit this was the first election year in which I simply hung up on pollsters. People who interrupt me are not entitled to courtesy, much less answers.

             Besides, experience has taught me that most of their questions are based on false premises and cannot be accurately answered.

          2. Except that IBD, The LA Times, and one other organization whose name escapes me, all managed to get accurate polls, and apparently did so consistently throughout the campaign season. Kudos to my local rag for that, btw.

             That suggests that all of the data really was in place and available. But most of the polling groups presumably had blinders in place that kept them from obtaining accurate results.

             1. At least part of the problem is that the pollsters cook the raw numbers to produce a mix of registered voters that matches their expected turnout. If the sample is 35% Democrat, 35% Republican, and 30% independent, they’ll weight the individual responses so that the overall number is based 40% on Democrat responses, 30% on Republicans… because everybody knows there are more Democrats voting than Republicans. As soon as you do that, you’ve basically turned the entire poll into an exercise in confirmation bias. If one party has more likely voters than the other, a sufficiently large random sample should reflect that without any cooking.

                Here in Canada, we don’t have registration by party (or primaries, or caucuses: one great benefit of a parliamentary system is that the election season only lasts about two months), and while pollsters may sift the raw responses to try to match demographic criteria, they don’t do anything to massage the data on party lines. There have been one or two catastrophic failures (notably in Alberta a few years ago, where one party’s support collapsed in the last days of the campaign due to a series of highly publicized gaffes, and the polls totally missed it); but on the whole the system appears to produce more accurate results than you get down there.

                It also helps that we have automated polling here, which (as I understand) is illegal in the U.S. People are notoriously more willing to tell the truth to a machine than to a human being, especially if they suspect they are getting push-polled.

             2. But most of the polling groups presumably had blinders in place that kept them from obtaining accurate results.

                Yes – the turnout models that are used to generate adjustments to the data, and to somehow incorporate the opinions of people who hang up on pollsters, is where the art still comes in. Note that the LA Times/USC Dornsife poll used a static group of 4000 people that the repeatedly polled, so presumable once they got people into the pool they got few hangups.

                It certainly looks like the LA Times/USC Dornsife polling did end up close to the overall vote, and they did catch the major move away from Hillary that started on Oct 24th, which was four days before the second Comey letter. Expect the USC folks’ private polling rates to go up.

                But they didn’t do state-by-state that I can see (probably that is what they were selling to the campaigns), so I can’t tell how close they came in the electoral college totals.

                I’m going to try and remember to compare the final drill-downs in their results to the final data from the actual voting once it’s available – I wonder if their sample was robust enough to catch what looks like actually made the difference, that is, the various minority breaks by a few points here and there in the “firewall” rust belt states towards Trump

             3. In looking through the polling site to inform my post above, I’m hitting some remarkable polling blind spots.

                Some pollsters are in fact saying “Oops, sorry, we’re going to go figure out what went wrong,” but others are out there bragging that their polls were really not that far off in the end (and “Please please please keep paying us those huge polling fees”). Nate Silver is spinning about how they had Trump losing by less than most everyone else. Amazingly, in the course of talking about state-by-state misses that fivethirtyeight.com ended up with while still projecting the irrelevant nationwide popular vote total more right than they did in 2012, Silver admits they had major state misses on all sides: In California they projected Hillary’s vote total 5% lower than she ended up actually getting*, and in the midwest they completely missed the flip away from Hillary, though Silver asserts that they secretly modeled that it might happen inside their analysis.

                I understand defending ones methods when the results were not that far off, but the way the polls are used by the media as opinion bulldozers to push their preferred outcome means the polls themselves have become politicized and suspected of being tailored to push the desired outcome, and this widespread miss (in spite of all the defending, nobody that I’ve seen predicted anything close to the correct electoral college totals) will only reinforce that suspicion.

                *Uselessly, since she was never going to lose those CA electoral votes, but Silver thinks CA mail-in ballots in particular will push the ending popular vote total to between +1% and +2% Hillary.

                1. It is almost as if their goal is to blow smoke rather than provide clarity. In similar inanity we see similar lack of recognition of the meaning of being a Republic …

                   Meaningless stat of the day: Dems got more votes for Senate
                   Democrats feel they were robbed, and some of their arguments these days are more absurd than others. The most absurd may be the implication that the GOP’s Senate majority deserves an asterisk because, as Nation editor John Nichols puts it:

                   Clinton’s winning the popular vote count for president and Ds lead popular vote count for US Senate:Total D vote: 45.2MTotal R vote: 39.3M— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) November 12, 2016

                   This little idea is beginning to kindle some flames in media circles. Here’s Matt Pearce of the L.A. Times mentioning it. Here’s Mother Jones editor Aaron Wiener on the same note.

                   At first glance, it’s intriguing. Upon closer inspection, it’s a worthless point.

                   Most importantly, not every state has a Senate race every year. One state with no Senate race in 2016: Texas, the largest Republican state in the country. This is a big deal, considering that the largest margin of victory in any Senate election in 2014 was Sen. John Cornyn’s 1.3-million vote victory.

                   The California factor also throws the count way off. In California, instead of running for a nomination in partisan primaries, all candidates of all parties run in a multi-party primary, and the top two finishers run in an election-day runoff.

                   This year, the Senate runoff was between two Democrats. So all 8.5 million votes in that state’s Senate race went to Democrats.

                   So the biggest Red state doesn’t have a Senate race, and the biggest Blue State has one where Republicans weren’t on the ballot, making this “popular vote for the Senate” statistic totally irrelevant.

                   Given that the Democrats didn’t win a single Senate race in a state Trump won 29 or 30 states, it’s more fair to say this: had all 100 Senators seats been on the ballot, the GOP would have had a shot at 60 Senate seats.
                   — — —
                   Last I knew, the SuperBowl champion is not determined on the basis of which team had the greatest differential between yards gained on offense vs yards given up on defense, even though I suspect most years that would be a pretty good predictor (in the rear view mirror.)

33. “Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.”

    It astonishes me the intelligent successful people that I know that are scared shit-less about the change of command. So I did a little digging and observed their posts and re-Tweets. Quite a few of them are lapping up the propaganda from MSM media and “experts”. Some are advocating revolution. Others are seeing bogeymen everywhere. Follow the twitter of folks like Sarah Kendzior, it’s like “Alice in Wonderland” with a liberal academic twist.

    But then again these are the same folks that think “Clock Boy” is some sort of electrical engineering genius.

    1. Checker at store to Dad Red: “You shouldn’t use Aspertame. it causes holes in your brain.”
       DadRed: “Well, I’m retired from the medical field and we see things a little differently.”
       College-age Checker, most insistent: “I heard it in science class and it causes holes in your brain!”
       DadRed: ” . . . sigh”

       1. If you have no holes in your brain how do you let the bad thoughts out?

34. I’ll just point out.
    Soros is paying money to people who are interfering with the political process in this country, sometimes through violence.

    If someone gets killed… can they freeze all of Soros’ domestic funds because he’s a terrorist financier?

    1. I’d like that.

    2. They did try and claim that Jim Brady was murdered when he finally died decades later, due to the lingering effects of the wounds he sustained during Hinkley’s attempted assassination of Reagan.

35. Want to mention something here about votes and vote fraud. It’s been said a Republican needs to win beyond the margin of fraud. Everyone, everyone who is anyone, knew Clinton was going to win Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. All 4 states of which are known for vote fraud in major metropolitan areas. She didn’t even bother campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan they were so solidly in the hole for her, and everyone who is anyone knew that. So, the people who normally orchestrated the vote fraud that elected people like Al Franken didn’t bother- it wasn’t going to be needed. And then Trump upset the apple cart. After the major vote fraud areas announced their votes, the reports from the hinterlands started coming in. And Trump pulled ahead. Too late to manufacture them. Beforehand, if they knew they needed them, 70,000 votes could easily have been prepared in Pennsylvania. But there was no awareness they would be needed. 12,000 votes was all they needed for Michigan, but again, they didn’t know they’d need them. Wisconisn, 30,000 votes, well within the margin of fraud, fraud they knew wouldn’t be needed. Florida would have been harder. Republican eyes were on Florida after the Gore shenanigans. Over 120,000 votes would have needed there. And that’s a little tougher to do when all eyes are upon you.

    So, I’m happy to say that vote fraud did not decide this election. No doubt about it. Overconfidence on the Democrat side told them they didn’t need it.

    1. YTHIS.

    2. Libtard overconfidence is Da Bomb!

    3. They could read the voter turnout numbers in the rural areas, but if they counted the LadyParts Vote as locked up* they likely wouldn’t worry about losing those precincts.

       *Sorry about that image, but not very.

    4. Every time CNN would go to the Detroit precincts and report ‘still only 83% for awhile now’ all I could think of is they are canvassing more cemetary votes to try to counter the rural votes.

    5. This is where their twisting the polls to favor Hillary when that wasn’t the case came back to bite them on the ass. They believed he polls that had been rigged to favor Hillary by a large margin. Thus denying themselves an accurate feel for what was in a lot of states.

36. It was kinda interesting at work this week. It being Reno, even the lefties are gun nuts. You know the type, trading reloading advice and arguing various brands. The two rabid Bernie supporters switched to Trump. The Hillary fans just shut up.

    The biggest discussion was how in heck the gun sales initiative passed. I guess if you want to sell a gun you need to do it through a licensed broker now. We’ll probably have those services added to all the gun store add on the radio. That’s country radio in Reno for ya. I’m so glad I fled LA.

37. Lol. Nah. EMS is my stress reliever. CRNA don’t typically restrain

38. Before invading a country that they wanted to add to the empire *ahem* to which they offered unsolicited fraternal assistance, the Soviets would send in teams of infiltrators to incite random violence. This served to heighten the level of fear in the population and so effectively paralyse them. Nobody felt safe and nobody knew what was going on. This gave the Sovs both a pretext and a cowed population. They called it the “Gray Terror.” It feels kind of like that to me. I think there is another shoe getting ready to drop. Mayhap Obama’s gracious cooperation in the transition of power is not all it seems. Hope I’m wrong.

    1. But we aren’t paralyzed by the the random violence. We are frustrated and annoyed but not paralyzed.

       1. They don’t get Americans.

          1. This is very true. They really don’t get America and think people will react like they would.

    2. Yes, this. I too am getting bad feelings. For one I suspect we’ll be hit before inauguration. One big or several small terror attacks.

       1. I’ve been worried that there would be a big terrorist attack at the inauguration.

          Get Trump & his people and get Obama & his people so the US has no leadership. 😦

          1. How would that be a change from the past eight years? No smiley, I’m quite serious.

          2. If there’s one very secured location, it’s Washington DC at inauguration. The US Secret Service has had 115 years to visit and catalog every single spot with any conceivable sightline to the physical location of the inauguration ceremony, and since they know them all they watch them all. Their only major inauguration surprise in that time that I’ve heard about was when Rosalynn told Jimmeh to jump out of the limo and walk to the ceremony in 1976.

             I suppose someone with a 155mm artillery battery in VA or MD could target the grandstand (even then – I would be surprised if these days the WH and Capitol Building part of DC is not protected by an Iron Dome installation or equivalent, i.e. something that could take out a battery barrage), but anything closer in is just not going to happen.

          3. Big terror attacks (as opposed to something small, like putting a pressure cooker bomb near the race course) take a lot of work and planning to accomplish. If something big is going to occur during the inauguration, then the plan has probably been slowly moving toward fruition for over a year now. And the sheer number of moving parts means that there’s a good chance that the authorities will get wind of it and stop it. That’s not to say that nothing is guaranteed to happen. 9/11 happened, after all, and that was a pretty big thing with a lot of moving parts. But it’d be difficult for the bad guys to pull an inaugural attack off even if they did have something planned.

             1. Plus every time something works, as long as the defenders are halfway competent, that method is effectively lost for future attempts. The trick with the fishing boat hijacking is not going to work to get an attack team into anywhere even slightly populated in India again, and hijacking airliners to crash them into things is not going to work in the US. An attack method has to be something new, and for a big event like the inauguration, innovative enough that the numerous and well trained and equipped defenders have not already countered it preemptively.

       2. They really don’t want to do that. But than we already agreed that they really don’t understand Americans.

    3. Even if so, I often look at the rabid hard-line progressives and shake my head, saying “You’re dealing with a playbook built on small European countries in the 1800’s, aren’t you? Oh, look! Violent incidents! Marching in the streets… in Portland. It’s Portland. Nobody except those near Portland cares. There are thousand and thousands of miles in America where Portlandia is nothing more than a TV show full of cuckoo wierdos.

       Or the new article “this high school class is upset!” … um, so? It’s like trying to sway the Dragon awards on a playbook built for the Hugos: the pool is too big for the effort to make more than a minor ripple before it sinks.

       But then, they’ve long felt like they’re amateur theater trying to pull off an epic glorious revolution, only instead of full orchestra they have a most of a middle school concert, and the costumes are all borrowed, and they only have a tiny cast, some of whom are too stoned to remember their lines, others of whom are too argumentative to follow directions, and a couple who are ready for their closeup, Mr. DeMille.

       1. I mean REALLY, you give them too much credit.

       2. You mean Grimm isn’t a documentary? Mom will be crushed. 😉

          1. The real portlandians are more crazy than wesen.

       3. Someone told me that the twitter threats this time were different, because the prior nasty elections nobody was rioting.

          Yeah, they were. I can remember Seattle having a tiny go-it-again for the WTO “protests,” and Portland probably did to– I live in Washington and it was just “Seattle being dumb.”

          For heaven’s sake, they protest EVERYTHING. Who cares? Other than if they stop my car in a threatening manner, I’m willing to go Utah Carol on their worthless hides.
          (As the cattle rushed to kill him/ he dropped the leading steer.)

          1. Are you saying that the selection of Trump in the primaries was Utah Carol placing that red blanket under Lenore so the saddle might ride easy for the boss’s daughter (wife)? That was now dragging behind her on the ground, for the frightened cattle to see and charge? The wikileaks emails then being the back cinch snapping like thunder?

             1. Sadly, the metaphor doesn’t go that far because my state doesn’t even get a voice in the primaries…..

                1. It never ceases to amuse me that California has more electoral votes than any other state, and yet the nominees are already decided by the time I get a chance to vote for them.

       4. I recently found an answer to ‘WTH does whoever organizing and funding this think they are doing?’

          Trump is big city liberal in a way that keeps him from realizing deeply that this is pointless and ‘far away’. If he is only weakly committed, this might impress him and change his opinion.

39. Minor pet peeve of mine:

    Whites will not be the minority any time soon. Like many decades soon. They will be the plurality. Minority would only be the right word if every single non-Caucasian (and wouldn’t THAT be a fun bit of brown bag testing?) was considered to be part of a single group.

    Which is precisely why the regressive left pushes such an idea.

    This also applies to the recent nose count. The masculine half of the Clintons did not get a majority of the vote.

    As to the terrifying of children: Why is it “racist child-abuse” when a KKK family or some such teaches and defends their children this way, but not so much when a black woman screams at her children “Cops want to kill you!”?

40. So was the uprising of the atavistic feminine power Grant is fighting a response to Hillary’s election defeat? What monsters was Podesta in league with?

    1. oh, gag me on even thinking of podesta. No, I was thinking it’s related to the plot of Guardian.

41. A government big enough to give you everything that you want is also big enough to take away everything that you ARE. Witness the protections of conscience stripped away, the demands that the Catholic Church somehow be changed against its will, and the “re-education” of corporate employees at the hands of “compliance officers”.

    1. Distinguo: There is no such thing as a government big enough to give you everything that you want. Some people want pet unicorns and pink flying ponies. The threshold at which a government can take away everything that you are is infinitely lower.

       1. indeed, but I feel this is addressed at people who don’t know there is no such thing.

42. A view of the side that would do this:
    http://ask.metafilter.com/302522/Knowing-the-warning-signs

    1. How do these people get so clueless? If it is all projection of what they want to do to us, then they are truly deplorable, despicable, haters, with absolutely no empathy for different points of view. Besides, Hitler was a national socialist like their hero Bernie.

       1. I don’t think it’s all projection. A lot of it is based on concerns borne out of fearmongering on the part of those who either A. are projecting, B. are attempting to gain political power by making people scared, or C. Both.

          1. Ah… Not what Trump actually said but how what he said was reported by the hysterical democratic operatives with bylines. Yes, the naive left still unquestionably believe the major media.

             1. And some of what’s based on reality is based on “If I said something like that, here’s what I would mean by it, which that’s what he means by it, which means (fill-in-the-blank bad things).”

                1. My favorite one this last election was “Trump called Mexicans Rapists and Murderers!” when what he actually said was that there were Rapists and Murderers among those entering illegally. There were also drug smugglers aplenty, but he didn’t mention those.

                   Simple logical fallacy: He said some of A were B, so he means all A are B.

                   The idea that “Banning immigration from Muslim countries until we figure out what we’re doing” only constitutes a religious ban if you assume we will never figure out what we’re doing.

                   Sheesh – these idiots would object to telling people to avoid sexual relations with other people until you learn how to recognize the predators as insistence on chastity.

                   Still nothing as inane as “Women in Binders!!!!!” this election, of course.

                   1. The idea that “Banning immigration from Muslim countries until we figure out what we’re doing” only constitutes a religious ban if you assume we will never figure out what we’re doing.
                      ————————

                      And also ignores the fact that the people most eager to flee the region are probably the *non*-Muslims who live there. And, I’ve heard (which means possibly not true), are currently blocked from entering the country as refugees by the current administration.

                      1. Sort of true.

                         You have to go through a UN refugee camp, and there have been multiple defectors from Daesh and other terror groups that reported that some of the camp guards are *helping* terrorists identify and kidnap/kill/remove minorities, especially Christians.

                         A couple of mostly-Christian (largely in communion with Rome, but they’re not picky– IIRC there are other groups involved too, not a lot of details for obvious reasons) groups that run safe-houses have been trying to get them to safety.

                         The report I heard on Catholic Radio had them fund raising through Knights of Columbus, and though it didn’t mention anything even slightly related I’d guess that how the Obama folks handled that Doctor who found them Bin Laden means that they’re NOT working with gov’ts if they can help it.

                      2. I gather we’ve not gotten very many Copts and Yazidis from the regions occupied by ISIS.

                   2. The ones protesting too much (about the description) …really aren’t helping.

                      Found on twitter:
                      https://t.co/anRoSApGb2

                      1. correction: https://twitter.com/AmRenaissance/status/776851299417620480

       2. These were likely the same sort of people that called George W Bush “Hitler” while forgetting that Hitler would have killed them.

    2. Why not study history, looking at the countries in the last century that’ve held internal purges, to see the warning signs? Gracious, if they stopped filtering for non-progressive, they might LEARN something about the end results of the policies they espouse. As well as what distressingly common signs to look for.

       (And why aren’t they filtering the National Socialist’s part of 1930’s-40’s Germany, anyway? It was progressive, too.)

       1. But, but, that takes work! You have to read, and compare, and think!!!! (I’m reading Gelletly’s book about Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. It is a tome. The students are a bit taken aback.)

          1. That tome is a depressing slog, but I found it useful for understanding the causes, scope, and scale of European progressive depravity during that time. It also reinvigorated my determination to fight against progressivism as best I can.

             1. I took a break after today’s chapter and worked on Marx’s “The German Ideology.” Sheesh, even if you accept his starting premise and his redefinition of some terms, he’s still in error about labor being identical to property. And then it goes downhill, in English or German.

                Marxism. org is a treasure trove of writings, with decent to excellent translations, all under copyleft. I disagree with their philosophy but it is a magnificent resource for finding all kinds of primary-source stuff and commentaries.

    3. There’s enough projection there to open a multiplex. Someone should link them to Matt Bracken’s “What I Saw at the Coup” and really trigger them.
       https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/what-i-saw-at-the-coup/

43. Back in the dark ages when I was in school they had “Civics” class and History class and everybody knew how the Electoral College worked and why.
    Now not so much and even some of my contemporaries have forgotten that this is one thing that keeps the “Hunger Games” fiction so far.

44. Something I’ve noticed in some of my circles is that at least some of the Lefties are willing to acknowledge that they live in bubbles, and this election has shocked them enough to realize that maybe they need to find out what is in other people’s bubbles. I had a long, serious, slightly heated exchange with some of my younger sister’s FB friends where we still kept it civil and discussed ideas rather than people. A second discussion involved quite a bit of interaction with older younger sister, the one I haven’t interacted with for at least six years (because of her behaviour leading up to the ’08 election). She was civil! She didn’t call me any names, nor did she go around accusing other’s who didn’t vote for Hillary as delusional or whatever the current favorite ad hominem is. It’s like a few of them are starting to realize that maybe, just maybe, the Democrats and the left in general have a problem, and more of the same won’t necessarily be the answer.

    It’s getting folks to realize that 95+% of the Demon Right wants very similar things, we want an economy where we can earn enough to support our families, we want our communities to be safe, we don’t want to be at war forever. We don’t want poor people to starve or freeze to death. We don’t want people to have to forgo needed medical care because they can’t afford it. We just have different thoughts on how best to achieve those goals. It started with an article on societal trust, and how that is breaking down. Which led to comments on culture (the article actually admitted that more ‘diverse’ societies tend to have less trust, probably related to lack of assimilation) and a bit on how this is reflected and amplified by our political system which tends to view us not as individuals but parts of monolithic blocks, the hispanic vote, the female vote, etc., (http://freakonomics.com/podcast/trust-me/)

    One thing I can say, we would never, ever have been able to have these discussions if Hillary had won, because the left (and therefore my sisters and their friends) would have been doing it’s usual gloating and “we won” bit, and refusing to admit that they had effectively disenfranchised half the country by ignoring them and their concerns and labeling them as “deplorables”.

45. One third of the House Democratic Caucus is constituted by representatives of Massachusetts, New York and California?

    Oh My.

46. “… the fervent Trump supporters, the ones who started campaigning for him in the primaries, roughly a group co-valent with those calling themselves alt-right, often were bullies on line, and bullies in a particularly stupid way, where they thought inventing insults for various minorities was an argument …”

    No. They thought it was funny. Or even better, triggering. In a rare few cases, when preaching to the Stormthumper (?) choir, they imagined it a QED.

    This is where we have had a parting of ways, I am afraid , from the get go. If you have been bullied, in real life. I mean, if you’ve been tripped, beaten, stoned, attacked with knives, for the amusement of, well, bullies… It is really, really hard to take seriously the tears of those who complain that someone said something mean to them on the Internet. Used the nets to get them fired, subject them to an international public-relations slander-attack, get them fired or banned. Fair dinkum: ++BadBehaviour. I saw what happened to Mr Correia and his allies during the 2nd campaign to end puppy-related sadness and it made my blood boil.

    But I never really understood why people got their knickers in a twist over the online words of some small-beer nobody supporter of … whatever. Or worse, compared the individual drive-by commenter with the massed power of government and mass-media writers, artists, etc.

    You’re not the only one to have expressed this, Mrs Hoyt, and I admit to being at loss to understand it.

    1. ‘Cuz she understands the Ring of Gyges?

       1. No doubt Mrs Hoyt does (though I had to look it up. Thanks!) but it doesn’t appear to be apropos as you’ve applied it.

          1. I would disagree. The Internet offers a representation of how people will act given the ability to get away with bad behavior.
             The alt-right bears a remarkable resemblance to SocJus mobs–they just don’t have any sort of broader cultural platform. They are, however, the Iago to conservatism’s Othello.

    2. On a side tangent, but related.

       Some years ago I started to become uncomfortable with what was happening on a number of U.S. television comedies that I had previously enjoyed. They just didn’t seem very funny anymore and whenever I watched I found myself increasingly annoyed. So I stopped watching.

       It was the Spouse who observed that the humor had become insult based. If what is accepted as humor is based upon on insults, slurs and nasty quips what does this say about the direction of the underlying culture?

       1. Yep.

       2. And not in a good way. Teasing and insults in jest are normal, especially when mutual. On most TV shows they have a punching bag that is targeted for laughs. I have long disliked the buffoonish caricature characters that are only there to screw up and make you laugh. But my sense of humor is defective too so YMMV.

          1. We’re in good company.

             http://www.gilbertandsullivanarchive.org/pinafore/web_opera/pin03d.html

             Dick Deadeye, a lovely old skewering of the guy put there just to be abused, and made ugly so you know you’re supposed to hate him….

             1. Ya. I will admit to enjoying stuff like airplane but pure comedies never got me interested. Closest would be Beverly hills cop or police academy. Most stuff today is just pure insult or stupid or juvenile

                1. I think it is in part the effect of Saturday Night Live, or perhaps more accurately the effect of comedians trained in that environment. Too often their film comedies are simply a five-minute skit inflated to ninety-five minutes, or a stringing together of multiple skits in expectation audiences will image a story in there somewhere.

                   Take, instead, a film like Romancing the Stone which embeds comedy elements in a larger narrative, granting deeper resonance to the skits.

                   1. Ya. Kinda sorta. There is a difference between today and Monty Pythonesqe comedies. Maybe just nowhere near as blatant

          2. You mean like Falstaff? I never liked stories like that either. I tend to find them more embarrassing to watch than funny.

       3. My husband and I stopped watching sitcoms for the same reason. These people are supposed to be friends or family, and this is how they interact? Not amusing: sad and terrible.

    3. Because your feelings follow where your mind goes. Have you never heard of studies that if you smile, you’ll feel better about how you’re doing? Even if you’re forcing the smile.
       Yes, I think the alt-right started as a joke. They also don’t get that — it’s not a trigger, it’s REPULSIVE — many of us who HAVE been bullied in real life and lived in really bad environments respond badly to that kind of “witty” insult and refusal to argue.
       But the thing is, I’ve watched it, including on the blog of the gentleman who chose to pick unprompted fights with me, they started using these words, etc. as a joke, and then started believing them. His difference form the stormfronters, at this point, if analyzed, is paper-thin.
       You start dehumanizing vast swaths of humanity by calling them names, and whether the name is “deplorable” or “neo-cohen” your mind writes them in as “not human.” After a while you go where your words lead.

       1. Amen!

       2. There is also a component of desensitization, or, as Scott Adams would put it, Framing.

          The SJZs are right in their basic apprehension of the harmfulness of teasing and bullying, but typically prescribe the wrong nostrum for the ailment.

          1. They also, like bureaucracies, go for the soft target, and prefer “solutions” to imaginary problems vs real ones.

             The downside to turning racism into a joke by flooding social media with obscene Harambe memes is that real racists, who honestly think “groids” and “people of colour” are sub-human will get a pass. But thanks to progressive privilege, these folks already do, as long as they dress up that belief in pretty language.

             Meanwhile if we can make “racism” a joke perhaps a perhaps conservative, Republican, or alt-right policy makers can try to implement school choice, or defund the destructive welfare state, or arrest black sociopaths who prey on poor neighbourhoods, without being shut down before they can get started by the social-justice-industrial complex.

             Because at the end of the day, I love my black brethren more than I hate either stormfronters or SJWs.

       3. No, Sarah, a lot of it started and will continue because of stuff like this:

          On CNN, Democrat Strategist Makes Fun of the White Guy Beat Up During the Anti-Trump Protests (Video).

          https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/249229/#respond

       4. Hmmm. Yes, I’ve heard of those studies. Not sure I agree with you. It seems to me that the feelings that necessarily follow superficial experiences are likely to be superficial also. I can make myself stop crying by watching my face in a mirror and engaging the analytical portion of my brain. The grief is still a constant presence.

          Though I do agree that if you decide to let someone get under your skin as if they were a friend rather than a stranger, the pain will be real. Not sure why one would choose do that, but maybe it’s one of those introvert/extrovert divides.

          And yes, I have been bullied in real life… How a cohort of strangers, particularly strangers for whom one has little respect, and who have no real-world influence on your life can be “bullies” by merely showing up on Twitter, Facebook or a blog and saying stupid, obnoxious things? Point and laugh or ignore them.

          No. As far as I can tell alt-right *tactics* include jokes, memes, insults… anything that works to discomfort the foe. The ability to aim fire accurately sometimes leaves a lot to be desired, but relentless assault does tend to provoke paranoia. These tactics have also been astonishingly effective in combating cultural Marxists in a way that literal decades of unfailing conservative virtue have completely failed do to. We have reached the point that merely suspected “racism” justifies violence up to maiming and murder. We’ve lost nearly all the critical institutions in the U.S. We need to defacing social justice if we have any hope of keeping the Bill of Rights.

          Yes, the real racists are going to get a free pass if the concept becomes a joke. Yes distinguishing between racists-for-messing-with-a-CHORF-sacred cow, race realists, racist-light and rabid pagan xenophobics (stormfront, thanks) is going to be very hard. Especially since no few conservatives (I’m looking at you Mr Goldberg) are happy to play the same games with the varied (and they are a diverse bunch) of alt-righters that the left does, and has done with blacks, women and gays who try to leave the reservation.

          I think making those distinctions is worth it. The enemies of civilization are vast, wealthy, well-organised, and the vast majority of their would-be serfs just want to be left alone. The people who are willing and able to fight, the ones who haven’t been beaten down or co-opted are usually some variety of Odd. The kook convinced that fluoridation is a government plot, the navel-fetish gamer, anyone who has stuck to his guns in the face of threatened exile from the tribe. Their allies are far more “alternative” than they are “right” because usually they’ve just been branded heretics and cast out for insisting on barbecuing ONE lefty sacred cow.

          And the clue that it’s worth the effort not to play into progressive narrative traps about how the alt-right is all one thing (and so anyone tagged with the label can be dismissed) is that the actual stormfronters are pisssed at people like Vox Day with their squishy Christian claims that all human beings have the right to things like equality under the law, life, liberty, etc. for coming along and corrupting “their” alt-right.

          I’ve said it before, on Vox Day’s site, and probably here. Those who love Western Civilization? We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.

          1. And yes, I have been bullied in real life… How a cohort of strangers, particularly strangers for whom one has little respect, and who have no real-world influence on your life can be “bullies” by merely showing up on Twitter, Facebook or a blog and saying stupid, obnoxious things? Point and laugh or ignore them.

             Effective bullies have a way of identifying vulnerabilities and exploiting them; social media and the mob mentality lets them recruit help, so it works like a DDOS.

             There’s also the issue of real harm coming from the people, even though you do not respect them and know they are lying, by others who do have power to cause you real harm.

             There’s the additional hard to quantify harm-to-truth.

             **************

             You’ll notice most of these things are what are done by those yelling “bully,” not experienced by them.

47. It would appear that the Trumptantrumeers suffer Vitamin N Deficiency.

    This seems especially common at modern universities.

    1. Kids hate being told “no.” That’s why you grant them intermittent relief from it if, instead of pitching a fit, they go into rational renegotiation mode. As they get older you can insist they cite their sources 🙂

       1. My two year old is already learning that if he manages a word or two of what the problem is, there is less trouble with mommy and daddy and faster results than tantrum.

          1. Just be ready for the instant re-negotiation reflex that will necessarily ensue 🙂

48. Moving it down because we hit the wall a loooooong time ago….

    This page is evil with autoplay, but it has some nice pictures of other characters from the Moana movie:
    http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/14-things-disneys-moana-film/story?id=43276845
    I’ll post the video next, if it’ll letme.

    1. Check out the guys playing with fire, here– they’ve got fairly normal fat distribution.

       Contrast with Mr. third generation wrestler. 😀

       1. This is kind of personal to me, because my mom’s family is built along the lines of the Samoans, but with a tall man being 5’10.
          Check out the thighs on the guys in the back? Yeah, you only make the mistake of thinking that they’re fat ONCE, if they have a reason to kick you. I was a teenager before I figured out that most people can’t kick open any door that they can get braced close enough to.

49. c4c

50. Pingback: Random Sarcastic Goodness | retiredmustang

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