Trump Points Out The Obvious. Everybody Apparently Loses Their Damned Minds by Thomas Kendall

387 thoughts on “Trump Points Out The Obvious. Everybody Apparently Loses Their Damned Minds by Thomas Kendall”

1. “Trump Points Out The Obvious. Everybody Apparently Loses Their Damned Minds”????

   What next, a column declaring fire is hot, water is wet, bears make doody in the woods and the gods of the copybook headings are honing their scythes?

   My only quibble is that about half our populace can no more lose their minds than they can lose their virginity. That moving finger has moved on long time gone.

   1. “And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire”

   2. I think they’re past the honing and scythes stage. More like linking up for a couple days worth of m61s

      1. That guy who attacked an ICE facility doesn’t count? He killed an ICE guy, burned up a car and was looking to do some serious, serious damage, that would have also likely hurt and possibly killed the ‘poor unfortunate souls’ that he supposedly wanted to help.

         1. Only in that it’s currently still one sided. Once you start getting gangland style competition all bets off. I’m of the suspicion that ‘when the English learn to hate’ will be just the start.

         2. Willem Van Spronsen? He was killed but didn’t kill anyone else.

            1. I thought he killed someone. Glad to be wrong on that score.

2. c4c

   1. c4c

      1. c4c4c

3. Yesterday I was listening to a news report about Mssr. Makron’s Bastille Day pageant and thinking back to the furor over Trump’s celebration of America on the Fourth of July could only conclude: the French* are laughing at us.

   The reason those people are running around with their pants on their heads is to conceal the fact their hair is on fire. Trump is so skilled at adding fuel to the blaze they are blinded by their own torch-light.

   *Does not include David French, a very intelligent conservative who nevertheless cannot see how he’s being pantsed by the jester. Asserting Trump’s remarks are racist is to assume that which needs to be proven, to assert facts not in evidence, and to signal one’s own virtue so vigorously as to miss what was actually said.

   1. Gave up on French, DANG!, four years ago. Time do fly, lordamighty!

   2. I very much doubt he’s a conservative.

      If you spend the vast majority of the time attacking conservatives, with a special emphasis on attacking conservatives who have been successful implementing a conservative agenda, your commitment to the conservative ideology is AT LEAST extremely questionable.
      And describing French that way whitewashes his record.

      He’s a natural fit at National Review. Buckley did attain his stature by attacking and undermining rivals, after all.

4. From what I can tell, the main problem with illegal immigrants… is that they aren’t immigrants. (Hence the use of the term “illegal aliens” from here on out.) That is, even once you sift out the human traffickers, smugglers and associated criminal elements, you’re still mostly left with people with no intention of permanent residence.

   Instead, they come to receive all the numerous social benefits so generously advertised by liberal policymakers (to the detriment of actual citizens, particularly servicemen); they work under-the-table for substantially lower pay, most of which goes back to their homelands… and at the end of this grand act of social tourism, so do they. With all the utilized benefits and acquired education and professional experience of an actual citizen, only without the responsibilities of one… though still at the expense of actual citizens overall.

   It’s the perfect con, really. The business-friendly conservative states get deprived of human resources, since employee competition is ruined by the aforementioned underhanded practices, while the West Coast People’s Republic can claim an increased need for welfare funds to cover these poor unfortunate souls’ expenses… Until, of course, you suggest to drop them out at sanctuary cities, whereupon it becomes rather clear how much the left really cares about them.

   If anything, the further way to call their bluff might be for the right to propose a considerable streamlining of the citizenship process, with post-acquisition monitoring of course, in order to see just how much these people want to become citizens, lock-stock-and-barrel, as opposed to merely getting all the amenities, with none of the responsibilities. I’ll bet you dollars to rubles that the liberal response would be like of a vampire caught in the sunlight, and instead they’ll start demanding that the illegals get some special non-citizen-but-with-voting-rights status or something.

   1. The loudest about the poor “immigrants” are also the ones who were alright with raising the fees to become Citizens.

      1. Apparently Occasional Cortex’s “they made them drink out of the toilet” was based on a woman who couldn’t figure out how to operate the faucet and so drank out of the toilet. Assuming that the faucet wasn’t one of the stupid “green” reacts to your presence thing (and I’ll assume this, because otherwise it would be HUNDREDS of people unable to operate them. I’m not alone in being invisible to them) this woman is dumb as rocks and incapable of problem solving.(I.e. I have figured out many different types of faucet, and even semi-civilized areas would have them.) What are her chances of actually becoming a functional American?

         1. Little or no…
            I know a church group was in the same center at the same time & said aoc was lying. It wasn’t an “evil” right wing church either.

            1. Klaven tracked down ONE person who did this. BUT she had water in her cell. So, yes, AOC was lying.
               I mean, she lies like she breathes.

               1. as shown by her distraught viewing of an empty parking lot and a security gate with photogs aplenty making sure and certain no one got enough in the shots to make it clear she was going for the Oscar/Nobel/UN Humanitarian faker of the year.

               2. And gets away with it (at least so far) because she is the darling of the media and can do no wrong.
                  But she finally stepped over the line, drunk on her assumed and undeserved power she has launched a very premature attack on the leaders of her own party. Trust me, young and enthusiastic loses to old and nasty every time. She keeps it up Pelosi and company will primary her butt. Had HRC won and AOC acted out as she’s been doing we’d be hearing of a sad tale of multiple self inflicted gunshot wounds.

                  1. My concern is that Pelosi – the announced target of AOC’s attacks – will suffer a serious stroke or similar mishap that leaves her alive, but effectively powerless. I may not like Pelosi’s politics. But leaving her as a target that’s unable to fight back would be very bad, I suspect.

                  2. That is the way that Nancy was going. However, I am finding myself in agreement with the few pundits out there who are calling this one of Trump’s more brilliant moves.

                     Nancy now finds herself in the position of defending the “new face” of the Democratic Party (which is simply the real face, without the mask). She can’t get rid of them now, at least openly (the HRC option is still there). But the polls of the much-needed “independent” voters, especially in the swing states that gave them control of the House, show that “The Squad” is intensely unpopular.

                     Addendum: They say that Trump mis-tweeted with “countries.” But, did he? It’s dark humor, but only half a joke when many people speak of “The People’s Republic of Kalifornia,” “Detroitistan,” “The Black Hole of Seattle,” etc. These places are rapidly turning into hostile foreign countries – and only partially from the influx of non-US citizens or “citizens of color” – the “pure white” denizens like Buttigeig, Klobuchar, Newsome, and so on are just as much foreign and hostile to American values as any of their “POC” or “refugee” constituents.

                     1. It appears that Trump put Nancy in a lose-lose box. If she went along with POTUS against Occasional-Cortex and company, the lefter-than-thou bunch would lose their remaining braincells, but when she went against Trump, she would lose what few normal Democrats left in the party, and it *still* hasn’t been sufficient to appease the lefters.

                        Must. Watch. Popcorn. Consumption!

                        Snerk!

                        1. Never let it be said that I don’t recognize the bad effects from Donald Trump as President.

                           I believe that I can fairly lay the majority of my weight gain squarely at his door. He refuses to stop feeding the Left with straight lines.

                           1. In 2016 I was given a choice between a vulgar clown (or so he was depicted) and an arrogant scold. I voted for the clown, expecting nothing more than four years of lowbrow entertainment. I have been delightfully surprised.

                           2. Sometimes you get a twofer!

                           3. #metoo.

                           4. #ditto

                  3. “she is the darling of the media ”

                     One might be tempted to wonder why that is, except the media sees her as a useful idiot stalking horse for attacking Trump, America, Mom, apple pie and all the deplorable people who do not accept the media’s narrative.

                  4. It’s basically the Bolsheviks vs the Bolsheviks all over again. Pelosi and her cadre and “the Squad” are all Marxists/Communists, they just disagree on exact methodology of how to achieve their goal.

                  5. If HRC had won, and AOC attacked her like she’s attacked Trump and Pelosi, I’m fairly certain that AOC would have already joined the list of over 100 people who have come to very bad ends under very odd circumstances from knowing a bit too much about the Clintons.

               3. I *wish* she breathed once every ten minutes.

         2. Uh, no it was actually based on the fact that she’s an ignorant **** who has never seen the inside of a holding cell and didn’t realize that the sink sits on top of the commode along with a bubbler water fountain. (who am I kidding ignorant doesn’t even begin to work as an adjective here.)

            1. The list of things that Ocrazyo doesn’t know about is summarized thus: THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.

         3. Maybe that woman could move to Brooklyn and run for congress. She’s probably got the brains to do that job.

         4. The Home Depot automatic toilets (barring the urinal they gave up on and converted back to manual-only) are capable of ignoring any human, even 300# 6′-0″ me. Fortunately, most people know where the override levers are and use them.

            1. They don’t exist in most airports. I now fly with hand wipes, in case I can’t convince the faucet I exist…

               1. Trips over the Cascades entail stops at the concrete quasi-outhouses. Running water? Nope. Purell or the like are fixtures in our vehicles that make the trip. (Note to self; get one for the Honda.)

                  1. But it saves water. Because we’re running out of water. Per Paul Ehrlich, the man who was never right EVER.

                     1. More of an infrastructure (rather, lack therof) for one, and the other is supposed to be for a snowmobile/cross-country skiing meadow. That’s assuming they could drill a usable well there. Biiiig assumption because volcanos.

                        Oregon doesn’t always have plumbed rest areas on non-interstate highways. One major NS artery that I know of has them , others, no.

                        1. I-5 is it. Nothing, outside of town on 101, coastal. None of the W/E highways have them. None on N/S 99 outside of towns, darn few stops (okay, I give, I can’t think of ANY stops) between towns. Trust me, have reason to know. Also have reason to know all the rest stops between Eugene and Yosemite, down i-5, at least just over 30 years ago (was 7 months pregnant, pretty sure we hit just about all of them between going south and coming home.)

                           1. I know that US-97 has a plumbed rest area at Midland, south of Klamath Falls. I don’t know about further north. US-97 gets a lot of long haul traffic–not that many towns along the way.

                              OR-140, no plumbing, and the rest area is the parking area for the Sno-Park. It’s the only one on the highway between K-falls and Medford. It has some surface water, but a well could be iffy, and power would be an issue.

                              There’s a small park (mosquito heaven in June) along Agency Lake; the toilet is blocked when snow gets high. That’s on a county road, and the park is a joint venture with the county and IIRC Forest Service.

                     2. That’s probably the justification for why most of them were actually installed, but there’s at least one decent reason for motion sensors in the sinks of public restrooms: hygiene. Of course, if they were being installed in the name of hygiene, there would be a manual override (just a push button that provided water for 15 seconds would suffice), and most sinks, autoflush urinals, etc. that I’ve seen don’t have a manual override button, demonstrating a clear lack of foresight from the people who installed them.

                        1. The urinals generally do have an override; the only one I haven’t found a button for has not needed one. (Might be there, but it’s always worked.) OTOH, it goes for extra special virtue signaling by only dispensing a pint of water.

                           Agreed on the sinks, though. I find I have to do the auto-sensor handwave to get it to trigger.

                        2. Worst examples of this I ever encountered were at the I-70 rest areas in Missouri. The sink, soap dispenser, and hand dryer were one integrated unit where you stuck your hands into the too-small opening to trigger an automated cycle you had no control over. First, it ran a quick bit of water to let you rinse your hands and get them wet, then it squirted out soap, stopped for a few seconds to let you scrub, then ran some more water, then stopped the water and started the dryer. It always seems to be about tens seconds short of what I’d like on dryer time, but I hate triggering another cycle from scratch and having to wait it out.

               2. Non liberal minority woman. Of course you don’t exist.

                  1. oh. yeah. those faucets are installed by green freaks. I see.

         5. Even if she *can* become a functional American, it bothers me greatly that AOC deliberately mischaracterizes the situation — that she *had* water in her cell, but couldn’t figure out how to use it — and then claimed that this was the norm, and it was because we were negligent (with a hint that we may even be doing this deliberately).

            Oh, and I should also add that, with regards to the illegal alien woman in the cell that Klavan tracked down, I wouldn’t conclude immediately that the woman having difficulty figuring out how to use a faucet can’t become a functioning American: I can imagine many scenarios where a person in a weird situation can get desperate enough to drink from a toilet. And I would further point out that even a schizophrenic bipolar autistic narcissist has a better chance of becoming a functional American than AOC.

            (Full disclosure: the original “she” was meant to be for the prisoner, but I realized I put in too much pronoun ambiguity, and it was too good to pass up….)

   2. This I have to xkcd386 about… (Warning: pissy mood ahead)

      they work under-the-table for substantially lower pay

      This is very often mentioned. But no one seems to want to talk about why they are able to undercut so well. Oh yes, there is muttering about how they are willing to work for less because their own countries are even poorer, or that their Most Evil Capitalist Employers hold their illegal status over them as extortion. (See also: Conservatives have never seen a Communist trope they didn’t embrace wholeheartedly after they filed the serial numbers off)

      But the root is never dealt with.

      Why are employers so ravenous to hire cheaper under the table?

      The extortion story doesn’t actually hold up that well. Not if we are talking about illegals in a world of sanctuary cities (H1Bs are different matter). The richer-than-they-were-back-home story holds more water, but ignores that their cost of living is probably higher as well.

      The answer is of course that an under the table employee has not priced themselves out of the market by constant union agitation, or demanding more legally required benefits, or, or, or. Sorry; but if this is a real problem and not just some made up crap to throw on the pile (don’t do that: there are plenty of good reasons to be pissed about illegal immigration and you hurt your own case by doing this) then the American People brought it on themselves, and are now whining about having to lay in the bed they made for themselves and their children.

      True enough they were lied to and didn’t know what they were doing. But Economics is a cold, vindictive, bitch, with a very long memory of who tried to screw her over. Too see her revenge in action one only need look at the Soviet Union. Or the Rust Belt.

      most of which goes back to their homelands…

      Which makes the situation even more laughable: somehow they are wildly undercutting citizens, while also sending most of their income back home.

      And the government has way too much control over how people’s money flows as it is. But go ahead! The selection pressure will help spur the development of extra-governmental monetary systems even more than it already is.

      1. I’ve often said “We don’t have an illegal immigration problem. We have a minimum wage problem.”
         Right now we ALSO have an illegal immigration problem, but that’s more “exploiting our welfare/health/education systems.” We still have a minimum wage problem. Eliminate the minimum wage, and the attractive nuisance of working under the table is MUCH reduced.

      2. If you live twenty-five to an apartment and share food and car expenses, you can send money home.

         Or you can find yourself living twenty-five to a locked basement dorm, and receive no money, because you picked the wrong illegal job.

      3. A lot of why comes back to American attitudes. Most people don’t have roommates, don’t eat cheap, have to have newest gadget, don’t want to work outside, etc. To someone going from a hovel in mexico city to a 2 bedroom apt with 6 people it’s still a huge improvement, whereas americans go from their families nicer homes to a starter with 10 yr old appliances and no cable and it’s like going to dark ages.

         Many illegal aliens are actually driven and work, but they do it to sock money away at home rather than to live here. The US is just the job site. The US has made hiring on the books not only riskier but more expensive because of regulation and our legal lotto.

         1. They cost a TON of money in health (no, seriously, talk to anyone in health care) education, etc.

            1. *waves hand* Me, me!

               As I keep pointing out, when the Princess was born we were the first ones who weren’t “under 18,” and who didn’t vanish on the bill, in several months. And there were several other folks in there at the time…..

            2. Oh I know. Decade of 911. It’s a not insignificant part of why such strains on emergency systems. Know a lot of border hospitals have been driven out because of lack of payment (ER/ambo collections can be as low as 10%. One of two reasons for $20 ASA.)

               Education, its a great way for the real customers of the education system to be satisfied. More ESL, more disabilities, more heads means more money for school districts and unions.

         2. Most Americans also don’t farm the food pantries.

            I’m sure I’ve mentioned the family friend who is still very liberal, but stopped donating to the food pantries because she worked (volunteer) at them. Bounced around our region covering a bunch of folks who had to miss a day, so she got to see the whole week-long cycle.

            She noticed that she recognized most of the women. And then she noticed that the same kids would come in with different women, basically they would babysit, then get a week’s worth of food for their newly larger family, and that was just at the one “chain” of food pantries. It’s unlikely they were exclusively going to that one chain.

            St VdP and some Catholic parishes started putting in “proof of residency” rules– you had to have some sort of evidence you lived in the area of the parish.

            1. False in one thing, false in many. Same reason there are regularly reports of shared or fraudulent dependents, often in the motherland

               1. *nod*

                  If they’re going to cheat to get here– why would they suddenly become respectful of the rules?

                  1. Come on. Those valiant and noble dreamers who spruced up that ICE substation? It’s not like they’re Catholic high schoolers or something

               2. Take in account stuff like this (do you think they don’t register extra kids too, as “born at home”? Or “came in”? Think again.) also contributes to “many babies born to immigrants.”
                  Bull shit.

            2. In our little town, about 20 minutes off the 99 south of the Fresno area, our charities coordinate to prevent people from multi-dipping! The St Vincent de Paul Catholic group with the Salvation Army and other churches plus Community Action. You get to ‘shop’ for free once every x-many days (I forget if it’s 60 or 90?) unless you have a bona fide job interview, in which case there’s a ‘professional cupboard’ they can choose an outfit or two from. A friend who works at StdVP said people keep exact track of the day they’re allowed to return, and there they are, right on the deadline day. For Thanksgiving and Christmas the charity groups also coordinate the angel tree program and free food baskets to prevent people from multi-dipping and to ensure all needy people might get something.

               1. GOOD!

                  In part because of the cheating, and in part because of mission creep.

                  …I’m still embarassed about the year Elf and I were careful to budget so we could give to the office Thanksgiving charity drive, and THEN THEY DROPPED A BOX OFF IN HIS CAR.

                  (Was all really nice stuff, some of which we’d sent in, but do you realize how hard it is to donate a frozen turkey? We ended up having to keep the turkey and I cleaned out our cupboards to double the approximate cost.)

         3. I forgot until a few minutes ago–
            white people aren’t allowed to live the way that illegals can, frequently.

            Elf and I weren’t going to be able to renew the lease on our apartment because I gave birth. It was a one bedroom, can’t have three people there. No more than two people per bedroom, by law… the ladies were probably not supposed to let us be there anyways, they did some fiddling on the records because Elf was deployed so much before we moved.

            Didn’t get enforced for the illegals, though.

            1. One of the things frequently noted by VDH is the litter, dumping and just straight up non enforcement of codes for the privileged class of illegals out in California p

               1. Yeah, I live 20 minutes down the road from his town. SO TRUE!! I pass 3 permanent taco truck stands. No idea if they have any county regulators checking on them.

      4. Way back about 1984 I became a company officer at C&NW railroad. At that time we figured the day a new hire stepped on the property we were obligated to something like $9k in sunk cost. That’s per warm body. To ameliorate the risk somewhat we had a 90 day probation period and a firm policy to not hire anyone without either prior military service or a record of five or more years of steady employment.
         So an employer could actually pay illegals just as much as citizens and save both money and the hassle of compliance with all the government regulations and tax collection. Short of active and aggressive enforcement of the hiring laws it’s very tempting, particularly in those businesses that operate on very thin margins to begin with.

      5. Having done payroll for a chain of fast food restaurants located in mall food courts…

         Yep. All of it.

         The company cashed their checks (because they couldn’t have bank accounts), paid rent on their apartments, and at one point not only found them a resource for fake documents but PAID FOR THEM. The employees worked open to close 6 days a week but were paid for 40 hour weeks. No benefits, and because they were illegal, they couldn’t file for unemployment and didn’t get benefits.

         1. Contractor in SoCal, around 1985, told me he could pay his illegals MORE than his legals (and did so, to keep the good ones) because even after having to pay their wages out of his own pocket (since he couldn’t very well deduct ’em as an expense) it STILL cost him less than to hire everyone legally. (Whether illegal alien or not. His foreman showed me his green card, with great pride.)

            I found out how true this was when (around 1990) I looked into hiring one minimum-wage part-time helper. For a job that would pay $7000/year, my total cost to be 100% legal — after coughing up the required taxes, benefits, insurance, etc. to the state, would have been about $24,000. Since this was more than my gross, obviously it didn’t happen.

            Around 2010 California decided they would hike costs to employers (forget if it was workman’s comp or what) and as part of their objection to this, um, statutory rape, Costco figured out that they were already paying about 70% of the cost of each employee TO THE STATE. Yep, that’s pretty much in line with what I’d figured… for every $10 you pay in wages, you get to pay another $20 or so to the state.

            So it’s no mystery to me why illegal labor is so popular. The only question is why it’s not MORE popular. Wouldn’t you rather have a paycheck that’s 3x bigger, pay for your own damn benefits, and have that much extra money to invest as you wish?

            1. why it’s not MORE popular

               I’m going to guess that in cases where quality of work is important (Dig where the red and orange flags *aren’t*!), the headache to dollars ratio gets unfavorable.

               1. Probably so. But those aren’t the majority of workaday jobs in even the most advanced society.

                  I’ve heard contractors complain about illegals damaging heavy equipment, but that equipment operator is still a minor factor compared to the hordes of guys with hammers and shovels.

            2. > I looked into hiring one minimum-wage part-time helper

               A few years later I did the same. And ran into the same wall you did. Plus I figured I’d have to hire a second person just to handle the paperwork…

               1. Me too.

      6. But no one seems to want to talk about why they are able to undercut so well.

         Where have you been hiding?

         That they DON’T HAVE TO PAY TAXES is a pretty well worn point– which, oddly, isn’t in your list.

         Working under the counter means the only cost your employer has is your wages; that’s a 30-75% price advantage right off the bat.

         1. Where have you been hiding?

            I got sick of the libertarians reeeeeeeing over stupid crap, so when in arenas with random people I mostly am not in circles where anyone has even the slightest inkling of remedial kindergarten economics. The conservatives are too busy throwing everything they pretended to know in the trash. And anything that touches the immigration issue is best described as the Blazing Retinue of Emperor Dumpster the First of planet Dumpster Fire.

            That they DON’T HAVE TO PAY TAXES is a pretty well worn point–

            Which is always characterized as a problem of them not paying taxes, rather than the taxes being the problem.

            which, oddly, isn’t in your list.

            Not by name. But I didn’t feel like listing every single aberration inflicted on the market.

            I wasn’t kidding the other day when I said that I hate my allies almost as much as my enemies. And I’m not even sure it is less.

            1. Sounds like a personal problem, bub.

               1. Heed the insight of Raylan Givens:

                  He is almighty justified.

                  1. That advice is true. Never said I wasn’t an asshole.

                     But asshole or no, am I supposed to just not notice that the libertarians get the economics right sometimes (which is about 10000x more often than anyone else), and then have no enemies to the left on nearly everything else? I was watching back when it happened: the libertarians were getting tied in knots by the SJWs on the microagression BS long before it hit the mainstream. As for the Party…… I think that mess is best summarized by the 2016 Libertarian Presidential Candidate being pro gun control.

                     Am I supposed to not notice that conservatives spent decades stroking their own egos regarding Protecting Civilization (credit to them: that is the proper function of a conservative in a society), yet never achieved anything more than to delay the newest abuse for a few months. The fact that they were on the losing side of a tech disparity would excuse them, except for the problem that their ideology doesn’t have room for that excuse. So they get to wear the scarlet C of having failed at fighting the most failure prone ideology that ever existed.

                     Am I supposed to not notice that conservative / libertarian / to-the-right-of-stalin organizations and Big Names appear to be almost universally corrupt? To the point that they are saved from the accusation of being controlled opposition, not by doing whatever job they were supposed to do, but by being so bad that Soros et al would never fund such a project because it would be far too obvious. If he did nothing else, tearing that particular mask makes Trump one of the best things that has happened to this country in a long time (and I’m counting all of his flaws along with that).

                     Am I supposed to not notice that just about the surest way to discover if someone is a heretic is to ask them if they are a Christian? And I don’t mean “has some errors on a few issues where there is a lot of argument”. I mean: open up a random page of a random translation of the Bible, put your finger on a random verse, and it will more likely than not contradict their most cherished beliefs. Or that anyone who gets even close to anything resembling doctrinal accuracy seems to be a complete jerk. (er, not claiming that accuracy for myself here…) Or that I have not once seen the “Christian Virtues” that are alleged to exist coming from a Christian? Or that AFAICT most Christians have never opened a Bible; they have simply memorized the five verses their pastor gave them to make them feel good.

                     I could go on, but it would be pointless.

                     I’m in the bizarre position of rejecting Marxian “laws of history”, concluding that individuals will mostly work as hard as possible to sabotage anything that might make the world a better place, and yet…. I’m also sure that this will all pass, as reality grinds that sabotage to nothing.

                     Which makes me not only an asshole, but a pile of contradictions as well.

                     1. An awful lot of what you notice seems to be only slightly connected with observable reality.

                        1. He did notice he was an *sshole.

                           1. I’ve got a cousin who’s a professional a-hole.

                              He’s paid for it, it involves getting accurate observations and saying the stuff nobody else wants to say because it’s mean, to fix situations.

                              Heck, Vimes is an a-hole.

                              Has no requirement for inaccuracy of observation.

                           2. “Has no requirement for inaccuracy of observation.”

                              It is only relevant to the degree it is germane to observations. He complained everybody being an a-hole, which is a) a generally irrelevant proposition and b) begs for an alternate explanation for his issue.

                              Being an a-hole is as related to accuracy of observation as boob size is to sensual response.

                           3. On further consideration, I suppose a degree of inaccuracy can be the route to a-hole dom? (Ness? Isity?)

                           4. I wondered if he was a troll when he first showed up. Posting history says not, but he seems to be the type who’d tease Fluffy and be upset at the inevitable outcome.

                              He did say he was young. With luck, it’ll only be 1st degree burns on the fingers.

                     2. Nobody says you shouldn’t notice. All those you’ve mentioned are human, thus flawed, fallible,contradictory and complicated.

                        If you go looking for perfection in their world you are destined to fail. If you blame that failure on others for not meeting your expectations, perhaps your expectations are in error?

                        If you expect sympathy from those of us who’ve been dealing with this corrupt world for decades, your expectations are certainly in error.

      7. Well, here’s another thought: The problem isn’t just that the illegals are cheaper, it’s that the lower end of the American native-born labor market is pretty much… Useless. Utterly f**king useless.

         Hire a Mexican, and the guy will work hard for his money. Hire an American, and you’ll find yourself wondering why the hell you’re bothering, because the little dweeb will spend nine-tenths of their day on their damn phones, texting or otherwise screwing off. It is not all of them, by any means, but it’s enough that a lot of employers have written off that end of the labor market.

         Couple of years ago, we went over to Seattle on a job lined up for us through a local cabinet dealer who’d sold to friends of hers who were building in the U District, an in-fill. We go over from Eastern Washington, install something like 70 cabinets in a weekend, five guys working like dogs–Had to haul the cabinets up the interior stairways, ‘cos the site wasn’t ready for us to do the sane thing and take them up through the front door. Anyway–Five white guys from Eastern Washington. General contractor shows up, and is impressed by the quality of the work and the speed. His comment was, and I quote: “Wow, you guys are the only white guys I’ve seen that are worth the money…”. Further conversation elucidated the fact that all he’d hire, due mostly to work ethic and production, was either first-generation Ukrainian/Russian, or Mexicans. Second-generation, he’d look at on a case-by-case basis, but generally wouldn’t take them, either. The root problem was simply that the labor quality wasn’t good enough for the money. And, he was paying top-dollar wages, for the period, too. It was just that he couldn’t afford to be paying someone 30 bucks an hour to stay on their cell phones, talking to their girlfriends.

         Sure, there’s an illegal alien influence on the labor market. Seen it myself, agree with the depressed wages. But, the honest fact is, a bunch of the problem is entirely self-inflicted: There are a bunch of people out there who expect money for nothing, and who don’t produce enough to justify their wages. That’s the far bigger problem.

         And, too, there’s that Mike Rowe effect: We’ve undercut the dignity of labor so much that most kids won’t work, thinking it’s beneath them. Hard physical labor is not something anyone wants to do, anymore–They all want easy jobs with nice hours working indoors, with all the amenities. Average kid simply does not comprehend hard work, nor are they willing to undertake same for any financial reward.

         There are a lot of things in the culture creating these effects, but I’ll be damned if I know how to fix them. Whole thing is severely messed-up, and it’s not just the illegals or even the employers. There’s a huge component here that goes only to the actual American labor force.

         Of course, it also doesn’t help that the employers are equally screwed up, in a lot of cases, all wanting something for nothing and having zero loyalty up or down. It’s a cultural issue that goes well beyond the facile explanations laid out by the pundits or the activists.

         1. Overheard at the local eatery last year: Contractor complaining about trying to find newbies; one wanted $25 per hour and didn’t know how to use a tape measure. Last year the contractors had far more work than people to do it. It *might* be better this year. At least the plumber we use had his #2 guy a handful of new people.

            1. #2 guy training a handful of new people.

               Arggh.

         2. Problem is likely his area– you’re not going to be able to hire legal, highly motivated people in the Seattle area to do physical labor unless you basically produce them with active recruitment. (Bet his turnover rate for the Russians/Ukraninans was through the roof, though they still did good work.)

            Someone who is motivated and legal is either doing something that pays better for less work, or isn’t going to put up with the, ah, “attitude” of the Seattle area. About the third time your car is broken into and you’re given a website (that doesn’t function) to report it…..

            That’s before the lack of employer loyalty you’ve noticed.

            1. I think there’s a little bit of column “A”, and a little bit of column “B”, with a healthy dollop of societal dysfunction thrown in.

               On the one hand, you’ve got the old guys complaining that nobody wants to learn, but on the other…? None of those “old guys” are really stepping up to the plate and trying to pass things on, either. Both sides of the line, they want something for nothing.

               Locally, it’s not easy finding good people to go into the trades. We’ve got one guy in the company who is under 30, and he’s a hell of a worker/craftsman–But, he’s the only one like that. The rest are just like “Pay me…”.

               There’s a broken lineage in the culture, where the trade lines aren’t propagating in a healthy manner. There’s no apprentice/master relationship system, it’s all dog-eat-dog, cut each other’s throat sort of thing. What I see going on out there with a lot of the other companies is just disturbing, because they’re all like that line in Dune, where they’re talking about drowning fishermen leaving boot marks on the shoulders of the men they pulled down trying to save themselves.

               You can blame the illegals, somewhat, but… Jeez. At least they stick together, ya know? The Anglos just cut each others throats for nickles and dimes. And, a lot of them are just crappy tradesmen, with no sense of responsibility or craftsmanship.

               1. I’ve seen a few small contractors bringing up people and getting them trained and paid for their work. These guys seem to be the ones in demand. Doesn’t hurt that the city is only 20K people. Easy work at high pay is elsewhere if you aren’t a gummint employee.

               2. At least they stick together, ya know?

                  No.

                  They don’t.

                  The ones that are still alive and here are usually either in a fairly small family group, or they are under control of someone else. Usually cartel, sometimes American gang spin-offs.
                  Get outside of the small trust group and there’s no problem with all the nastier sort of human behavior you might think of.

                  ****************

                  On the one hand, you’ve got the old guys complaining that nobody wants to learn, but on the other…? None of those “old guys” are really stepping up to the plate and trying to pass things on, either.

                  Can see this online, too.

                  I don’t know how many places I hung around where folks of about my current age or older constantly complained about know-nothing kids, but they couldn’t give even a hint of where to go to try to GET decent information, much less being assed to offer more than their assertions which must of course be treated as holy writ.

         3. > We’ve undercut the dignity of labor so much that most kids won’t work, thinking it’s beneath them.
            —
            Even when I escape the correc^H^H^H^H^Hedcational system in the late 1970s, the “placement counseling” was all about “what kind of manager do you want to be?” All their jobs – except for “forest ranger”, which was apparently perfect for anyone – were white collar, and non-management positions were only the stepping stone to being A Boss.

            Decades later, I see ads at fast food places, “Now Hiring Managers.” Sometimes “Associate Managers” or “Shift Managers.” A friend’s daughter works at one of those places, fresh out of high school. She’s a manager. They’re ALL “managers” of something, all chiefs and no Indians.

            So, yeah, you have a couple of generations there who have been led to believe, if not expressly told, that they’re going to enter the workforce at the top level. When that doesn’t happen, grifting or living in their parents’ basement is fine; at least it’s better than a blue collar job…

            1. Makes sense to hire newbies as managers at fast food places. *Somebody* has to tell the server droids what to do. You”ll also need a service manager to boss the repair robots.

               Did I set the sarcasm tag correctly? 🙂

               1. I think it has more to do with the Fair Labor Standards Act. Fast Food workers are covered by FLSA. Work more than 8 hours/day or 40/week. Overtime pay. But “Managers” are FLSA exempt, they are “salaried”, so 60 hours/week is fine.

                  1. “FLSA. Work more than 8 hours/day or 40/week. Overtime pay”

                     Son doesn’t get paid overtime until he’s worked more than 40/week. Which has meant short days at the end of the week. Plus if uses PTO earned hours, those do not count toward the 40 hours. Lately that hasn’t been happening as his work is extremely busy. He is a supervisor of his section on his shift. We asked if he was going to be moving to manager next. His answer was HELL NO. Currently his total pay, with bonus, is more than his manager’s with all the overtime he is getting, even tho his manager’s salary and bonus percentages are higher. His manager doesn’t get overtime. Son does. Son has been clocking over 60/week. Which is illegal. Doesn’t get him in trouble, but should he have an accident, due to fatigue, his employer is in a world of hurt.

                     Hubby had it best. Salary not exempt with paid vacation and sick. Days off were paid, unless he explicitly took leave w/o pay (barring seasonal or “act of god” layoffs). If you weren’t assigned a work location, you got paid, without using your vacation or sick hours. Paid overtime over 8/day. Straight 8 hours (no docked time for lunch or break). Hubby avoided it, but do know of weeks where he was WAY over 60/week (12/day, 6/week). Don’t know if the above rule applied then.

                     Me. Software. Straight salary. Just learned to 40 and done (okay given the nature of design/programming, not perfect at it, but that was the intent). Never worked anywhere where management was even a remote possibility.

      8. A big thing in economics is the multiplier effect.
         So what happens to a community when a significant percentage of the monies coming into the community are immediately sent to a foreign nation as remittances, rather than circulating within the community?

         What happens to the community when the pillars of the community are driven into bankruptcy, because they cannot compete against employers who are flagrantly breaking the law?
         Should the ethical not find this state immoral and unacceptable?
         Should the people who lost their livelihoods not be upset?

         Government exists to protect the citizens from which it draws its legitimate authority.
         When the government actively harms citizens for the benefit of foreigners and criminals, shouldn’t the citizenry object vociferously?
         Shouldn’t such a use of power be deemed illegitimate, and a betrayal?

         I have seen the community in which I grew up destroyed by illegal aliens.
         I would that others never see a similar horror.

         You can have the free flow of goods, or you can have the free flow of labor.
         You cannot have both, even in a hypothetical perfect world.
         It is the people and culture of a country more than geographic accidents which comparative advantage derives from.
         Supplanting the people and culture destroys the benefits of trade.

         1. A big thing in Keynesian bullshit economics is the multiplier effect.

            FTFY.

            This is one of the things my ill-advised and stupid rant from yesterday was trying to get at: what passes for economic knowledge among conservatives is barely any better than the crap the communists spew. They used to claim better knowledge that that, but have mostly thrown it away in the last few years.

            It used to be that presented with a situation of severe milk shortages caused by price controls, the conservatives would mostly insist on looking at the real problem of the price controls. Now it’s all in with the milk subsidy plan.

            And it is worse than even this. It takes almost nothing to poke a conservative into long speeches on the wonders of intrinsic value theories. Just because they wax lyrical about the magic value-woo of Gold, instead of the magic value-woo of Labor doesn’t make them better than the commies. They are all standing on the same patch of flat earth.

            I mostly keep my mouth shut about these problems: because I judge the complete destruction of the leftist and republican establishments to be more important at this time, same as with Trump’s repeated attacks on the 2nd. Also I’m a terrible debater, and no one is ever convinced by words anyway.

            And then I proceed to scream at random people in a discussion from time to time and indirectly call them trash. For which I am sorry.

            1. Understand that free market capitalism certainly died with the New Deal, probably before it. The vast amount of stupid meddling by Government makes all and every economic theory a pile of San Francisco street droppings.
               Now, there is also some stupidity in not meddling. We watched steel production shift to China because their government subsidizes production. There goes our National Defense. Rare Earth refining also went to China because of the absurdist NIMBY environmentalism of California where instead of having a well regulated industry minimizing pollution, we farm out processing to China, where the toxins freely flow out to sea. Similar to sending them our plastics to recycle and being shocked, shocked when they end up in the Pacific.
               By the way, I didn’t make it past your first sentence, not TL;DR more NVA [No Value Added].

               1. We watched steel production shift to China because their government subsidizes production.

                  Two problems with this:

                  1. This is just a roundabout way of saying “planned economies work”.

                  2. The “starting point” for this situation was the unions driving up the cost of american labor higher than it’s market value. The unions drank as much blood as they could, for decades. It worked because the economy was expanding so fast that it was worth it for companies to pay extortion fees instead of losing time to strikes. Eventually that stopped working, and the little guy got screwed in the process.

                  Both pollution and the rust belt are situations where no one gets to claim “The market did this! See! We have to meddle!”. The foundation of the problem was established by meddling, but it happened far enough back that no one remembers it.

                  Oh no, I stabbed myself in the leg. Well my leg is messed up now so I’m going to fix it by cutting it off.

                  1. Planned economies do work — in the short term. See Japan, pre-WWII Germany, contemporary China and innumerable other examples.

                     And the short term is often long enough. Since you are asserting understanding of economics, I urge you contemplate the effect — in the short term — of predatory pricing and government subsidies. Part of the problem in the world oil markets was the ability, for so long, of OPEC countries to turn up the tap and devastate any competitive start-ups. Any industry with high barriers to entry is susceptible to monopolistic predation, so the question is: how does a free market economy outwait the attacks of a protectionist competitor such as China.

                     One answer, of course, is to reduce barriers to capital investment by tax and regulatory policies that allow faster return on investment through quicker write-down of capital expense — something the Trump and Ryan tax reform and regulatory policies achieved.

                     A big part of our problem is not that the two parties do not understand economics, it is that our communications system seems adamantly against helping the public understand economics. Heck, they’re still arguing over the Laffer Curve (or rather, their Straw man version of it.)

                     1. Planned economies do work — in the short term. See Japan, pre-WWII Germany, contemporary China and innumerable other examples.

                        A more precise way of expressing it would be that it (often) takes a while for the consequences to come home.

                        And the short term is often long enough. Since you are asserting understanding of economics, I urge you contemplate the effect — in the short term — of predatory pricing and government subsidies.

                        Executing your own short-term-work-but-long-term-disaster is not a valid solution. The consequences will always come home, and they are going to hurt worse than predicted. And that is assuming that you have angelically wise politicians who are willing to stop the policy the moment it ceases to be “necessary”. Any plan relies on politicians being anything but the worst scum your country has to offer means you have already failed.

                        But to the question itself: this is just a fancy version of the Monopoly Problem. Which is very convenient because that has known solutions.

                        If Sneakystan starts subsidizing widget production in order to destroy the American widget industry that money has to come from somewhere. No matter how fast they move the shells around they are hurting their own economy in the process, resulting in everything else they aren’t subsidizing doing worse on the market.

                        Standard Oil weren’t the one’s winning price wars.

                        Admittedly China has special problems because of the bizarre financial ties between the US Government and the Chinese Government, but, well…. that is hardly the market’s fault now is it?

                        Part of the problem in the world oil markets was the ability, for so long, of OPEC countries to turn up the tap and devastate any competitive start-ups. Any industry with high barriers to entry is susceptible to monopolistic predation, so the question is: how does a free market economy outwait the attacks of a protectionist competitor such as China.

                        That is called a speculator. To the extent that it is possible to deal with future unknowns given the limits of human nature, the market has already solved this problem.

            2. Multiplier effects have been at the heart of economics since at least Bastiat.
               Heck, they’re at the heart of the supply-side economic doctrine. You don’t get to Say’s Law or Laffer’s Curve without multiplier effects.
               Without multiplier effects, capitalism does not increase the size of the pie.

               That Keynesians believe something everybody but doctrinaire marxists agrees on, does not invalidate the existence of the thing.
               But if you want to rant, the people who freely invoke Keynes without having ever actually reading anything he wrote provide a remarkably target-rich environment.

               Keynesianism in a nutshell: Markets crash when uncertainty freezes liquidity. Governments can act to inject certainty into the market and moderate the severity of the crash.
               Note: to a true Keynesian, currency inflation injects uncertainty into the market in a number of ways, all of them extremely bad. Recall that the two biggest economic disasters he witnessed were hyperinflation and deflation. The importance of having a stable currency was his favorite drum to pound, and he did so with fervent enthusiasm.
               It is here, where his biggest conflict with the Chicago School exists, as they hold that the best way to moderate a market crash is to expand the money supply (and inflate the currency). But that’s uncomfortable to talk about, because he’s hard to refute on the damage that inflation and deflation do to an economy and the communities that comprise it. Best to avoid that and ake a strawman of him. After all, you’re arguing against the statists who are already using him as an idol to advance prescriptions he actively opposed in life. Why complicate matters with intellectual honesty?

               I’m of the Austrian School persuasion (for a straight apples:apples comparison: a market crash is an inevitable consequence of a market boom. Attempts to moderate the crash are necessarily based on partial information at best, and will spawn unforeseen negative effects that will almost always outweigh the damage of the crash.) I say this lest you call me an apologist for Keynes. I have no shortage of objections when it comes to his worldview. But I’ve read him, I understand where he was coming from, he makes interesting arguments that are generally valid, and the poor bastard deserves better than the abuse he gets from his self-declared “followers” and the critics who conflate him with Hobbes.

               I’d rant more, but my battery is about to die.

               1. I have literally never heard anyone talk about the Multiplier Effect that wasn’t a Keynesian.

                  It could be said that I just haven’t read enough. And I almost certainly haven’t.

                  But that seems mighty weird having read or listened to Sowell, Hazlit, and David Friedman.

      9. Even if an under the table employee is getting the same pay, the employer doesn’t need to pay his portion of social security, unemployment tax, worker’s comp insurance, do endless paperwork on withholding, etc.

         1. Don’t know if it is still occurring, but situations occurring where most the crew are undocumented, at the end of the season, before the big pay day, immigration raid conveniently takes place. Those caught go to jail, get sent home. Those who scatter and don’t get caught disappear. None of them get paid. The employer then evaporates, after being paid for the job and paying the legal workers, next season new company name, wink, wink.

            Number of reasons why this appears to have disappeared: 1) probably was not true. Oh the high percentage of not legal to work in country was true. Potential for raids, true. Not paying up? Probably false. 2) Industry where this was prevalent has all but disappeared because of regulations (still happens, but not as extensive). 3) NOW when immigration/ICE shows up and catches ANYONE, the employer gets (or is suppose to) a major fine, thus taking the financial incentive out of the process.

            1. Happens in orchards in Washington.

               Same guys who were screaming about how we NEED illegals during that year or two when the illegals stopped. (Neighboring orchards who did it the legit way were OK. Not great, but OK.)

               1. I was hinting at Ag, in general, but tree planting specifically. Not Christmas Tree farms, those can keep small regular crews busy all year, with HS supplemental at season.

                  1. Not familiar with tree planting, I only got gossip for the orchards.

      10. Don’t forget all the taxes and fees that come with on the books employees. You need accountants and an HR dept to comply with all the red tape. Sometimes I think it is amazing that any new businesses form in America these days. One of the reasons that you see many small business / stores run by immigrants is they don’t even try to comply with all the regulations. Until they are noticed by the bureaucracy they do well for their families.

   3. Well, here’s an easy filter:

      “For an immigrant to become a citizen, they must permanently give up all claim on every sort of public assistance.”

      1. Technically, that is the case — or used to be the case; I am not sure whether the law was changed by action or inaction, but an immigrant’s sponsor had to swear to provide for their financial support for a period on the order of seven years (IIRC).

         Asylum seekers constitute a loophole in that, of course.

         Does granting asylum to anybody accompanied by a child, without requiring evidence of relation, constitute an encouragement of human trafficking?

         1. Other way round, RES: green card = no bennies and must have sponsor. Citizen is Citizen is Citizen.

            My parents sponsored my husband.

            1. I worked with a local group in 1975 to sponsor Vietnamese refugees. We had to promise to see to them, find them a place to live, help them adjust, ensure that they found employment … all that.
               (Which they did, actually. Of the single young men that we sponsored, one was basically adopted my the family of a deceased soldier, the other two found employment in places which came to think the world of them … and the one family we sponsored – their one son served in the US Army, a daughter came to be a devout Christian … well, it all worked out well for them. .

         2. Yes.

   4. The problem with illegal immigrants is that, unless the immigration laws are changed, they will come to live in a shadow culture, knowing that the Elites of the country can ship them out at any time, that they cannot go to the police without getting in trouble, that they cannot (therefore) report serious criminals hiding amongst them.

      Now, if I saw any indication that AOC and her merry idiots intended to actually CHANGE the laws, my opinion would be different. Not VERY different, but different. Maybe I’ve missed something, but I don’t hear any of these ballot-lice proposing to LEGALLY open the borders. What they propose to do is stop enforcing the law.

      And whatever use they intend to make of a horde of people who cannot legally interact with society, it can’t be legal.

      But this isn’t new. The Progressive Left LOVES laws it can selectively enforce at whim.

      1. Mine isn’t different. Open borders is the abolition of a country of creed. No.

         1. When mass immigration was the policy of the day, their were still restrictions, screening of immigrants, patrolling of the southern border, and massive social and government pressure to assimilate – everything the modern open borders types tend to decry.

            1. A little knowledge bursts so many bubbles. From PBS, so you know it’s factually accurate:

               Immigration and Deportation at Ellis Island
               Between 1892 and 1954, more than twelve million immigrants passed through the U.S. immigration portal at Ellis Island, enshrining it as an icon of America’s welcome. That story is well known. But Ellis was also a place of detainment and deportation, an often-heartbreaking counterpoint to the joy and relief of coming to America.

               [SNIP]

               New arrivals were processed quickly. In the Registry Room, Public Health Service doctors looked to see if any of them wheezed, coughed, shuffled or limped. Children were asked their names to make sure they weren’t deaf or dumb. Toddlers were taken from their mothers’ arms and made to walk. As the line moved forward, doctors had only a few seconds to check each immigrant for sixty symptoms of disease. Of primary concern were cholera, favus (scalp and nail fungus), tuberculosis, insanity, epilepsy, and mental impairments. The disease most feared was trachoma, a highly contagious eye infection that could lead to blindness and death.

               Once registered, immigrants were free to enter the New World and start their new lives. But if they were sick, they spent days, weeks, months even, in a warren of rooms. Some, like the tuberculosis ward, were open to the sea, where a gentle New York harbor breeze cleansed their lungs, improving their chances. Other rooms were solitary, forlorn places where the illness itself decided when to leave or stay. Most patients in the hospital or Contagious Disease Ward recovered, but some were not so lucky. More than 120,000 immigrants were sent back to their countries of origin, and during the island’s half-century of operation more than 3,500 immigrants died there.

               Ellis Island waylaid certain arrivals, including those likely to become public charges, such as unescorted women and children. Women could not leave Ellis Island with a man not related to them. Other detainees included stowaways, alien seamen, anarchists, Bolsheviks, criminals and those judged to be “immoral.” Approximately 20 percent of immigrants inspected at Ellis Island were temporarily detained, half for health reasons and half for legal reasons.

               [SNIP]

               … President Warren G. Harding signed into law the first Quota Act (1921). This law effectively ended America’s open-door policy by setting monthly quotas, limiting admission of each nationality to three percent of its representation in the 1910 Census. Further restrictions followed, such as the National Origins Act, which allowed prospective immigrants to be examined in their country of origin, and often refused before making the trip to Ellis Island. Soon after the new law went into effect, Ellis Island “looked like a deserted village,” commented one official.

               By the 1930s, Ellis Island was used almost exclusively for detention and deportation. During World War II, as many as 7,000 detainees and “internees” were held at the Island. Under the Geneva Conventions, war prisoners were permitted to have an advocate speak for them. These representatives sometimes gained significant concessions at Ellis Island. Nazi prisoners, for example, were allowed to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday each year.

               [END EXCERPT]

               1. Ellis Island waylaid certain arrivals, including those likely to become public charges, such as unescorted women and children. Women could not leave Ellis Island with a man not related to them.

                  If I remember correctly, these are two completely unrelated things– a lone woman could come through, a group of women could come through, a woman with kids or a woman and unrelated man couldn’t.

                  AKA, basic human trafficking protections.

   5. “I’ll bet you dollars to rubles that the liberal response would be like of a vampire caught in the sunlight”

      No they won’t. Because they won’t have to bother with the vote fraud; they’ll just harvest the ballots.

      1. I reckon illegal voters would be more useful if they remained in the border states, most of which lean right so far. Sending them off to blue states means adding fuel to a fire already at full burn. At least unless they start getting counted as citizens in the census that determines electoral college seats per state.

         Speaking of which, does anyone else suspect that, should the elections switch to a full-scale popular vote, there would be a ton of previously disheartened and hence dormant conservative voters appearing in blue states? After all, remember how Proposition 8 had to be ruled out by the court when it wasn’t voted by the liberal playbook, in California no less? For all the left’s complaints about the electoral college, I’m starting to think that, if a switch ever does occur, the results might be even less to their liking.

         1. They’ve already lashed my vote to the popular vote, so…

            1. Not quite yet — as I’ve understood those agreements they are tied to a majority of states signing on. If they cannot guarantee the fix the new rules don’t activate.

               Of course, if by some fluke Trump wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College we all now how tightly those binding resolutions will hold.

               1. Yes, they have to tip the boat before it takes on water.

            2. well, they will once a critical number of states approves the scheme, which still hasn’t (and may never) happen (ed)

5. I’m curious how much of their attitude toward the US the misses Omar, Tlaib [which I keep wanting to write as Talib], Occasio-Cortez, and Co. picked up from their families, and how much from their schools? By family I am including the larger kinship networks and tribal groups that surrounded them as they grew up. if the families came here just for benefits and so people are no longer shooting at them, but they despise our culture for whatever reason, there’s no way the girls would not have been afflicted by that. And I suspect their schools just reinforced the attitude, given all the “Europeans bad, free markets bad, tribal societies good” material in public schools.

   1. Sure, our schools need reforming.
      But let me tell you as someone who DID acculturate: mass immigration is BAD.
      I don’t know if I’d have managed it, with the internet and the ability to stay in touch with family in Portugal night and day. Much less with a whole imported community around me.

      1. Oh yeah. Amarillo has the highest number of immigrants per capita (based on municipal population) and there are areas where no one has to speak English nor wants to. And then they hit the local school distract and disaster. Assimilation is not required, and after a certain critical mass is reached, I almost think it becomes impossible, because those who don’t want people to escape are numerous enough to threaten and punish everyone else.

         A school district with, oh, 40,000 students should not feel it needs to have interpreters for 50+ languages and dialects. But I’m Odd.

      2. Jerry Pournelle put it thusly: “Immigration without assimilation is invasion.” I don’t see anything wrong with that statement.

         1. Me either.
            Damn, I miss that man.

            1. Agree with both sentiments. Dr. Pournelle was absolutely correct and he is really missed.

            2. +1

         2. ++

6. I saw Trump’s tweets as a win. There are 3 parts of America. Marxists that already call him racist and white supremacist, but their outrage is already turned to 11. There is no rise above peak outrage. The will never support Trump, let them be outraged. NeverTrumpers that also consider each and every Tweet an outrage. Again, already set at 11. As their name implies, they are rabid non supporters.

   Trump supporters many of them are proud of this country and Trump is merely stating what they are thinking. Win. Other Trump supporters are middle-class Americans. I won’t use the pejorative “white”, because they come in all sizes and races. Many of them are former (D) voters. Not any more. Trump told no untruths in his tweet, and if these folks are looking at the (D) now, well, lets just say it is nothing like what and how their own values and beliefs go. And the (D) offer only insults, no rebuttal. Win. Lastly, there are Americans too busy to be bothered by any of this, it is Summer. Jobs are good, so it the economy. They will check in later.

   1. Some idiot on my FB page is accusing me of being a white supremacist because of this post.
      You know, the crazy idiots think America means white. And they accuse US of being racist!

      1. I saw it noted somewhere a few months ago that every immigrant group is an ethnic group until that group successfully assimilates. And then it’s “white”. Case in point, the Irish, who were heavily discriminated against early on, but are now considered just as “white” as someone from England or Poland.

         We’re also apparently starting to see that with various Asian ethnicities, which some now refer to as “white” (and those who do are the kind of people who use the term as an epithet).

         1. Offhand thought, possibly apocryphal…

            One of the reason Irish are highly represented in fire and police in the northeast is because were more disposable and so got more dangerous jobs.

            Now they are back to being hated and mistreated because of color, this time their uniform instead of skin. Same with Latino ICE/CBP/etc

            Although have to laugh at the idiots thinking its truly just color. Only way to find an Irishman in a blizzard is find the freckles.

         2. Consider the number of people who think Sowell, Elder, and Williams whitewashed themselves because they never jumped on the poor descendants of black slaves bandwagon, and instead adopted a strong work ethic and got good educations (or liberal educations and then recognized reality.) It can be done, but it does require mixing for the melting pot to work most efficiently.

      2. Sooo, I’m racist for wondering why the heck someone in Canada thought it was a good idea to have Chinese nationals doing a lot of work in a Level 4 lab and bringing in their own grad students and associates? Cool.

         Because I really don’t think, despite their protestations, that the Chinese microbiologists were close to a cure for Ebola when they got escorted out of the lab and lost their access.

         Makes as much sense as, oh, the US allowing Chinese nationals to work at Los Alamos and have the appropriate clearance. Oh, wait…

         1. …or any foreign nation, tbh. Doesnt matter if China, India, or Indiana the leadership of any of these nationally vital or dangerous/military endeavors should be, or should include someone from host country. Helps slow preferential hiring, defends against obvious foreign interference, and decreases risk that all tech and data will vanish onto an international flight.

            Plus they are bound by your law. Less obvious diplomatic incident if you arrest your own citizen for malfeasance vs a foreign national.

            Also, there have been three major new aircraft developments in West in last 20 years. All three got bit in ass by outsourcing. Can we learn please?

            1. “Doesnt matter if China, India, or Indiana….”

               Beware the Hoosier menace! 😉

               1. As they say in Indiana, “Hoosier daddy?”

                  1. 😀

               2. How else will Canadia protect its strategic maple sugar reserve?

                  1. Rabbitting off-thread, maple syrup is valuable enough that it’s not only stolen, but counterfeited. The US Senate and Congress consider and sometimes pass bills concerning maple syrup at almost every session.

                     People will steal or counterfeit almost anything, but apparently the maple syrup thing is made more complex by differences in Canadian and American law…

                     1. Canadians I trust to deliver me Canadian Maple Syrup. [Can you get Canadian Bacon from a US pig?] I understand the fun is Honey from China. Microfiltered to remove pollen, so place of origin can not be determined. Also makes it easier to mix in a little corn syrup to increase profit.

                        1. As I understand it, even without milcrofiltering you can still add in filler.

                           The old style, though, it was a lot easier; so they made it so that filtered honey isn’t legally “honey” in the US, and that’s why kids under one year can’t eat honey. Because the filtering that can catch botulism spores also gets pollen.

      3. That FB intruder is the white supremacist — only a white supremacist could read the above and conclude it advocated white supremacy.

         1. Yep.

            1. For today’s left, anyone who is not a full-fledged left of Lenin identity based Marxist is by definition a white nationalist.

               1. I thought white supremacist is simply the current generic term for defenders of Western Civilization

                  1. No. But my fear is that people will decide that, yes.

                     1. Your fear is here.

                        Steve King says he was just defending ‘Western Civilization.’ That’s racist, too.
                        https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/15/steve-king-says-he-was-just-defending-western-civilization-thats-racist-too/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4d253d7e3117

                        1. Won’t let me visit with basic “all ads that are asinine” blocking, won’t let me visit as guest, then can go blow themselves.

                           Sorry.

                           1. /sigh
                              *aren’t* asinine.

                           2. Not sure why it’s not giving me that, now, because it was a couple weeks ago.

                              Gist of paragraphs I read:
                              Western civilization was built by white men who chose “west” to include both Europe and North America. They overcame the “dark ages” thus inherently designating white as superior to dark. Blah blah blah.
                              Had to stop before I barfed on my keyboard.

                           3. *sympathy*

                           4. Yeah. This is where we’ll end up. because the left pushes, and the so called right plays “they’re right, you know?”

      4. Instapundit linked you and has 189 [and counting] comments.
         One F yah! I’m with Sarah.
         I think about half of the comments are a couple of false flag operators trying to make Instapundit commenters look racist so Facebook/SPLC can block any links there.
         I didn’t see anyone accusing you af being a white supremacist, they are mainly calling each other names.

         1. Facebook. My two shares of this post.

7. I despise the Omar woman increasingly. Never was a good deed more badly rewarded when we got suckered into trying to repair Somalia’s self-inflicted woes, and allowed certain of them refuge in the US. She’s a true representative of a community which has not done much of note, other than criminality and organized welfare fraud, to the US which took them in,

   2. Saw someone on Twitter or FB saying that her father was a bigwig with the previous dictator, and they fled the country when the dictatorship fell.

      1. With all appropriate caution of accepting claims on twitter etc– two angles for that.

         One, folks who were “in” with the prior dictator would be those most likely to be functional enough and with reason enough to run for their lives,
         and
         two, dictators like to pick victim groups to favor that they think they can trust because that buys loyalty on the cheap. They have nowhere else to go. That’s why a lot of Islamic dictators have favored christian groups– Christians keep deals and are going to be killed by everybody else anyways, so all you have to do is NOT kill them and you have loyal supporters.

   3. Saw a comment, maybe on FB, saying that her father was a bigwig under the previous dictator, and they fled the country when the dictatorship fell.

8. Hadn’t thought of it, but isn’t second generation also the group that most of the terror recruits come from?

   1. Yep. They’ve forgotten why parents came here, and our idiot schools fill them with “pride of where you came from.”
      Ask me how hard I had to fight that bs when kids were in school.

      1. Ah yes. And said schools were 100% convinced you were from south of the border iirc. Never mind where you were really born and grew up.

      2. I was met with shock and surprise when I said I wasn’t using Filipino at home, only English. White Aussie woman sputters why?

         -I never spoke Filipino proper, only the pidgin
         -Even in the Philippines we spoke in English. Even the household help knew some English.
         – Other than the food I didn’t really have anything from the Philippines I wanted them to internalize, culturally or literally.

         Oh my son also wrote an essay where he roundabout said he didn’t have to apologize to the Aborigines endlessly because neither of his ancestors came across during the bad times. We don’t think it was really noticed because he got a good grade on it.

         1. In that regard, I can only imagine how perilous it might be for immigrants from Eastern Europe, especially the Balkans, to try and point out that the concept of slavery, imperialism and oppression as “white man bad” tends to fizzle out anywhere east of Prague. Starting with the Ottoman Rule, mentioning the Golden Horde, and going all the way back to the pre-Christian slave trade, it’s the kind of large scale phenomenon that it’s difficult to remain unnoticed… unless one tries really, really hard.

            Consequently, anyone from those regions tends to roll their eyes at any guilt-tripping attempt in that particular area. For bonus points, just about everyone on the Balkans is also a mutt of every race and ethnicity imaginable, from Thracian and Slavic, to Turkic and even Celtic origins, so the western liberal concept of racism simply doesn’t apply. To periphrase “Miami Vice”, you can’t even tell who’s who without a program.

            All in all, I reckon, or at least I hope, that more people are realizing that the leftist ideas of racism, oppression and whatnot, don’t really hold water outside their own self-contained bubble, if even that. And that trying to apply them to matters of immigration – from the southern border illegals in the US, to the migrant crisis in Europe – is not only disingenuous, but outright embarrassing in the eyes of those outside the bubble.

            1. Folks outside of the US mostly don’t matter as far as ideas important in US politics are concerned.

               The bubble folks only pretend to care about opinions that are convenient.

               There are US people who don’t realize how curated the bubble model of opinions outside the US is, and who genuinely try to extend the getting-along-inside-the-US cultural habits outside of the US. There are people who genuinely admire some element of foreign culture or another, because they have imprinted on it as admirable.

               Information from Hollywood and news media is a fraud, and most Americans simply do not care about knowing anything about other parts of the world. Some don’t care about knowing anything in depth about other regions of the US. Maybe they know something because of neighbors or coworkers who are immigrants.

               1. Let’s be fair: having lived in Europe — most people don’t know anything about other cultures. And Europe only thinks it KNOWS the US. PFUI.

                  1. Europe’s knowledge of the US comes entirely from CNN, CBS, and MSNBC… which means they know DC, NYC, L.A and Chicago, and maybe the urban of urban-est Atlanta… and only think they know the rest of the country.

                     1. Not exactly — they also know all about Miami (Miami Vice), Hawaii (Hawaii Five-0 & Magnum, P.I.), Baltimore (Homicide, Life on the Streets), and rural Kentucky (Justified).

                        Just as Americans know all about English class struggle thanks to To the Manor Born and the great tradition of English mercantile service as a consequence of studying Are You Being Served?.

                        1. I heard of a grad student who was in my hometown having learned about America from Dallas and Dynasty. First weekend here he got recruited to wrangle cows at the agricultural fair.

                           He adapted quickly enough to enter bread and spaghetti sauce in the exhibitions.

                     2. Which news sources they assume are controlled to give a GOOD picture of America, so their own news sources then spin them on that assumption. Yeah.

               2. “The bubble folks only pretend to care about opinions that are convenient.”

                  That’s not TRUE!!!! They carefully search out world opinions that match their desired narratives and then cite those world opinions as support for their views. World opinion which contradicts their views is, of course, irrelevant — which is why, for example, the United States has the most extreme pro-abortion regime of any Western nation. It is also why the trend of “Democratic Socialist” Scandinavian nations away from the socialist model, back to Free Markets, is casually ignored in their arguments.

                  Oh, wait a minnit – your statement is true. Never mind.

            2. *snort* Attempts to try guilt me have been met with the response of “The Philippines had caste systems in most of the tribes put in, with a class specifically for slaves/servants. So did China. No history anywhere had no slavery of some kind at one point in history. I refuse to be held responsible for something that happened long before I was born.”

               Hungary is probably looking at what’s going on in the US and is glad they have walls up.

9. Pingback: Trump Points Out The Obvious. Everybody Apparently Loses Their Damned Minds by Thomas Kendall – It's Karl

10. Oh, incidentally, this also connects the “squad” to the guys who stormed that immigration center, tore down teh flag and raised a Mexican one.

    “Leave hell holes and then try to tell us how to run our country” rings very strongly.

    1. A wave of individuals assaulting a location and raising the flag of a foreign nation to which they appear to hold allegiance.

       That reminds me of something, and it’s not refugees.

       1. It’s known as an invasion.

          1. To which the typical proper response is to issue live ammunition.

             And we’re crying because someone had to drink potable water out of a toilet because they couldn’t be taught.

             This world is a silly place.

    2. If you want to hear crickets, look for the condemnation from the left of the guy who tried to firebomb the Tacoma detention center.

       https://victorygirlsblog.com/antifa-anarchist-willem-van-spronsen-is-not-a-hero/

11. c4c

    1. C4C2

12. It’s largely the Chain Migration immigration policy that is responsible for Tlaib’s & Omar’s election.
    Ilhan Omar represents a large, non-assimilating Somali enclave in St Pau, MN
    Tlaib represents a more mixed district in Wayne County, MI, but one with a large, non-assimilating Arab immigrant population.

    It’s not immigration that’s the problem. It’s the abandonment of the “Melting Pot” in favor of “Celebrate All Cultures Equally”. When what holds our country together are the ideas expressed in our founding documents, having large blocs of voters who reject those ideas is a recipe for internal strife.

    1. Yes. But unchecked over the border illegal immigration forms enclaves worse and faster than chain migration.

       1. Worse as far as hotbeds of crime perhaps, but consider that those enclaves in Minnesota and Michigan have through block voting on purely racial lines elected two America hating radicals to Congress.
          We should watch with great care as to whether Tlaib and Omar win re-election, if they do I truly despair for the future of our country.

          1. Minnesota also made antifa-loving anti-Semite Keith Ellison its State Attorney General, i.e. its chief law enforcement officer.

          2. They were deliberately designed that way. It was NOT an accident.

    2. Ilhan Omar represents a large, non-assimilating Somali enclave with a significantly large number of people who have returned to the ME to wage jihad.

13. So: second-generation immigrant [son of a Scottish mom] who hates most of America, good; descendant of slaves but wrong color who wants her country to live up to its promise, bad?
    (And spare me the dog-whistle stuff about how the Nazis were really socialists because that’s in their name, just like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the “Liberal Democrats” of Japan who are neither, the Liberal Party of Australia which is nothing of the sort, the Sweden Democrats who are the local neo-Nazis rebranded, etc.)

    1. Hey, guys, we have a troll.
       Okay, prove that the president hates most of America?
       Descendant of slaves… Who? Wants the country to live up to its promise of… socialism? Tovarish, you got the wrong COUNTRY.
       As for all your bullshit: PFUI. Yes, sure, the Nazis weren’t socialists. In your head.
       Okay, let’s go for the real socialists: Try being black or a Jew in the Soviet Union.
       Listen, bud, if you hear dog whistles? You’re the dog.

       1. Or Cuba for that matter. Leftist icons Fidel Castro and Che Guevara absolutely hated black people; Guevara openly talked about wanting to kill them all. And let’s not forget Omar and Tlaib’s support for Hamas, which once again today had a senior official call for the WORLDWIDE murder of Jews, i.e. genocide.

       2. Are you suggesting “orangemike bad”? 😉

          1. Orangemike crazy, mostly.

    2. Why on earth would someone need to “dog whistle” something about a name when it’s in their actual policies?

       1. Right? This person seems incapable of thought.

       2. Over half their official platform was overt socialism, their party name had socialist and the overtly Marxist workers featured prominently.
          Their ideological lineage was as a heresy of Marxism.

          But they were totes right wing in the American context, if you’re a drooling moron.

          1. Frankly, if I were a modern American lefty, I’d be a little…queezy…about aligning myself with Stalin as some sort of a norm for “center-left.”

             1. They’re imagining smiling Uncle Joe on the WWII propaganda posters, America’s friend and ally. And so badly fake-newsed with that whole “Terror” thing, when he was just removing a bunch of counter-revolutionaries, traitors, and slackers from society. Well, DUH, wouldn’t anyone? And he was the greatest anti-Nazi, breaking the Third Reich with only a little help from minor foreign allies. And after WWII he ordered programs to help out the poor and impoverished in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the PacRim, spending billions of rubles helping them create modern industrial states. For which most of them were ungrateful, but Uncle Joe loved them all anway.

          2. The idiots view right and left in EUROPEAN terms. You see, in Europe everyone is socialist. It’s just that the left is international socialist and the right is national socialist, all blood and soil and stuff.
             And then the idiot American left adds another layer, because they’re provincials who understand NOTHING of what Europe is like, and they think that the European right is “capitalist.”
             Because having private enterprise directed and controlled by the government is totes capitalist.
             Morons. If they’d ever successfully run something as complex as a lemonade stand they might understand life better.

    3. Dog whistles are heard.. by dogs, troll.

       1. I love the rants about dog whistles. None of them are ever smart enough to realize the Morse Code messages in blinking the eyes.

    4. So: second-generation immigrant [son of a Scottish mom] who hates most of America, good;

       Define “hates”, and then explain how “most” is somehow significantly less than half the population, Mikey.

       descendant of slaves but wrong color who wants her country to live up to its promise, bad?

       AOC is a descendant of slaves? Please supply some actual evidence.

       Also, the Green New Deal is just about the opposite of the country’s promise, that promise being the Declaration of Independence.

       (And spare me the dog-whistle stuff

       Poisoning the well. You are a fuckwit, and a mendacious fuckwit at that.

       about how the Nazis were really socialists because that’s in their name,

       Not just in their name, Open Mike, it was also in their, you know, platform. You know, the document that tells the world what they believe?

       If anybody is dogshistling here, it’s you, lad. You’re basically saying “Nazis are bad, and everyone I don’t like is bad, therefore everyone I don’t like is Nazis, because I feel it.”

       You’ve taken shits that have better arguments than you do.

       just like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the “Liberal Democrats” of Japan who are neither, the Liberal Party of Australia which is nothing of the sort, the Sweden Democrats who are the local neo-Nazis rebranded, etc.)

       Gosh, it’s like you are totally fucking ignorant of how the CPUSA used front groups with lying names to foment subversion, at the direction of Moscow. You actually think that “it’s in the name, therefore it’s a lie” is a right-wing fetish, rather than a left-wing one.

       Go back to slurping gutter water, you anencephalic mouth breather.

       1. I think there is some reason to think that, statistically, everyone is a descendant of slaves. We can be confident that slavery was widely practiced in prehistory. Furthermore, the maximum number of possible ancestors doubles every generation. At twenty years a generation, 200 is ten generations, likewise thirty and forty. So a thousand years is a minimum of 10^25 maximum possible ancestors. Given that a billion is 10^9, a) the thousand year ancestral pool is going to include many of the same people b) if there were slaves in a population you have ancestors among, you are probably descended c) pretty much no one can document an ancestry so incestuous and always in power to not have slave ancestors merely in fairly recent history d) pretty much no one was so careful about population control and mass murder of slaves to avoid any interbreeding with the wider population. Once you start looking at tens of thousands of years, the bullshit adds up quickly.

          If it isn’t absolutely valid, what about relatively? Well, if you had some threshold of recent oppression, there would be some currently useful excuse in danger of passing the statute of limitations.

          In conclusion, we should not automatically exclude mass murder from our list of acceptable policy options.

          1. I was laughing into my sleeve, as I realized that I am an immigrant, descended from slaves (well, one nearby, but if you count Moorish and Roman occupation, I presume MANY) who just wants America to live up to its promise. The promise of equality under the laws and freedom to pursue happiness embodied in the constitution. PFUI.

             1. Accepting the family history of descent from Portugal’s converso families, your history of slave ancestors extends back another millennium plus.

                1. Oh. There is that.

    5. Hard to argue with someone who opens the ball by making two unsupported and contrary to facts in evidence statements in his first paragraph.

       Where is your support for the assertion Trump “hates most of America”?

       What “promise” do you think your “descendant of slaves” wants America to live up to?

       The only one concerned about her skin seems to be you>, Mikey, so who da racist?

       And weren’t nobody here talking about Nazis until you, and it isn’t particularly relevant to the issue of unassimilated immigrants, so what is with dog whistles you son of a …? Please spare us you projectile spewing.

       1. Can we get Egypt to name a river “Projection”?

       2. Funny about I thought it was the coastal leftist elites who refer to the rest of the country as “flyover country” (and far worse) and call millions of people “deplorables” who despise most of the country. Silly me.
          One thing that is true of both modern leftist trolls and mythical ones-they want to take all of our money for themselves.

    6. NPC alert! Preprogrammed outrage spew and buzzwords expected, no actual thoughts!

       1. My favorite newspeak term just has to be “dog-whistle”. For one, it’s original meaning refers to code words hidden in public speeches; that is, *it doesn’t apply to private conversations*. (Bonus points if you see it used against the occasional conservative on a left-leaning forum – because that’s *just* the place for lurking white supremacists to exchange coded messages… sigh.)

          So now, it’s mostly used to disparage any opinion which runs contrary to the hive mind, but can’t really be attacked verbatim. It’s basically an admission that what you say isn’t actually offensive, but also isn’t what the other side wants to hear, so they’ll treat you as if it’s offensive anyway. After that, any attempt at dialogue is strictly for entertainment purposes only.

          1. Apparently ‘Nazis were socialists’ is a dog whistle, but I never have gotten a good answer as to why they’re supposedly NOT socialists, despite having called themselves that, and the whole name literally translates to National Socialism, and that’s what their policies were. I mean, even now the stuff we hear from the screeching woke IS a ‘modernized’ version of the same, and really a rainbow painted version of Communism at it’s heart.

             1. Calling it a dog whistle is a way of acknowledging the statement is true without having to seriously address its implications.

                Kinda like Bill, caught in bed with Monica, screaming at Hillary for bursting in to their bedroom without knocking, then complaining she’s showing no trust in him.

                1. While I understand the example being given, I honestly don’t think Hillary cared. I mean, he was LESS discreet in Arkansas.

                   1. I concede they remind me of the inverted version of the joke about the Jewish businessman who, coming home and finding his wife in bed with his partner, exclaimed, “Shmuel!!! I have to, but you?”

                      1. *chokes on cola* Dammnit RES!

                      2. An English lord in the Victorian era walked into the bedroom and found his wife in bed with another men.

                         “Madame, you should be more discreet! Suppose I had been one of the servants?”

14. But AOC *does* love America! She loves it so much that she would not part with a village of it.

    1. Yeah, she really wants to.. “love” it up… badly.

    2. AQC loves America the way Jeffrey Epstein loves barely pubescent girls.

       1. AQC??? Really, fingers, what the !@$# are you doing?

          1. Alexandria Qualudes Cortex? Works for me.

             1. Alexandria Quality Control?

                1. Nah. This one obviously escaped.

                2. Please, I work as a quality controller (among other things.) AOC hasn’t one iota of a hint of what QC is.

                   1. Always Quickly Certified (well, in a functioning world…)

                   2. Nope. Not even close. As much as a PIA QC can be, I respect what they can do. AOC, respect? Uh, no.

             2. Cue Shel Silverstein!

             3. There’s so many opportunities….

                Al Queda Cortez
                All Quacked-up Cortez
                Absolutely Quazy Cortez

                1. Alexandria Quite Crazy?

             4. She is NOT a Quiet Interlude.. oh, she needs such? Yeah, that’s true.

          2. whatever they want

15. Only problem I have with this great post is that there is no such thing as first- or second-generation immigrant. Either one is an immigrant or she isn’t.

    My father comes from another country. He was an immigrant. I was born in Chicago. I’m not an immigrant — not unless you count Chiraq as a separate country, which would be a fair point.

    There are, however, first-, second-, etc. generation Americans.

    1. My kids get called “Second generation immigrants” all the time. I agree, it shouldn’t be so. But… there it is.

       1. Mom was a “Second generation immigrant” from Grampa Pete. (No firm idea how long Grandma’s family had been here; family joke was that they greated the Indians as they arrived. OTOH, they were Bretons from Dorsetshire…)

          1. “Grandma’s family had been here; family joke was that they greated the Indians as they arrived”

             Sounds like dad’s family. Great-grandpa came to Oregon from Scotland via Nova Scotia, and across lower Canada. OTOH Great-Grandma was Jessie Applegate’s granddaughter (first generation born in Oregon, unknown X generation born in Americas. Applegate name got here before the revolution, and fought with Washington & company.)

             Mom’s family is the same, only as far as I know, no recent emigrants. Again, fought for independence with Washington & Company, then came to Oregon after WWII after spending a couple of generations in Montana.

             Oh, yes. Mom swears with as many kids the Applegate brothers had that the local tribes just left a few with them to be raised. No, but there were a LOT of them.

          2. That is not actually a joke. Tribes were going through a lot of geopolitical struggle and societal.collapse when the colonists arrived, mostly because of the increasingly cold climate destroying Mississippian cultures. Epidemics and fun with settlers did not help, and neither did the Six Nations trying to turn the Eastern US into a fur monopoly game.preserve. So there were a lot of times when settlers settled empty country.abandoned by tribes, and then tribes migrated or fled, or resettled after the Iroquois got driven back, into that same empty country.

             1. [sarc] Unpossible! The Iroquois Confederation was a peaceful, voluntary association, my history book says so! [/sarc]

                1. Yes! And the Founding Fathers totally ripped off their Constitution!

                   “When I think back of all the crap I learned in high school / it’s a wonder I can think at all. But my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none / I can see the writing on the wall…:

             2. (Looks at 20 year old research done by niece). Not in this case; that area was pretty well settled by the time Grandma Pete’s ancestors moved there, possibly by railroad. OTOH, ancestors a few generations earlier would have had some interesting experiences in the Atlantic states and along the Ohio.

    2. You have never apparently attended a Sons of the American Revolution meeting. I think they require the waitstaff to be at least 4th generation.
       As a 9th generation pre Revolution Virginia son, I took my Father to one meeting. Admittedly I said they were all boorish snobs and I wouldn’t be back.
       But you better believe they count native born children of immigrants as second generation immigrants. But, like I said boorish snobs. If you are born here, you are an American. I’m pretty sure that is what the Constitution says.

       1. Yeah. As I said, my kids get called “second generation immigrants.” So. And btw, on one side they qualify for SAR. They just never bothered.

          1. Kind of the same here. My Mother was 1/2 Polish, but the “pedigree” side is through my Dad.

16. One other thing. This is a boy/girl thing too.

    When men join a committee (or arrive in Congress) they expect to spend a year or two “learning the ropes” and establishing their “soundness,” as the Brits say.

    But women expect to be able to “share” right away, and they are offended if people don’t pay them any attention.

    Of course all this is just a corollary to the truth that men are expendable, so they have to prove their worth.

    1. Actually, no. That’s present day feminism. And insanity.

    2. Likely seems so because most of the younger women who have lately been elected to higher office woulda been “mean girls” and “queen bees” in any other context .. so they still behave that way as congresscritters.

       1. Even queen bees used to realize they needed to bide their time and gather support. These are not competent queen bees.

          1. Yep… I didn’t say they were =good= at it. About all they’ve managed to do is band together as their own little Mean Girls club.

    3. “When men join a committee (or arrive in Congress) they expect to spend a year or two …”

       I recall back in the Clinton administration one Democrat congressman complaining about being told that was how the system worked: Shut-up, do what you’re told and we’ll take care of you and see you get re-elected; get ahead of yourself and we’ll find you a primary opponent.

       Party discipline used to mean something, it was a key test of leadership. The rise of independent activist support PACs (thanks, Soros) means that fol like AOC and her campaign manager/chief of staff do not need the party and do not need to support the party.

       Pelosi actually rewarded AOC’s Squat with choice committee assignments (for first-time electees from safe districts) and likely does not appreciate the ingratitude she’s seen in return. Not that “gratitude” is their calling card …

       1. Leadership? Sounds like indoctrination on being a good little slave to the party masters.

    4. Apropos of nearly nothing, this is something that Really Bugged Me about Zootopia.

       Okay, Judy did well in the police academy. But she gets hired and… it’s a sign of Awful Prejudice that she gets to write parking tickets first thing instead of being assigned the Very High Profile Disappearances?

       You *just got hired today*. Who do you think *should* be writing the parking tickets? Do you think there might be *some* value in actually figuring out how policing works in the real world before sticking yourself in the middle of *everything*?

       It’s been a few years since I watched so I might have the details wrong, but… boy, do I recall it playing into *every bit* of “I’m special and know everything and all your quaint ideas about learning and advancement don’t apply to *me*” that drive me absolutely mad when I run across them in the wild. X_X

       (…I did like that her response to being assigned to write a hundred parking tickets was to challenge herself to write *two* hundred parking tickets, though. And ticketing her own misparked car as a part of that.)

       1. Heh. The most common complaint employers have about newly hired graduates is the need to retrain them to the realities of the workplace.

          The Ivory Tower’s disconnect is not a recently discovered phenomenon, except among those who refuse to learn from History.

       2. I honestly didn’t get much of an “awful prejudiced” vibe from it– more of a kind of pained “Guys, we’re cops. We do stuff this way. Yes, the cute little bunny wants to be a cop…but she REALLY CAN’T DO THE MUSCLE STUFF.”

          Of course she was upset about getting put on ticketing, because she’s a little girl at heart and wanted to BE the big, strong, cool cop.

          But after that “aw, not magically awesome” twitch, she went gung-ho on doing her job…and got to be the big, strong and awesome sort, because there’s always someone weaker than you.

          And in the end she was able to get the big, strong guys she admires to remember that there are tools besides a hammer. ^.^

17. I do see our current situation with these spoiled entitled idiots as the natural outgrowth of eight years of “I intend to fundamentally change America” who tried his damnedest to do precisely that. Fortunately he was all talk, surrounded himself with others of equal ineptitude, and failed at the sort of complete destruction he actively desired. At most he polluted government agencies and with that phone and pen instituted numerous executive orders that Trump had to cancel.
    The current crop have managed to infest our government and obviously have two goals. First, to actively destroy any belief in American exceptionalism. Second to create their socialist utopia out of the ashes of an American nation laid waste through their combination of open borders while massively infringing on the rights of current citizens.

    1. Any idiot can rip apart a car. If they do it right it might be put back together, but they’re more likely to do it wrong. Regardless of wether intended to destroy car or not you’ve still got a hunk of scrap metal. And in this case we’ve got a pack of rapid dogs protecting it from even being appraised as it rusts in the fields

       1. Reminded me of a very old, possibly apocryphal, story about buying a used rattletrap car, rubbing a bit of weed around the wheel wells, then driving it into Mexico then right back across the border. Dogs would sniff of course so border patrol would disassemble the car to find the supposed stash. When none was found they would reassemble the vehicle much tighter than it was before.
          Like I said, probably made up, but a cute idea anyway.

          1. Back when Jimmuh was president, a friend and I took the ferry from Pt. Angeles to Victoria, BC. No problems with the 12-year old Travelall and a couple of guys with camping equipment. OTOH, the Jesus-Hippie with the filthiest Porsche 911 I’ve ever seen drew the Eye of Sauron from the Canadian Customs people. That car was getting stripped as we took off. JH was not a happy person.

             US customs wondered why two guys, one from San Jose, the other from San Diego were traveling together. We’d known each other since we were 8, and Officer Not-so-friendly reluctantly agreed it was plausible. Glad I hadn’t bought any Cuban cigars, though.

    2. “he was all talk, surrounded himself with others of equal ineptitude”

       How’s that old saw go: “Strong people surround themselves with highly competent and disparate staff. First-rate people hire first-rate people. Second-rate people hire third-rate people.”

       It has often seemed to me that first-rate people are generally aware they might be mistaken while second-raters are generally threatened by any suggestion they’re mistaken – and when challenged resort to irrelevancies in rebuttal, such as accusing their challenger of racism, sexism, somethingphobia.

    3. Many of the ones Trump tried to cancel were forced to remain in effect by the imperial judiciary deciding that executive orders that fed the leftist agenda could not be cancelled by anyone, no matter what the Constitution, previous SCOTUS rulings, or anything else of law might say.

18. I wasn’t quite ready for the Overton Window shift, but then nobody ever is.

    1. I’ve been wondering: are there blinds or shades on those Overton windows?

       1. Blinds. They come from the left. They’re to die for.
          And people will.
          Look, it won’t be an outright civil war, but widespread violence is JUST around the corner.

          1. Out of curiosity, where’s the line between sporadic violence (assaulting Andy Ngo, shooting up an immigration facility) and widespread violence?

             1. It means all at the same time, all the time, till you’re fairly sure there will be an incident on your way to work.
                They’ve been nerving themselves up to that.

19. For what it’s worth (and that’s quite a bit, really) I am an American Mythical, NOT a ‘Mythical-American’.

    1. I thought that would be babe, not a minotaur

       1. You’ve got to wonder. If Orvan is a minotaur, what’s a majotaur look like?

          1. I think again goes back to Babe

             1. Babe is not merely mythical, but Legendary.

    2. Does your being an American Mythical mean that Earl made a leather jacket from the hide of one of your relatives?

       (I reread MHA over the weekend, preparing for the impending release of MHG.)

       1. Welcome to the MH fan club. Cost of silver running about $15.4 per ounce.

       2. Is possible. Distant relative. And the.. manner of inheritance is key – a bequest is not a conquest. Or if it is, a very special one indeed.

20. Genius. The United States is not your loot box.

21. Vote time:
    https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/190212-what-work-about-strange-and-unusual-schools-shall-we-read-in-august

22. What can I say. They are writing his reelection campaign. He is going to win the electoral college AND the popular vote. At least I don’t think they can cheat enough to get popular votes out of CA, WA, NY, and OR (god forbid), without showing they cheated (more votes than are in state.)

    1. California has just under 25 million registered voters. Emphasis added.

       Democrats’ hysteria over basic voting security undermining US democracy
       Such is the state of modern liberalism that it sees oppression even in efforts to clean up voter rolls by removing those who’ve moved or died, as required by federal law.

       One result: Hyper-progressive California now totals registered voters equal to 101 percent of the adult population, including noncitizens and citizens not registered, with eight counties well above the 100 percent line.

       That news comes from the nonpartisan Election Integrity Project California, which just released a report claiming nearly 1 million registered Golden State voters are actually ineligible.

       That’s up more than 60,000 in two years from the number in the group’s previous such report, even after Los Angeles agreed to clean up its voter lists to settle a lawsuit.

       ‘“Dirty’” voter rolls are an open invitation to fraud, especially in states like California that don’t require voter ID — another no-no to the modern left.

       Democrats insist that voter fraud simply doesn’t happen, and all the talk of how, say, the old Chicago machine “got out the graveyard vote,” is just paranoia.

       Instead, Dems present their own conspiracy theories — notably, the claim that Stacey Abrams was robbed of victory in last year’s Georgia race for governor because 53,000 “voters” were denied thanks to voter-roll cleanups. (In fact, an investigation found solid reasons for the suspended registrations, from criminal records to addresses changed to out of state.)

       When the left insists on seeing evil in something as basic as keeping voter registries updated, you have to wonder if progressives even care about keeping American democracy functional.

       1. Short answer, I think they’re rather have a “meritocracy”, with them defining “Merit”. Democracy? That’s for the lowlife Demos, and they shouldn’t count. (I’m sooooooo glad I escaped California before *somebody* built a wall around the state.)

          1. You and my husband. He has been overheard to state – “I’m out. Close and lock the door.”

             So, have you seen the meme going around? The one that states —

             “Make Oregon Green again, get rid of Brown!” ?

             1. LOL. New meme to me, but I love it!

             2. Hadn’t encountered that (way back in MN…) but I do recall “Brown, flush it down” for Gov. Moonbeam.

                1. “Make Oregon Green”
                   “Keep Oregon Green”

                   Are not new. Have been around since the mid to late ’60’s about the litter clean up, limiting/stopping field and slash burning, and river clean up.

                   Adding “Get rid of the Brown” started up recently when she tried to force the bill that essentially was Oregon’s version of the “New Green Bill”. Had the votes. Didn’t have the quorum … hence the furor or the GOP Senators leaving the state until after July 31.

          2. They want a Merritt-ocracy, and they all believe themselves to be one and only Merritt.

       2. Do they care about keeping a republic functional.

          Democracies are similar to republics, but do not have protections for the rights of political minorities, nor stick to a consistent set of rules for making decisions. If a plurality of voters tolerate a corrupt voting practice, that could simply be understood as the essence of democracy.

          1. No, they want the republic destroyed. The law is whatever they say it is; rights are privileges granted by government.

             The cries of “Democracy!” are used as rationale for tearing down the carefully crafted protections of the republic against mob rule. Ditto for trying to justify illegals voting, non-citizens voting, non-compos-mentos voting. I will say “felons” voting is arguable, given the asinine things that are called “felonies” these days. If you read historical writings, “felon” meant someone who was actively serving a sentence for a serious crime.

             So calling the republic a “democracy,” calling our elections “democracy,” is all part of the undermining of the republic.

             Equally vile is the unthinking Big Lie of saying that rights are “given” or “granted” by the Constitution or other government action. Is your life “given” or “granted” to you by government? Or is it something you own. Your rights are just as inherent to your being. You own them just as much as you own your life.

             Beware, also, of “rights” that depend on the labor of others. Like a “right” to health care. A “right” to housing. A “right” to public education. All these are privileges granted by government, and done for the benefit of those who control government. As a herd animal has a “right” to a well-tended fence to keep out predators, so that the benefits of keeping and harvesting the herd go entirely to the herdsman.

    2. I’m not counting on it, but I’d love to see a red wave election in Oregon. Toothless Kate Brown might be fun to see. OTOH, the Dems’ lame duck revenge would be, er, interesting.

       1. I’d love to see this too. But, ouch the carnage.

23. “Large-scale immigration raids are designed to strike fear in our immigrant communities, and the University of California will not be a willing participant in them.” from Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California, and one-time US Attorney appointed by Bill Clinton. I wanted to comment, “Oh, you mean like this?” https://images.washingtonpost.com/?url=http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2015/05/AlanDiaz.jpg&w=1484&op=resize&opt=1&filter=antialias. The virtue signaling, it burns. It burns.

    1. Remember, these raids are for “immigrants” who have completed the judicial process and been denied asylum, a fact which will be found, if at all, in the last parapgraph of most news stories. Also worth noting:
       Trump isn’t matching Obama deportation numbers.
       [SNIP]
       Under the Obama administration, total ICE deportations were above 385,000 each year in fiscal years 2009-2011, and hit a high of 409,849 in fiscal 2012. The numbers dropped to below 250,000 in fiscal years 2015 and 2016.

       Under Trump, ICE deportations fell to 226,119 in fiscal 2017, then ticked up to over 250,000 in fiscal 2018 and hit a Trump administration high of 282,242 this fiscal year (as of June).

    2. Elian Gonzales?

       1. Yes.

24. Or maybe like this? http://img.wennermedia.com/social/gettyimages-526765052-9d7de67e-9c52-43a6-b98a-4d5c07eee326.jpg Some of us have long memories.

    1. Those in the Gaslight Media a) count on nobody listening to those of us with long memories and b) control the news-holes.
       

25. Pingback: And Thus, With A Simple Tweet – Small Dead Animals

26. That’s different because shut up you racist xenophobe! Then the government was reuniting the boy with his father, not separating a child from his loving family.

    
    For those disinclined to click through the link above, I give you the jpg.

    1. With his alleged father who wasn’t listed on his birth certificate. No DNA test was performed.

       1. And Elian is now a properly programmed spokesbot for the Cuban regime.

27. Another “I’m trying to explain things to people” moment to me.

    All the anti-Trump people have to do is be NOT crazy. And, they can’t even pull that off. Most of the people out there realize that the anti-Trump people are nuts, and their masks are falling off. These people don’t have the interests of the people they’re supposed to represent to heart.

    1. Yep.

    2. Don’t forget that the Democrats have a two hundred year history of outbursts of widespread political violence every generation or so. That starts at least as far back as their vicious attacks on Federalists in years before the War of 1812, such as the cannon and mob assault on the Federalist paper in Baltimore, the one that so injured Light Horse Harry Lee. And sometimes there are multiple sets of incidents in a single generation, such as Bleeding Kansas, the Civil War, and the anti-reconstruction violence. Sometimes they are widespread but small in scale, without much government sanction, such as the surge of lynchings that followed Theodore Roosevelt having Booker T. Washington to supper at the White House. There were Wilson’s thugs in the American Protective League, the KKK of course, the crowd at the 1968 Dem convention, Antifa, etc. The Democratic Party has the longest track record of crime and political violence of any party America has ever seen, even if many of the individual party members are decent human beings.

       1. The Democratic Party, in one form or another, is the party of a certain kind of “aristocratic privilege” that in many other places was a form of feudalism. Sometimes noble, sometimes terrible. But, still.

          1. Aristocratic privilege, and mob violence to keep it that way.

             1. Which is aristocrats (bad and indifferent ones) in a nutshell. The few rare good ones tend to make sure the mobs are no longer around to be a problem.

    3. I occasionally listen to Tim Pool, and apparently the ones even SLIGHTLY sane are already being turfed out for not virtue-signaling wokeness enough.

       (I generally prefer Paul Joseph Watson for the dripping sarcasm. Incidentally, he thinks that in a clown contest America would still lose to the UK. Which I would agree with. So all is not lost, my friends over yonder!)

       1. Losing a clown contest to the UK isn’t all that encouraging, considering. But I’ll take it.

          1. You guys aren’t quite at ‘enforcing laws against mean social media comments over tsunami-ing knife crime and virtue-signalling at pride parade’ levels. So there’s that.

       2. When your best sense of the political aspects of the UK come from Jonathan Pie, you have an issue…

    4. There is [a] class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy, and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. … There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.
       — Booker T. Washington in his 1911 book, My Larger Education

       And that applies to every other “protected minority” and interest group.

       1. I remember this quote, and it’s a “nothing new under the sun” sort of thing. But, it’s sad how many people seem to listen to these grievance-mongers.

28. I don’t care whether immigrants are white, black, brown, green, or purple. If they refuse to learn the language and law of the country and demand food, housing, healthcare and education at public expense, they are freeloaders. Yes, there was a time when America welcomed everyone who wanted to immigrate, but beginning in the 1880s, the difficulties with assimilating large numbers of immigrants with increasingly different languages, history, and customs led to imposing restrictions. It could be and has been argued that this was simply racist, but there are also practical problems with “naturalizing” immigrants, making sure that they are willing and able to become cooperative, law-abiding, responsible, and productive citizens.
    And yes, when the children of immigrants have still not yet gone through the naturalization process required before first generation immigrants may become citizens, then second-generation immigrants is not an inappropriate term.

    1. THIS.

    2. Earlier than the 1880’s. You have the “Know Nothings” in the 1840’s worried about immigrants. You have the problem of New England and New York and the political machines of that era using the votes of newcomers.

       Some of my ancestors were Germans. They were invited to settle in what is now the Ukraine, as a buffer against the Turk, several hundred years ago. They stayed German. Then they arrived in America. Very soon they became American.

       The melting pot is the only way for America to survive. Otherwise you end up with the European city with each “quarter”, where your tribe lives, and walls to keep you safe from enemy tribes. The damocraps have prospered by dividing us into tribes they “give” stuff to. If they win it will be the death of America.

       When I look at my ancestry on 23 & me, I see hybrid vigor. Spanish, German, English, 5% “native american”. I am America. My ancestors came from many parts of the world, and became American. That is who I AM. I AM an American.

    3. I am concerned about green or purple immigrants; they should be quarantined and receive a thorough health screening. 😛

       1. PARTICULARLY the polka dotted ones.

       2. And well you should be……

29. This post in a major exercise in “defending what Donald Trump meant rather than what he said.”
    Seriously. If Trump had gone and said “these women who spend all their time running America down should find somewhere else to live that’s more to their liking” the usual lefties would have frwaked and the rest would have said “Seems legit.” Instead, we got…what he said.

    1. Well, barring some of the usual suspects (does Trump live rent-free in Bill Kristol’s head? A look at Kristol’s twitter feed implies such) who freaked out, and those trying to be the Voice of Conservatism (Sorry, Bill, you aren’t now, if you ever were) it looks like most normal people agree with the president. The only difference is that it’s now clearer what voices (ostensibly) on the right can and should be ignored.

       I don’t do video, but it sounds like the own-goal was scored by the lefties:

       https://victorygirlsblog.com/thesquad-press-conference-backfires-spectacularly/

       I’ll risk moderation with this on Pressley’s reaction to a question asking if she’d condemn attacks against ICE facilities:

       🔥BRUTAL🔥
       New face of the Democratic Party @AyannaPressley asked if she would tell Americans to “stop violently attacking ICE facilities.”
       She remains *silent*
       She then *refuses* to condemn Antifa terrorists & threatens the reporter asking her questions: pic.twitter.com/PWCXXGdS3W

       — Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 15, 2019

       1. I saw a headline this morning about Twitter refusing to explain why their guidelines did not determine Trump’s tweet racist and block it.

          Perhaps because there was nothing in there about race?

          Clearly the J-school grads toiling in the print-mines at AP and my local dead-tree news aggregator (such local news as they publish is essentially repurposed press handouts and two or three bloggers columnists) are at a loss to grasp that not everything of which they disapprove is racist.

          1. Right?It wasnt’ even remotely racist.

       2. Define “normal,” because my facebook feed says otherwise.

          Meanwhile, that the Four Would-be Congresswomen of the Apocalypse botched their chance to look like the adults in the room isn’t surprising. Our political leadership has been doing it for years, why should it change now?

          1. Sorry, but with the curation of posts and news by Facebook, I have difficulty accepting anything from a Facebook feed as representative of reality. It’s kind of like free speech on Twitter; seems to lean far left.

    2. Which was STILL not white supremacist, or racist. Which was yes, that immigrants have the duty to assimilate.
       So…. your point is? Precisely?

       1. Except for the part where three of the four people he yelled at weren’t immigrants to begin with. And if you think he was thinking that deeply you’re kidding yourself.

          1. Irrelevant – their politics are those of identity, of activists criticizing America as racist, sexist, etcetera etcetera excretera. As if there is a country in this world that is none of those.

             It isn’t a matter of “thinking deeply” for him to have a more nuanced concept; it is a matter of expressing bluntly. Never confuse being articulate for being smart, nor being blunt for as being stupid. Sometimes the most insightful observations are couched in the coarsest terms. See, for instance, the “issue here ain’t pussy, the issue here is monkey” scene from The Right Stuff.

             Somebody needs to do for Trump what is done here for Gus.

          2. See post today.
             You don’t know how he was thinking. And I don’t either. I know it’s time we talk about people who come here, live in unassimilated communities and never acculturate.
             And you’re talking to someone whose kids are CALLED second generation immigrants.
             So, how do you feel about the other lizards?

             1. “Second Generation”

                Which makes no sense. IMHO You can’t be first generation born here if one of your parents were born here …

                From paternal great-grand dad, 3rd generation born in US. But paternal great grandma is 1th generation born in Oregon (which makes me 4th), and *Xth generation in the US. Maternal side is *Xth generation in US.

                * Xth because I have NO idea how to WAG, although someone(s) on each side have the correct linage and paperwork required for daughters of the revolution scholarships. It could be counted back at least that far.

                At some point F em. I’m native.

                1. Look, I don’t care. Also I’ve never seen it applied beyond grandkids. But kids definitely get it. In schools. Again, I don’t gaf. I’m American.

                   1. Yep. Agree. I actually had to think about it. If I have to think about how long we’ve been here. My response is Whatever. We’re Americans. Stand by the last line. We’re Native.

          3. ???

             All members of that group make noise about being, to be brief, hyphenated Americans.

             All of their pre-hyphens are jacked up.

             Thus, “go back and fix it, then come tell us how to do it” is not outrageous.

          4. And it’s your serious conclusion that just because they were BORN within the bounds that this makes them Americans? So was Benedict Arnold.

             Magic dirt theory, in other words.

          5. AOC identifies as Puerto Rican. Tlaib identifies as Palestinian. Omar identifies as Somali. Pressley identifies as black, and supports only those blacks for whom it is their identity.

             I.E. Not one of them identifies as American. Until someone points that out. THEN they scream that they are American and how dare you, you RACIST.

             1. *nod*

                Thank you for spelling it out.

                Even second or third generation PR folks, this matters to.

                That island has some issues. (And that’s from someone who recognizes, say, Hawaii’s issues.)

             2. THIS. In fact Pressley was saying that black representatives must speak with “a black voice” by which she means to the left of Lenin.

    3. “Progressives” Tell Me To Move To Africa All The Time…

30. A0C is going to do for the news industry what Chick Ghostbusters and a flood of lame, “modernized,” neutered remakes are doing for the box office…

    1. The new 007 is a black lady.

       That’s going to be interesting. In the same way a cruise ship taking on water is “interesting”.

       1. That is dumb. If you want a black female spy assassin, start your own dang franchise. Or spin it off from Bond, if you want that cachet.

          It is not as if there are no spy movies about female spies or assassins, or about black spies and assassins, or even about female black spies who are assassins. Maybe not about female black snipers, but I would not guarantee that.

          So what the heck is the virtue signal? “Brits copy fifty year old blaxploitation movies”?

          1. I think the take-home message from the casting of a black actress as 007 is that they really, really don’t want our deplorable money.

             I plan on keeping mine to myself.

             1. The Majority of Black Characters In The MCU Films Are Unoriginal

                Black guy covers the insulting tokenizing of established characters in the name of diversity.

                1. Watched most of the clip. He’s noticing the annoying tendency Hollywood has of treating black people like idiots. The Marvel movies have been the -least- idiotic of the last many years, they managed to make the race switches at least -work- in the movie. For Heimdal the Viking god to be played by Idris Alba is clearly politcal, but at least Alba makes it work. Overall it doesn’t actively detract from the movie, even though we all see what’s going on there.

                   The Valkyrie character, same thing. Valkyries are Norse goddesses, they’re big huge blondes and built like a brick shit house. They’re not dainty sylphlike brown girls who weigh-in at 105lbs soaking wet. But again, she makes it work so it isn’t taking away from the fun of the movie.

                   Making the Ancient One female in Dr. Strange, another potentially stupid PC token move but saved by a magnificent performance from Tilda Swinton. She turned out to be one of the best parts of the Dr. Strange movie and she was great in the latest Avengers.

                   Marvel Comics has also done this, as noted in the clip, with Nick Fury. Originally a white character, originally Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos from WWII. Believable in the 1960s, not so much in the 1990s because it had been 50 years by then, and Fury would have been 80 years old. 2018, now he’s over 100. Continuity is supposed to -help- the story.

                   But then Spiderman is retirement age now. He was a high school kid in 1962. 2019 its been a while and he’s still a kid in university. So arguments about Nick Fury and continuity, they fall a little short. If Spiderman is still a kid, Nick Fury can still be the same dude. Vitamin pills that were walked on by a radioactive spider that was on its way over to Peter Parker’s house.

                   But we see this race-switch, gender-switch crap all the time from Hollywood, and every time its just annoying weak-sauce pandering. You want a black character? MAKE ONE. Let there be good reasons for the black character, let them have powers and flaws that make sense, let them stumble through the story the same as everybody else. Don’t take an established white character, cast a black actor and call it good. Do some fricking work for a change.

                   What’s the most annoying thing about 007 the black lady version? Its LAZY. Just plain lazyness.

                   If you want to tell me the story about how random black girl got to be the scariest assassin on Earth and EARNED that 007 number, I might be interested in that. But they’re not going to. It’ll just be the same story they always tell, except Jane Bond this time. I’m too lazy to go out to see Jane Bond.

          2. I would enjoy seeing a movie about Mary Touvestre, who stole the plans for the Merrimac and made her way to the North, without any training or orders. There is a freaking superspy.

             Or Harriet Tubman. James Bond would only have wished he was as effective, and paid attention so he could learn something.

             1. Oh my gosh, the lady they’ve cast as 007 would be PERFECT for Tubman, if she can do something that will pass as some flavor of American accent!

                The paintings I’ve seen of Tubman as a younger woman are at LEAST in the “Abe Lincoln” casting window. (Lincoln being a rather…singular…looking fellow.)

             2. I’d go see Harriet Tubman movie. We have been to the movies in ages.

                OTOH “they” would scream “racist”. To be accurate only the actors who were Harriet and those escaping the south could be darkly tanned. Those who risked their property, their own lives, the lives of their families, and any employees/tenets, to provide hidden safety along the underground railroad, but definition can not be … or they wouldn’t have been there to provide that stop on the railroad. But historical facts won’t stop them from screaming “racists”.

       2. Point of interest: she is NOT the new James Bond. Bond left MI6 at the end of the last movie. This actress is portraying the agent who was assigned the “007” code number following Bond’s departure.

          1. Yes, like I said, she’s the new 007. “James Bond retired” is SJW Speak for they don’t think they can get a toxic masculinity Bond film past the British Censors and the Shrieking Twitterati, so they’re going to go for toxic femininity instead. More 90lb poofy fashion models beating up beefy men, whee.

             Better than Daniel Craig transitioning, I suppose. I don’t think he’s got the legs for a miniskirt.

             No word on what they’re going to do about Bond Girls… Maybe they’ll go for some of that fabulous and totally feminist girl-on-girl action. So maybe not a complete loss.

             [mutter mutter SLAP mutter]

             Sorry, I’m told by my Sensitivity Reader that girl-on-girl is un-QUILTBAG and will be purged. Oh, and I’m being purged for saying it.

             See you under the bus! ~:D

             1. Actually they are Bond women now and part of the whole thing one of the articles was pushing is that she ignores Bonds advances and such. Plus the tagline for article was almost as insulting as possible, basically ‘thought bond couldn’t be a women? Well he’s a black woman now’.

                Changing the character wearing the moniker I actually like, although saw the James Bond identity as more a cover than a person, e.g. Brosnan bond retired or died and went away to another name.

                1. You know, what I find hilarious in all this is that the Daniel Craig Bond films have been generally awful, mostly due to the writing-in of all manner of SJW themes. Craig himself is a bit wooden and not believable as a lady’s man. He looks like an SAS trooper, not a smooth talking spy.

                   This “Bold New Direction!” is supposed to be trying to improve things and get the franchise back on its feet at the box office. When it crashes and burns harder than Girlie Ghostbusters, they will blame the audience. The casting has just been announced and the blame has started already.

                   Because its OUR fault they can’t make a movie that doesn’t suck.

                   1. Yep. Had to actually look up which one after skyfall. Saw in theaters but was utterly forgettable.

                      And ya. With the way it was announced it looked like going for outrage publicity

                   2. Does anybody else notice this?

                      I thought it was just me– he strikes me as the kind of guy I’d shoot, rather than be charmed by, but…eh, I think Garak is charming. (Although IRL shoot him now before he decides you’re a threat to Cardassia. As we are, being Americans…..)

                   3. I always thought he looked more KGB than MI6, i.e. Vladimir Putin.
                      Which would have been handy back in the old days now that I think about it.

                2. “Changing the character wearing the moniker I actually like”

                   Yes, that would be acceptable and a respectful way of handling it — but they ain’t gonna do it thataway. They’re undoubtedly going to shove the new 007 down our deplorable throats and command us to “suck it!”

                   Face it, plenty now “do it better” and the franchise has exceeded its “use by” date by decades. The franchise was a pioneer but it is time it was retired, a fact they’ve been tacitly acknowledging ever since Judy Dench* took on the role of “M” — if not before then. This way they get to kill it and blame hide-bound, right-wing, sexist reactionaries for the slaying.

                   *The rotation of actors through “M” and “Q” roles supports the concept of “James Bond” as a cover identity whose occupant varies.

                   1. Oh I know. After the 90s it just got pretty blatant there were no more acceptable ideas.

                   2. From memory of the Ian Fleming novels, “James Bond” was a real person; the number “007” was assigned to him. IIRC, there was “008” and one other. Since they seemed to keep it to single digits, it makes sense that the pool of 00 agents would have to change over the years.

                      And yes, “M” and “Q” were supposed to be job titles, as best as I could tell. M seemed to be the same person through those books. Thought there was a Q branch, with “Q” as the head.

       3. Cruise ship upper management, as a general rule, does not fire missiles into the bottoms of their holds.

          1. “Captain, we’re taking on water! She’s listing hard to port!”
             “Good! Now get busy with that cutting torch sailor, and make the hole bigger!”

31. Even if two of the women addressed were actually born in the US, they sure don’t act like they came from the US. Thus, their home of the heart isn’t the US.

    1. Agree. From the way they all 4 talk. They sound like they came directly on the “boat” well after they were grown. That where they came from was heaven on earth (then why are you here?) Not as children, not as born here. I give their parents all F in raising their children.

       1. Wait wait, I know!

          They’re… TRANSRACIAL. or something. Like this deluded moron being mocked by Paul.

          (Mind, he could just legally migrate and get Filipino citizenship, and he’d be legally allowed to call himself Filipino, but believe me, our local bading population (catch all phrase that encompasses gays, transvestites AND transgenders) would make him cry, since most of the crossdressing and transgender ones PASS SO MUCH THEY LOOK PRETTIER THAN REAL WOMEN.)

          1. Our in-processing to Clark included (possibly apocryphal) stories about service members who got engaged to be married to a pretty young thing only to find out she was a guy and the family now intended to blackmail or reveal that the poor E1 was a homosexual.

             The moral of the story was “Go straight to your First Shirt, do not pass go, do not collect $100… go *now* and let mommy take care of the problem for you.”

32. Not to nitpick, but if your parents were the immigrants, then you are first generation. If your grandparents were the immigrants, then you are 2nd generation. Etc. etc. If you are the immigrant, you are the immigrant. If you become a citizen, you’re a naturalized American. But still an immigrant American.

    1. Whatevs. I am so profoundly uninterested in semantic arguments of this sort.
       I am an American. Also, PFUI.

    2. Some twenty years ago in public school it was standard to say “third generation immigrant,” etc, to indicate how many generations since immigration. The catch was usually on from what country, they didn’t much care about anything too white, although I was too innocent to pick up on that at the time.

       The revolutionary thing was to say the kid version of “who cares? I’m American.”

       (I’m a 4th, here. The bleepin’ immigrant great-grand was as American as all get out, and he got here as a teen.)

33. I read President Trump’s tweet, so I am acutely aware that ALL the sound and fury on the Left is a lie told by an idiot, signifying nothing. Occasional Cortex, call your office.

    I will now say two things about immigration and such.

    1) In Canada, in the 1980s when I was a contractor, I would guess that over 90% of construction in Toronto that was not being done by unionized labor at government projects was done for cash, off the books, no taxes paid. Because if you paid the taxes, the job price would roughly triple and your quote would be laughed at.

    Currently there’s a crisis in the construction trades, because nobody can find workers who know which end of a hammer hits the nail and all the workers available are A) on drugs and B) don’t speak English.

    Something else I figured out, a man with a vehicle costs about $50/hr. Unless he’s an illegal off-the-books ’employee’ driving some wreck with stolen plates on it, so that’s who is delivering your Dominos pizza in Toronto. And that’s why a crappy Dominos pizza costs $25 and is made of plastic. Due to get worse when the Carbon Tax kicks in.

    2) I was an immigrant to the USA with every intention of staying there the rest of my life, because in the USA I could get educated in my chosen profession and get a job, and in Canada I couldn’t. Got my Masters, got gainful employment, bought a house, bought a new truck. All impossible in Canada.

    But now I live in back in Canada, basically because the INS simply would not do their paperwork. I spent over $10K on lawyers (utterly wasted) complying with regulations that would make your hair stand on end, and despite having no less than the federal Senator of my state of residence intervene, nothing could move the INS. I’m sure if the President at the time had phoned them up and raised hell with them it still wouldn’t have moved them forward.

    Meanwhile, I watched literal goat herders from Somalia (by which I mean gentlemen whose profession was tending goats) with drug resistant tuberculosis get green cards because they worked at the turkey plant in town.

    So I concluded that the the system was not only broken, it was actively corrupt and deliberately working against me. Once that conclusion was reached, the decision to return home was immediate.

    I’ve heard this exact story from an awful lot of highly skilled Canadians. Doctors, nurses, physical therapists, computer people, and also air-frame maintenance guys who keep all those airliners flying. They do not get issued green cards, but random Mexican/Somali/Haitian/what-have-you unskilled laborers do.

    On the bright side, all that American money I saved up and removed from the American economy made it possible for me to get on the ladder here in Canada, which was great for me but not so great for the USA. I do my best to return the favor by wintering in Arizona, but the people at the US border seem very intent on making me want to stay home.

    So really, Trump is underselling the border thing. Y’all are getting fleeced like you can’t believe.

    1. I’ll put it frankly… what ancient formula are you using that means a man with a vehicle costs $50/hr? Sounds exactly like the ‘calculation’ a friend of mine made 25 years ago, updated for inflation.

       1. Yes, it used to be $30/hr but now minimum wage is $15/hr and the cheapest used car you can get is about $3K. This also assumes the car is sitting still, not going anywhere. Mileage is very expensive these days.

          If you want him to go someplace, then its probably more like $70/hr.

          1. as i told him then.. ‘y’all must buy real crappy cars’

             and well, the minimum wage is only $15/hr in Seattle. it won’t be in CA for a few years more…..

             1. Yep, $15/hr minimum in Ontario, although Doug Ford may have changed it. Not sure. A human who can stand up, see lightning and hear thunder, plus show up every day costs $18-$25/hr, I’ll tell you that.

                And at $18-$25 they are getting poverty pay. $50K/year, you are starving. Rent is ~$1,500/month around here for cheesy one-bedroom dumps. Two weeks goes to rent, two weeks goes to tax (yes it does, you Lefty tools, 50% tax on the poor here) you better have a room mate and be good at making spaghetti out of stolen McDonald’s ketchup packets. Mom and Dad are either paying the rent or paying for your car.

                But everybody keeps voting Liberal. It amazes me.

                1. Rents here in Eugene run $900 for a dump to $1200 or $1500 per month for not so much dump but not best part of town. Wages here are NOT $15/hour minimum wage. Not sure when $12/hour requirement ($15/hour in Portland) hits.

                   Reason why son is still at home. Know of more than one of his HS friends, if they haven’t managed to get into their own home (narrow period where house payment was cheaper than renting), are back home, with spouse and kids in tow, with both spouses working. Know of one case where one is working and the other is SSI. They do have their own subsidized apartment (actually a decent one, in a decent part of town), don’t own a vehicle, and they still need help from their parents (who went back to work to be able to help), and the church…

    2. I would believe. I’ve had friends go through the process. I hated it in my time. It’s only got worse.

       1. So much worse. these days they spend time harassing tourists at the border over weed. So useful, right?

          To be fair, one does not expect such things to be all candy and balloons. These are unionized public employees doing something amazingly boring and occasionally dangerous. Its the DMV writ large.

          On the other hand one does not expect to send a form off into the ether and never hear about it again, when that form is your permission to stay in the country where you own a freakin’ house and have a job, which you are now doing illegally because they did not update your papers. (And every day that goes by, you expect some guy to show up at your door and deport you. Because they really do that, my friends. They really, really do. Just never to Mexican drug dealers, or radical Somalis who marry their brother to defraud the system, then brag about it on national TV. That would be the point where I fired the lawyer.)

          Then you appeal to the ONLY HUMAN IN GOVERNMENT WHO WILL ANSWER THEIR PHONE, that being the US Senator’s office of your district. And then that guy does not hear back either. And he’s a #*%$-ing Senator, and also famous as hell, and a DemocRat too.

          And you don’t hear for SO LONG that you finally say “F- This!” uproot the whole operation and drive back to Canada with all your stuff. Looks like we got us a convoy, Rubber Duck, big 10-4 good buddy.

          Then after you’ve been home in Canada, bought another house, got a job, the whole deal, THEN they send you a letter. And the bitch at the interview (which you HAVE TO ATTEND or they bar you from the USA for life, and it is ONLY held in Montreal, too bad so sad you had to drive 800 miles) acted all surprised when I told her to keep it. I told her a thing or two, you may be sure.

          So in case anybody is wondering why Canadians living in the US tend to be super salty about the US government, they’ve likely got all due cause.

          1. Folks trying to come with skills or money, especially industries where licensing is necessary, have more money than all the family immigrants and they can bleed more out. Plus you can’t appear racist by allowing westerners in.

             1. Certain countries appear to be fast-tracked by the bureaucracy. Somalia, Saudi Arabia, China, India etc. they get green cards and H1Bs like Happy Meals at McDonald’s. “You want a toy with that?”

                Canadians, Brits, Germans, Australians etc. get put through the wringer and washer. Its low-grade torture, basically. They’re very concerned we will “steal” an American’s job, you see. Can’t be too careful about those damn Canadian job thieves.

                Meanwhile, Mexicans and everybody else from South America is strolling in like the border isn’t even a thing. There is no reason for them to worry at all. And of course once arrived they all apply for and get welfare, food stamps, all that great stuff. If a Canadian applied for that they’d be deported in a day.

                1. And yet it’s China and India crowding out the tech fields.

                   Even if it’s benign reason this is going to light a powder keg.

          2. > the country where you own a freakin’ house and have a job

             There’s no profit in *that* kind of immigrant! You can’t justify a vast bureaucracy unless you have enough clients to “assist”, you know…

          3. Know someone who has dual Canadian/US citizenship. She is a widow of an American.

             Know someone else who after 35+ years became a dual citizen of the US and Netherlands. He just had no desire to become a citizen, until his wife, kids, and lawyers, pointed out how much the US government got upon his death, VS his family. He’s the one who accidentally got on the wrong Ferry between San Juan County and the mainland … one whose origin was Canada. Did not have his passport nor green card with him. Yes. Detained. They called the office. He was the owner of the business. Office’s response was “Uh, he writes our pay checks. Can we have our boss back?” Do not remember if they let him go, or his wife or son-in-law (worked for the business). flew up with his documentation. It wasn’t long after I started the job this happened, mid-’00.

34. Yeah, from a law enforcement standpoint it’s been my personal experience that pretty much all of the legal immigrants to this area are really, really frakking excited to stay here rather than go back to their shithole countries. They remember just how dangerous it was to live back there. It’s their kids who were born here, or possibly in another country while their parents were in refuge status waiting to get here, that hate how much they have to actually work to get ahead and think that every little personal setback is because of racism.

    What? You didn’t show up for work on your second day, didn’t even call in sick, and it’s the racist company’s fault you got fired? And now don’t have enough money to buy a new iPad and gas for your vehicle, and take out food each day? Sorry Hon, you made your choices freely.

35. Having read “Fear – by Amanda S. Green – a Blast From The Past from September 2017” and this article pretty much back to back, I am struck by the fact that Trump isn’t afraid to speak his mind. He doesn’t agonize over his posts and worry about how people will interpret him. He isn’t careful in his speech. And while I enjoy those who speak with care and precision, it’s not the only way to communicate. Anyone acting with a little good faith (yes, I know that’s asking a lot nowadays) can readily determine what President Trump was getting at.

    https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2019/07/15/america-ladies-love-leave/

    1. As Andrew Klavan had pointed out long ago, Trump is a guy from Queens, an American mode familiar to all New Yorkers. He grew up dealing with construction guys and learned his business collecting from rent laggards. He is not politically correct and thus shows up the facade political correctness protects. He is shifting the Overton Window* and that is a sin those pushing it ever further Left cannot accept.

       For the sake of clarity:
       The Overton window is an approach to identifying which ideas define the domain of acceptability within a democracy’s possible governmental policies. [Wikipeia, emphasis added]

       All denunciations of racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and Islamophobia are efforts to defend the placement of the Overton Window.

36. I’m seeing two basic themes I all the “Trump is a racist/whatever,” firestorms and they also apply to any non-progessive commenter.
    First, the critics all believe they can see directly into the no -progressive’s hearts and know their true, innermost motive. Second, that motive is always the worst one they can imagine.

    1. Yep. They all think they’re psychic. And then they say “if he’s not a racist/you’re not a racist, you shouldn’t have said x y z” completely missing that ANYTHING can be distorted, by a willing enough listener.

    2. Manipulation and projection.

       Differences Between a Psychopath vs Sociopath
       https://psychcentral.com/blog/differences-between-a-psychopath-vs-sociopath/

       Typical leftist is a sociopath. May have feelings for family and close friends, but total lack of empathy for everyone else. Out to get what they want.

       Leftist leader is a psychopath. Manipulative, deliberate, personable and charming, makes people think they really care about them when all they care about is satisfying their own desires.

37. Excellent post. Spot on.
    (Sorry I’m late.)

38. Pingback: “Fit in or F*ck off. I’ll help you pack your bags” – Cold Fury

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