Disinformation

422 thoughts on “Disinformation”

1. Take Care And Stay Smart Everybody!

   Note, the I didn’t say “Stay Sane”.

   Most of us are Odd and may be “slightly” nuts (but not me). [Crazy Grin]

   1. In a crazy world sanity is insane.

   2. *wonders about the ‘cunning as serpents’ line and how serpentes compares to draco*

      1. Don’t know but is “cunning” the same as “smart”? 😉

         1. Probably not, I’ve seen it translated as ‘wise’ as well.

   3. Sanity is overrated. We’re fighting Lovecraftian Horrors here, after all.

      1. Nah. We’re fighting yet one more self-selected Elite. They aren’t anywhere near as INTERESTING as a Lovecraftian Horror. Crass, stupid, arrogant, annoying, dangerous, and tiresome, yes. Interesting, no.

         1. None of their transgressions against moral or good sense even approach the inventiveness of the French ancien regime.

            1. Because they are the threat we must deal with NOW, there is a tendency to magnify their importance. The cold truth is they are just another clump of parasites. The reason I harp on this is that it has been my observation that there is little they fear more than being unimportant.

         2. They are also easy to get rid of, unlike a Lovecraftian Horror.

2. I remember the 2016 election. I had not voted for Trump, not only because I live in California (which made it pointless), but because I didn’t feel sure he wasn’t a progressive false flag, I didn’t feel that I knew what his agenda was even if he had a real one, and his speeches often seemed to embody nationalist and populist ideas that aren’t mine. And I had followed the polls and didn’t expect him to win. And then the tide started turning and I realized that I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off of me. At least, we weren’t going to have Clinton appointing Supreme Court justices, and Trump might appoint tolerable ones. . . .

   So then I went from surprise at my own pleasure, to anticipation of Schadenfreude at progressive horror . . . and by the Inauguration, I had had enough Schadenfreude to be getting tired of it; I was already at the point of disgust. I’m a lot more disgusted now. But I’ll be really happy if 2020 brings us some more occasion for Schadenfreude.

   1. I started calling it the Wheel of Trump on Facebook in 2016, because I knew that, like O’bummer, we were seeing a performer’s mask than anything real. PIus, I was hesitant about someone who had been a Democrat until 2015. I’d wanted Scott Walker, in large part on the grounds that he’d proven rather good at winning elections against Democrats, having done so three times in the prior 4 years.

      But once it was down to Hillary vs Trump, the response of every Constitutionally-sane and informed Republican should have been, “Wheel of Trump or not, _NEVER HILLARY!_”

      That we got so close to the jackpot with Trump’s performance as President, simultaneous with his crass rhetoric playing laser-pointer with the media to distract them, is not far short of miraculous.

      -Albert

      1. Amen. And I want to give him another CHANCE.

         1. Sarah, when I hear people bitching about his yet unaccomplished campaign promises, (like why are Hillary and scads of other felons still not incarcerated?) I recall Barack’s infamous promise to Putin to be “more flexible” after his re-election. I estimate that some things we’d all love to observe in our rear-view mirrors would endanger his chances of re-election. I can wait four years for some things. If he has done all that he has in a first term, I cannot help but think his second term will be GLORIOUS. That is why I suspect Dems are trying anything, everything, no matter how ill-advised or wacky, to prevent that. They are shaking in their boots at the prospect of Second-Term Trump.

            1. A long bit I just wrote in response to “last time I didn’t vote cuz the choices were monster, communist, and idiot. I was wrong about the idiot.”
               ===
               Lots of people were wrong about the idiot. 😀 I knew literally _nothing_ about Trump but “isn’t that some rich guy??” (having had no TV for the previous couple decades — I was even fuzzy on his name!) so once he started looking serious, I went forth and dug up every old article and interview I could find. And was very rapidly convinced that here’s someone who not only knows what he’s doing (failed business rate of only 5%, vs 50% average), but has been consistently railing how America is going wrong for almost 40 years (including testimony before Congressional committees). And politically, he was beholden to no one.

               So, Trump got my vote. My _enthusiastic_ vote. I’da been okay with Ted Cruz (who is smarter than he seems) but by himself Cruz is just not enough of a force to turn the tide… and probably would have lost to Hillary anyway.

               And since then I’ve become convinced (in part from the Bender affidavit, which is a scary must-read — long but worth it**) that the real reason there’s so much political hate and orange-man-bad propaganda is because our enemies have _already_ tried to corrupt Trump in the usual way, starting back when he first came to financial prominence — and failed. _Repeatedly._ (That also means… he knows all about ’em. But cleaning that sand out of the gears is a slow and dangerous process. We don’t hear about it, cuz not to encourage idiots, but there are regular assassination attempts.)

               Which is probably the real reason some formerly jello-spined congresscritters have started finding their balls: suddenly it’s okay to NOT be corrupt, because Trump has their backs, and they no longer need to keep their heads down if they’re not on the take.

               ** TL;DR: all of the mainstream media (except possibly Fox) and a large proportion of our political class are either owned outright by or are being bribed by Qatar, which has all that oil money to do it, with the goal of civilizational jihad. And once you take the bribe, you can’t say no or back away — cuz if you do your career is over and you go to jail. They’re also manufacturing people like Ilhan Omar (so yes, calling her a traitor is not too harsh).

               Of course an attempt was made using the “Russian dossier” (KGB boilerplate used since forever to control foreign officials, tho originally Trump was just collateral damage: the real goal was Ukrainian mobsters [yes, the same ones Biden’s kid was paid by] trying to take down Putin by making him look like an American stooge, since Putin put the kobosh on their most profitable activities in Russia) — but Trump failed to fold in the prescribed way, so here we are today, enjoying the impeachment comedy, which at least prevents Democrats from having time for other legislative mischief.

               Particularly important since the Democratic Party is being taken over from within by the “Democratic Socialists” and their plan for conquering America (unfortunately already well-advanced, having inherited the Gramsci marxist machine and well-funded by the Muslim Brotherhood; Bernie was their pet candidate, and Occasional-Cortex is one of theirs too).

               Meanwhile, Trump has quietly replaced about a quarter of the Federal judiciary with Constitutional originalists (since Obama conveniently left so many positions vacant), and has been deliberately picking younger judges. That is perhaps the most important thing he can do, because those are positions held for life… and that’s 30-40 years of last-ditch resistance to the socialist tide.
               =====
               Also, “Trump was a Democrat” isn’t quite right. He sat on the fence and donated to one and all, and was friendly with _everyone_ in power — because if you’re doing construction in New York, or big real estate just about anywhere, that’s what you do if you don’t want to fight a continuous stream of roadblocks. You have to make allies, and avoid making enemies, or you simply can’t DO business.

               ===
               I use a bogus-looking email because after some ‘update’ a couple years ago, WordPress (delenda est) wouldn’t let me post under my normal one anymore. But I did finally get around to making it a real mailbox. 😛

            2. And so are our enemies-foreign.

               1. I don’t actually care about broken campaign promises because nearly all of those were not promises he could keep solely by his own initiative. Building a wall at the Southern border was always going to require Congressional cooperation; it is clear now that he should have pushed it harder when the GOP still owned both houses of Congress but it isn’t clear his other priorities — such as tax reform and ending Obamadon’tcare — shouldn’t have taken priority.

                  OTOH, those things he has done, such as regulatory reform and judicial appointments — have been more than satisfactory.

                  Besides, what else is on offer?

                  1. The wall is being built.

                     https://www.trumpwall.construction/

                     1. Yes, but at a far slower rate than could be accounted for by any reasonable opposition (which is not to say the opposition has been reasonable.)

                        Illegal border crossings drop for sixth straight month after Trump pressures Mexico
                        The number of people who illegally crossed the southern border or arrived at a port of entry to claim asylum has declined for a sixth consecutive month since peaking at the height of the humanitarian crisis in May.

                        Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan announced Monday that 42,649 people were apprehended or showed up to claim asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border in November. That number is down from more than 144,116 in May.

                        The number of arrests has dropped significantly since Mexico deployed more federal police and military to the United States and Guatemalan borders to deter illegal immigration after President Trump followed through on a threat to impose tariffs on Mexican imports if the country did not take action.

                        The Trump administration also began turning away asylum seekers arriving at border crossings, limiting the number of people who can present their cases per day. It then implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols, which mandate the large majority of asylum seekers be returned to Mexico while their case waits to be heard by a U.S. federal immigration judge.

                        The number had dropped to 104,311 in June, 81,777 in July, 62,707 in August, 52,546 in September, and 45,250 in October. It is now on par with the usual number of monthly encounters of people on the southern border.

                        Morgan, speaking at a press conference at CBP headquarters in Washington on Monday morning, called the overall decline “staggering in a very positive way.”

                        [END EXCERPT]

                        Gee, given all of the news coverage over the Trump Administration efforts to deter entry you would think this would be newsworthy. Nearly as newsworthy as the prior administration separating kids from their families and holding detainees in cages.

            3. Most of them seem to forget the political environment Trump works in. He’s always had to be worried that if he moves too far or too fast, the GOPe leadership might be spooked enough to team up with the Democrats and let him be impeached out of office.

               They also forget that the only appointees / nominees he’s gotten are the ones the coup running FBI let through the background check process. Again, if he overrides them too many times, it makes impeachment sound plausible.

      2. Trump may have been a Democrat until 2015, but he’d actively talked about running for the Republican nomination in 2012. And he’d run for the Reform nomination in 2000. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t leery of him (I voted for Cruz, who was still on the ballot in California, even though he’d conceded just before I voted), but I knew he couldn’t be as bad as Hillary. I still worried, because he was a noisy unknown who could suck the oxygen out of the room, and some of his promises sounded suspiciously like excuses for new government programs. But I was confudent by that point that he’d be better than Hillary.

         1. Before he ran, Trump was a regular on Sean Hannity’s radio show. (I’ve given up on talk radio, partly due to excessive pessimism (and Hannity’s tendency to let progressive guests talk, and talk, and talk), but when Sean would talk to Trump, one could hear a) the love for America, and b) a strong sense of conservatism.

            Even so, Trump was my fourth choice for the nomination. Cruz was my third choice, but I’ve concluded he’d be better wearing judicial black robes (my preference would be SCOTUS) than as president.

            The new neighbors from California threw a small party. We carefully did not discuss politics, and it transpired that he was a state worker (Cal Parks, some management position) until he retired. OTOH, he did invite the small rancher across the highway who proudly flys a Gasden flag and signs promoting State of Jefferson. I’m hopeful that the California ex-pats came to the Deplorable side of the state because it was a good ideological fit. Still, won’t discuss politics for a while.

            I’m now more worried about what the state government can do to us in the red counties than what the lefties can do at the federal level. We don’t have it as crazy as Virginia, but we’ve already had some issues.

      3. I remember discussing it with my parents prior to the election, when they were surprised that I was in favor of him. My mother was particularly concerned by the vulgar comments that had been amplified by the media, and wanted to know how I could support someone like that.

         I noted that of the two major candidates, one had expressed open hostility to people like me and to the rights and ideals that I deemed critical for civilized life, whereas the other was a cipher and apparent egomaniac. He might cause incidental damage to our rights and institutions while he blundered through seeking his own glory — but the first had expressed the clear intent of destroying them. That was enough for me.

         I have, since that time, been pleasantly surprised — the judicial picks alone have vindicated me. I was reluctant in 2016, but won’t be in 2020.

         1. #2 son? Is that you? 😀

            1. Assuredly not — but I expect a fair number of sons and daughters in my generation had similar conversations with their mothers in the lead-up to the election.

               1. Mom still can’t get over how crass he is, sadly. I haven’t yet tried the ‘do you think that fishermen in Jesus’ time, such as Peter, James, and John, were anything other than coarse-spoken?’ line on her, though.

                  -Albert

                  1. Peter – the only guy in the Bible swimming naked at work.

                     1. 😀

                  2. Ya. My mother is that way just as the rest of her side is. Father has stopped fighting those battles and I won’t. Enough bridges burned

                     1. Miss Manners was a died in the wool democrat, and I wouldn’t vote for her.
                        Trump’s “Crudeness” is necessary.
                        I’ve been known to swear a few times.

                        1. Ya. I’ve heard worse. I’ve said worse. And I’ll say worse in future.

                        2. My sister is an architect who works big construction sites. She said of Trump’s much-decried crassness — “WTF? have you ever BEEN to a construction site?? Trump is astonishingly _polite_.”

                           But yeah, sometimes the only way to get people’s attention is to be rude until they shut up and listen.

               2. He sat us down.
                  Mind you. The crude language didn’t worry me. The possible turning out to act like a dem did.

                  1. Absolutely. And I’ve never been happier to be proven wrong.

                     1. Same here.
                        Wasn’t overly worried about him tanking us economically, he might appear be a bit too crony for my likes, but he was not going to do near the damage at my worst fear than The Shrill One in a best case scenario.
                        Also at the time I had not noted how 0bama and Bill’s Wifey had insulted Trump at the press dinner, causing him to decide to kill their legacies ASAP. I likely would still preferred a different candidate (Cruz was my “Well Okay, I can take him as the Nominee” after my other choices just didn’t pan out or even show up), but I would have had less qualms about him winning.
                        Being one of the Leftoid Elite Socialites for as long as he was also allows him to know just what buttons to tweak on them to get maximum screeching. So he’s gone from being one of Hillary’s hit men on the Birther issue (everyone seems to forget that originated from her campaign), to handing her her ass in the election while she was padding the ballot boxes in safe win states and cities.

                        1. I think it’s more than that. As I say above — I think the REAL reason there’s so much Trump-Hate is because the established powers-that-be had ALREADY tried to corrupt Trump (because the same offers get made to anyone once they get enough influence), and FAILED. Which means he knows where all the bodies are buried, even if it’s real unsafe to go dig ’em up.
                           ===
                           Obama created the ‘birther’ issue himself with the stupidly-edited scan that the O’WhiteHouse released. I don’t blame anyone for amplifying it (after all, citizenship IS a required trait for POTUS, and his early history did create questions), but most have not rooted around in old microfiche and discovered O’s birth announcement in a 1960s Hawaiian newspaper, as I did.

                           1. Actually Obama crated the issue because the author bio blurb that accompanied his first book expressly stated that he was born in Kenya. Obama almost certainly approved that bio being included by the publisher. While likely done simply to help sell books and create authenticity: for the book (in the eyes of the left), it certainly created reasonable grounds to investigate his background further as to where he was actually born.

                           2. I think Ibama *wanted* people raising a fuss about his citizenship. It allowed him to paint is opponents as crazy conspiracy theorists. Note how the moment someone with a national pulpit – i.e. Trump – focused in on the birther stuff, it almost immediately got (mostly) cleared up.

                           3. 0bama used the Warren method to get ahead (Lie like hell about background) and as pointed out created it himself well before the crappy fake version of his birth cert. Timelines and side stories make it rather clear he was born in Hawaii, but either he wanted something covered up about the cert, or he used it as a stalking horse. The whole birther thing came about from the Shrill Campaign through her back channels, and Trump was well in her and Bill’s confidence, so he was used to beat on 0bama over the falsehoods involved. She would never “lower” herself to sling such mud. That was for others to do.
                              He claimed to be foreign at one time, so which lie is the truth? Why was the released copy so easily spotted as not a true copy, and what does the actual original say?
                              etc
                              etc
                              Look! over there!!11!

                           4. The Birther issue is a smoke screen for the REAL problem. Until 18 he had
                              Kenyan, British, Indonesian, and US. It is assumed that people will pick US. BUT Obama DID NOT. He choose one of the others (Indonesian) and used that at Occidental where he lived in the FOREIGH Students Dorm. You only live in those dorms if you are not a US citizen.

                              Obama is not a US citizen because he chose another country!
                              It is Plain as Day, why the Republicans let them get away with it is the question.

                           5. Because they were afraid of being called racist.

                           6. You’ve missed the point: he only opted to live in the Foreign Students Dorm as a gesture of solidarity with those students, in order to help them cope with the racism inherent in American society. He nobly sacrificed his opportunity for the “normal” college experience in order to assist those poor foreign students who were unaware of how racist, corrupt and oppressive America is. It is a measure of his early greatness.

                              Pardon me, I think I’m going to be sick after spewing that.

      4. I had a similar story. My #1 pick was Rick Perry – and he dropped out. #2 pick was Scott Walker – and he dropped out, too. Voted for Cruz in the primaries. He lost.

         But in the general? Trump versus one of the biggest criminals of our time? Hell, that was a no-brainer.

         Then Trump unleashed the sort of real-deal conservatism we hadn’t seen since Gingrich.

         1. I, too, voted for Cruz in the primary. That was about two days after I got back from the Middle East, and was actually able to vote in person. Come the general, I was in the Red Sea. We’d left Bahrain Swptember 8th and didn’t get mail again until about a week and a half after the election was decided. Even had I requested an absentee ballot, it would not have reached me in time, nor bene returned to Illinois in time, either.

            I’ll be in Mississippi next year, and voting in Illinois again. Hopefully/likely my last Presidential election in that cesspit.

   2. “I had not voted for Trump, not only because I live in California (which made it pointless),…”

      I hope conservatives who live in states like California will reconsider thinking like that. I’m in Colorado and going to be in the same position, but I think every one of us needs to vote for Trump anyway because it will affect the “he lost the popular vote by x million and isn’t legitimate argument.” At a guess, in California alone if every conservative who has been too discouraged to vote got up and out and did vote for Trump that x million figure would go down by y million.

      My first comment on this blog was in the run up to the 2016 election when so many were saying either they couldn’t vote for Trump, only against Hillary. I said I was going to vote FOR him, mainly because of the Supreme Court (the list he promised to pick from was out by then), but also for a half dozen other reasons. I still feel that way. Trump was the first since Reagan I voted for without reservation. Voting for that old b@st@rd McCain was painful. I figure if a politician keeps even one promise he’s better then most, two superior. Trump – astonishing.

      1. Yep. Also, you know, maybe we’ll beat the margin of fraud.

      2. Oregon here. Knew state was going to go for Hilary. Heck county was. Didn’t matter. Refused to stay home and not bother (well okay, did not refuse to take in my ballot). If nothing else brought down the popular vote. Everyone needs to vote, no matter if you know how your location electrical college votes are going to go. I’m sick and tired of the “popular” vote comment. If everyone who didn’t bother in CA/OR/WA/CO, etc., voted, even tho they were the minority in their state, it would have reduced her popular vote maybe to the point where that rally cry is the BS it is suppose to be.

         I wasn’t a Trump fan during the primary. But come the general I sure in the heck wasn’t voting for her.

         1. And who knows? In CO, at least, there’s stupendous levels of fraud. If everyone showed up to vote, maybe they wouldn’t have counted on it?

      3. I have found that the way to answer the “Hillary won the popular vote” argument is to ask, “What makes you think so?” . The majority get REAL quiet and thoughtful. The few that ask me what I mean tend to kinda *gulp* when I say, “The supposed tally had her winning by, what, slightly less then three million votes. There’s an admittedly disputed study that asserts that in the 2012 election about five million illegal votes were cast in California alone. And Hillary is a know crook.”

         1. Yep

         2. My own answer is that there IS no popular vote. There are fifty of them, and he won more of them.

            1. Winning the popular vote and $5* will get Hillary a venti mocha latte at Starbucks … assuming her security detail can get her int the shop.

               *Not including sales tax, processing fee, cup disposal charges, and health insurance rider; prices may vary according to location.

               1. Nonsense. Hillary will just march in and TAKE that venti mocha. “Pay? Try and make me!”

      4. Two things to get about the Glorious Counter-Heteronormative Bear Flag Peoples Republic: Thanks to Governor Muscle-Head we have Open Primaries, so the Primary Ballot is one big honking long list with everybody plus their non-gender-determinate-sibling listed, and the other thing Governor Schwarzenegger gifted to us is the “Redistricting Commission” of _appointed_ mostly-ex-politicians, and magically that has made CA into a one party state for ever and ever.

         So only in the General Election will we have any real choice – do not look to the CA Primary on March 3rd as anything of any consequence whatsoever.

         1. Cheer up. With any luck, the Left will bungle their attempts to steal 2020, and the California Democrat Party will be so deeply implicated that the whole rotten edifice will come crashing down.

         2. The jungle primary system does ocassionally result in amusing situations in which two Republicans are facing off in a heavily Democratic district.

            1. But mostly it does what it did in the last Lt Governor’s race, where the two finalists were One-Dem-nobody-heard-of Kounalakis and Other-Dem-nobody-heard-of Hernandez. In a stunning upset, a Dem won (Kounalakis). Oddly, while Gov Newsome got more than 7.7 million general election votes, the victorious Kounalakis only got 5.9 million, and the total votes cast for any candidate in the General Election for Lt. Governor was 2 million fewer votes than were cast in the Governor race.

               You’d think with Fraud-by-Mail in CA the Party would make it look closer.

               I’m sure they have continuous improvement goals to fraud better in 2020.

               1. imo at the rate CA’s going they will soon enough have more people voting in their elections than can legally vote in CA

                  1. In The City and County of SanFran they allow illegal aliens to vote, but only on things like school board election ballot items – and I am certain that they have completely figured out how to limit those ballots dynamically while retaining a secret ballot system and not unfairly stigmatizing those non-citizens as they exercise privileges of US citizenship.

                     OK, they have not so figured that out – in my understanding they are only sending limited ballots to registered illegals, but mostly basically doing it on the honor system.

                     And what kind of a judgement challenged illegal would register with the government, based on how trustworthy and honest the governments are back where they illegally came from? Don’t they realize governments can change at the drop of a hat? Do we really want people with judgement that bad voting?

               2. Fraud-by-Mail

                  Hang on… why hasn’t the postal Inspection Service been sicced on this problem? Postal Inspectors – the folks who the IRS *rejected* as auditors for being “way too gung-ho.”

                  * The posse gave up the chase.
                  * The cavalry gave up the search.
                  * The gang was still pursued by a few.
                  [Gang]: Who ARE those guys?!
                  Postal Inspectors.

                  1. Y’know, that’s so obvious I never thought of it…

                     Once a fraudulent vote hits the USPS, that’s a Federal crime, and the states can stomp their feet and throw hissy fits, but they have no jurisdiction over mail fraud.

                     1. 1) Because it’s not a “crime”-crime when Dems do it in California.

                        2) I assume those collecting all the mailed-to-someone’s-address-even-if-they-are-dead ballots, and those sent to nursing homes and assisted care facilities, then proceeding to commit their forgery and fraud and identity theft and other major crimes by “helping” to fill them out and such, could go to the drop boxes in each county and drop those “assisted” ballots off in the anonymous drop boxes by hand to avoid mail fraud charges – assuming somehow that answer 1) above did not keep their vote harvesting community activism classified as youthful exuberance and definitely not felonious crime.

                     2. I need to ask the folks at TrueTheVote about that, because all the references to cases I’ve been able to locate have only involved state / county level charges.

                  2. Because enforcing the law is raaaaacist. And is almost never being done in Democrat jurisdictions. 

   3. One very important thing to remember about Trump is that he is a poker player and is a fan of the game. Indeed he treats negotiations in business and now in politics the way a poker player would, including evaluating value, deciding opponent strength and running the occasional bluff.

      Living in the NYC metro area, I was aware of Trump well before he became a national figure and that he spent a lot of time in Democratic Party circles; of course to be real estate developer in the city, you basically had to. I expected him to be a typical Ed Koch type “moderate” Democrat with a big, rather uncouth mouth. To me, the “worst” possible Trump was better than the best possible case Hillary. Hillary has aspired her entire life to rule by any means necessary and has used her position to enrich herself and her family. She has a long history of acting unethically, going back to the days when she was fired from the team of attorneys working for the House Democrats in connection with the Nixon impeachment investigation because of her gross lack of ethics.

      As I have noted before in comments here, in 2016 I voted against Hillary. In 2020 I am voting FOR Trump.

      **** Full disclosure-I used to play at the Taj in Atlantic City when Trump actually owned/controlled it before the bondholders/banks took control and eventually Carl Icahn took over, and played in the US Poker Tournament that they hosted every fall way back when. Somehow I missed meeting him..he used to visit the poker room a lot during the tournaments and at other times, but I know most of the AC based pros of that era– many of whom had met Trump and got along with him.

      1. “To me, the ‘worst’ possible Trump was better than the best possible case Hillary.”

         For one thing, I knew the MSM coverage of Trump would be far less sycophantic than their coverage of Hillary. I did not anticipate it being so over the top hostile to him as to be destructive of the MSM’s guise of impartiality* — their self-destruction of their credibility has been a delightful bonus.

         *MSM impartiality has generally been in the mode of “endorse progressive policies without explicitly endorsing progressive candidates.”

         1. As I remember it, the media presented Hillary! as a foregone conclusion and the election was only a formality before she moved back into the White House.

            The pollsters were saying the same thing, which likely shows their expertise is more along the line of extracting money from their clients than prediction…

   4. I was very opposed to Trump. To the point of, I think, the morning after the election I had to apologize to everyone here. Because I had told them so vigorously that they were wrong to think that he could win, or had any intention of winning.

      The win that cheered me up to make a good effort at turning my life around, even if I have a bunch of doubts, even if I’m wondering if the course change I felt I had no choice about last year was wrong.

      1. I had my doubts. I wasn’t sure how much it was until I looked at the news the first thing the day after — I had avoided it like the plague all election day — and found myself relieved, so it couldn’t have been that bad.

   5. > I had not voted for Trump … because I didn’t feel sure he wasn’t a progressive false flag,
      —
      Oh, I was pretty sure he was a false flag. But he met my single requirement for casting my vote: NOT HILLARY.

      I admit not only to being wrong about him, but pleasantly surprised and in general approval. Sure, I’d prefer he made a number of decisions differently, but on the whole, OK.

      1. I expected two things from, to not be Clinton, and to make leftists go spare in amusing ways.

         The vast number going spare in unamusing ways does not alter that he came through on both.

         1. “I expected two things from, to not be Clinton, and to make leftists go spare in amusing ways.

            The vast number going spare in unamusing ways does not alter that he came through on both.”

            I know, right! I keep running out of popcorn (or would if popcorn didn’t cause my system to go into nap mode).

   6. I openly stated that I wasn’t sure Trump could win, with the way that there would be so much CHEATING for Hillary. Hell, I think the cheating will be worse this time – the big tech companies are not so subtly gunning for anyone who isn’t rabidly far intersectional progressive left.

      But I sat there and cheered when he won, and it was a huge surge of joy and relief that the Democrats hadn’t been able to destroy the elections. That cheering happened in my house again when Labour and the Corbynites lost in Great Britain.

      I’m hoping something good for Australia too, despite the attempts to swing things for Labour and Greens by screaming Climate Catastrophe and the same stuff as the Corbynistas were and still are screaming at everyone who even slightly disagrees with them. They’re really not going to be able to stop, or help themselves. They haven’t, at all, since Trump won!

      Like Paul Joseph Watson said, personally I want to see as much of them as possible… please, by all means! Carry on!”

3. c4c

4. My completely non-scientific polls of my FB friends (checking feeds), shows me a great deal of nothing-burgers in those feeds. Even the most rabid TDS sufferers have quit with the impeachment screams (note that went quiet when Pelosi never forwarded it), I haven’t seen a lot of support for any one particular candidate on the D side of things (by this time last election my feed was relatively evenly divided between the Bernie vs. Hilary crowds before any primaries), and with one or two exceptions, the noise has died down considerably.

   Now, I expect that to increase in the new year, but I do think it’s significant now. As an example, I posted a reddit thread about a girl whose teachers threatened to tell her parents the girl had removed her hijab in school (as a faculty member, this absolutely infuriated me and I said so. I also called the teachers evil). Four of my friends did an “angry” response and only one of those commented. For the rest, crickets. I know they’ve seen the post. They just don’t want to admit that it’s a problem. That tells me more than they think it does.

   “Constant vigilance!” (Thank you Mad-Eye Moody).

   1. Holy crap, the cognitive dissonance in a teacher who will (I am sure) preach that a child should be allowed to get an abortion/start taking dangerous transgender drugs without parental consent on the one hand, and then threaten to tell another child’s parents that she DARED remove her headscarf…I can’t even.

      (I know that wasn’t the real thrust of your post, but. That really infuriates me as well.)

      1. The thing about the bottom feeders who get teaching positions is that wheat they want is petty power over children. I’m not talking about the genuine few who go to teachers college because they want to teach and that’s the way forward. I’m talking about the imbeciles who have a cow over some kid posting pictures of a Forbidden Activity (like going to the range with family). Some of these vermin are very subtle, but most aren’t. So, they’ll get a pregnant girl a secret abortion because it fits Teh Narrative (and makes them appear powerful) and they’ll report a girl who takes off her headscarf because that doesn’t fit (and means the girl is Getting Ideas).

         I’ve been hearing rumblings for a couple of decades that if anybody starts really collecting sex abuse statistics on public school teachers, it will make the Catholic Church coverups look like nothing. And that fits the pattern. It fits with schools that like to make it difficult for asthmatic kids to keep their inhalers. It fits with expelling kids who make finger-guns and say “Pow!”. The morons in the system have all of Kipling’s Mr. King’s bad points but are too stupid to have his passion for teaching.

         1. I’ve been hearing rumblings for a couple of decades that if anybody starts really collecting sex abuse statistics on public school teachers, it will make the Catholic Church coverups look like nothing.

            “No Child Left Behind” did it, at least once.

            It supports your intuition.

            Not long after that, it was suddenly a horrible evil bad program…..

            1. The teachers’ unions lost a lot of power with the recent SCOTUS decision about dues. I’ll be interested to see what starts sleeping out of the woodwork as that sinks in. At some point the unions won’t be able to protect the absolutely dreadful teachers and administrators anymore.

               *evil grin*

               1. Let justice be done upon them. In 115 grain increments.

                  1. No, no. Shooting them grants them entirely too much importance. Let their power be broken, they’d HATE that.

                  2. Rope’s reusable.

                     1. Again, lynching makes them too important. Kick the union to pieces, and then leave them with inspiring their students as the only way to be significant. Since they are as inspiring as mud, they’ll die of frustration.

                        Kipling’s Mr. King was a sonofabitch, but it’s clear he had passion for his subject and was remembered for that as well as his nastiness. The drones in the Public Schools have no such resources.

                        1. It would be too much work, but I’m fond of the thought of Christianizing them.

                           With millstones.

                           -Albert

                           1. Christianizing them Kratman-style is another option worth considering.

                              Just sayin’.

      2. Hit her with “Islam is right about women”, in a way that she has to respond in front of her children, preferably without being traced back to you.

         Then offer her a cold drink and see if she strokes out.

         -Albert

         1. I suspect most of them have no clue what Islam actually preaches about women, and think them a Middle Eastern version of modern Methodist or Episcopalian. It’s brown people and therefor automatically woke.
            Any facts otherwise is just Alt Right hate propaganda.

            1. Honestly, I suspect the teachers in question were probably Muslim, and trying to keep the kid in line with community requirements. It’s a real issue in certain communities, like Minneapolis.

               1. Nope. This was in Massachusetts.

                  1. In Boston, or somewhere else?

            2. The “Islam is right about women” experiment has been done: It produces a great deal of offense in the chattering classes, because they have _some_ idea that women are oppressed under sharia law, but they can’t bring themselves to say anything “Islamophobic”, so they get equally upset and inarticulate.

               -Albert

   2. For something like this, I find it useful to ask if they would have the same reaction if the teachers threatened to tell the parents if the child removed a sweatshirt that covered up a more revealing shirt, or something similar. That generally works to get them to realize that they are reacting in an emotional manner because “hijab”.

      1. Here’s the link to the reddit thread by the student in question.

         My teacher almost outed me for taking off the hijab from exmuslim

         I’ve had more responses in the “angry” and “wow” columns and a couple more responses. But, the usual suspects who see Islamophobia in everything have been incredibly quiet.

         1. Good for her! I hope she continues to make her own choices, and is supported by the community in so doing.

            It sounds like her teachers are of the “all cultures are equal, and the same except for quaint customs like clothing and food” sort. Who congratulated themselves on how enlightened they were.

            1. Yes, good for her up until the Family finds out and decides she needs to go back to the old country and marry while she still can.
               Or they decide to kill her to save the Family Honor.

               You and everybody else are playing with fire.

         2. Funny how all the people complaining about treatment of Muslims are stone silent about what China is doing to Muslims, with over a million in what are concentration camps who are being tortured, used as slave labor and likely dying in large numbers., But if Israel defends itself from people sworn to not only destroy Israel but to murder all Jews, the left goes ballistic.

            1. If they didn’t have double standards, the Left would have no standards at all.

               -Albert

            2. Including the sorts of Muslims that declare fatwas on Western writers and film makers.

5. I didn’t realize how depressed — despairing, in fact — I’d been.

   Yeah, if you go back and read my posts, it doesn’t come across that way, but trust me, it was as though a weight lifted off my mind, such a weight that I hadn’t been able to think straight around it.

   NOT calling you a clown, but this hits close… as does the tune Laugh, Clown, Laugh, perhaps for similar reason.

   1. If one is a depressive by nature, you either give in to it and become useless, or live in constant vigilance. That wears on a body. I know. It takes a bloody *lot* of effort to just keep it at bay so you can get through the day. You rarely ever get a break. Especially the last… twenty odd years or so.

      1. THIS. Seriously. People then chide me for being “too optimistic.”
         All I’m doing is applying the reality testing I HAVE to apply to stay alive.

         1. Amen!

         2. I’ve never gotten the “too optimistic” criticism, but I have been subject to the curious and unrelenting cultural pressure to just let go and go under. Makes me glad I was raised stubborn and … what was the term they liked? … “oppositionally defiant.”

            As a 99% of the time lurker (I have no idea what’s possessed me to comment so much today, since work is busy and legal deadlines wait for no man), I’m really grateful for this blog and the people in the comments. It’s helped a lot.

            1. Thank you.
               Myself, I was also born stubborn. And raised that way.
               And yes, the cultural pressure….

            2. Be welcome, and know you’re in good company. In my youth, in the holler forgot by time, it was “ornery” and “stubborn as a mule.” We’re in a rare slow period around here, so I get the busy bit. Glad it helps someone else, too.

            3. Yes, ornery. There’s a reason I tell people that it’s “ornery b*tch”, not just “b*tch.” Please. I work hard for that ornery label!

               1. Ornery is good… better than stubborn, even.

6. …because honestly who is PRO porn?

   “I do have a cause, though, it is obscenity. I’m for it!” – Tom Lehrer (introduction to ‘Smut’)

   1. I agree. First, of course, I have no intention of giving the State the power to censor. But second, in this day of ubiquitous cameras, and cheap printers, actually STOPPING porn is a non-starter. All you can do is drive it underground and remove all the legal protections the models have now. Yes, posing for porn is degrading (for most people, much of the time). So is flipping burgers for minimum wage or listening to Democrat politicians. Allowing yourself to be degraded under controlled circumstances for an important end (like feeding yourself without having to grovel to some Government stooge) is part of the human condition.

      And porn is about the only sex life there is for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons…not all of them bad.

      I’m for porn, provided that it involves only adult volunteers. Porn that involves children is evidence of a crime, and should be treated as such. Porn that involves drawings doesn’t count.

      And, ultimately, porn is no legitimate business of the State. Certainly not until the State can reliably keep the roads open and the borders safe.

      1. Have to disagree strongly on flipping burgers for minimum wage. If it’s your first job, it’s a JOB, and gets you used to the idea of getting up, getting ready, and getting to work on time. If you can handle that, you’re on your way to other jobs. Working an honest job is not degrading. A good supervisor let’s the line cooks know they’re appreciated.

         If you’re working for minimum wage after more than a year on a job – there’s either something wrong with management or something wrong with you. I looked it up one day to see. My first job washing school buses paid $3.25 an hour. Minimum wage at the time was $1.50 in NJ. The company hired two people for the summer job. The other one quit after 3 days. I’ve never had a minimum wage job.

         1. One of the aspects of any job, especially a low level one, is to do the disagreeable to earn the agreeable. That is, in a sense, degrading. It is also necessary. Going through Marine boot camp is degrading; recruits must be torn down before they can be built up. Degrading isn’t the end of all things, even for a porn starlet.

            Now, the pity is that so many people do not learn a goddamned thing from degrading experiences. They just whine.

            1. Degrading
               1. To reduce from a higher to a lower rank.
               2. To bring into contempt, to humiliate.
               3. To bring to a lower level of quality.
               4. To reduce to a lower and less complex organism, or a lower more chaotic energy state.

               HOusecleaning, flipping burgers, waitressing, emptying bed-pans legally and FOR PAY include disagreeable tasks, and do not require extensive education or mental skills to learn well enough to get started. Each job *needs* to be done by someone. Doing necessary work for pay elevates the do-er and is anti-enropic. This is called honest work.

               Only #3 could possibly be in dispute.

               So none of the above definitions apply unless one decides that some tasks really are immoral, or that they corrupt either the individual or the community or both.

               Porn, arguably does this. So does performing medical experiments on children. Or assassination. Or calumny (*cough* CNN et al.)

               Making them legal is irrelevant. That some bloody damnable aristos have spread the unAmerican notion that honest work = #3 is not merely irrelevant but a wicked lie.

         2. All too many career minimum wage earners go from job to job, never spending more than six months (if that) at any one job, and cycling back to their very first job three or four times. Raising the minimum wage won’t do anything for people who have low time preference and no ability to think about or plan for the future.

            1. I may have told this story before, but it seems apposite.

               Knew a young lady, from a poor family in West Virginia. No money, but she loved to learn. So, she’d get a fast food job and save until she could afford a semester of college, then quit and study. Since she kept herself sanitary, turned up on time, and always had the uniform, every place she worked tried to promote her to management. Every one.

               There are dead-end jobs, but if you have ANY job skills at all, they aren’t in fast food.

               1. Definitely would not have been a career minimum wage earner, then. Did what she was supposed to. Probably demonstrated good financial management too, to make that money last an entire semester.

                  1. Aye. I’ve informed some that half the “trick” to keeping the job is simply to show up. Surprising how many humans (I presume..) are somehow dumber than ox.

                     1. Well, showing up every day, on time, sober, and then actually doing the job they’re being paid for. It’s sad how many of those ‘oppressed minimum-wage workers’ can’t manage to meet those requirements. Must be something RAAAACIST!!! in there somewhere.

                        1. “…doing the job they’re being paid for.”

                           There’s the problem: the government has been paying them for not doing any job, so now demanding they do more is oppressive.

                           Besides, every single one of those people depicted on those bills they’re being paid is a dead white male. Have you no concern, no understanding, no empathy for the trauma they experience being forced to enact monetary transactions with those notes bearing the faces of their oppressors?

                           It’s no wonder they hold being on the schedule is sufficient for payment ad that working those shifts requires extra incentives.

                           1. My gawd, man — what more do you want of these people? HAVEN’T THEY SUFFERED ENOUGH?

            2. I think you must mean “high time preference.” Low time preference means you care nearly as much about future rewards as about present rewards (your preference for the present is LOW); high time preference means future rewards don’t mean much to you (your preference for the present is HIGH).

               The basic economic transaction of a capitalist economy is that someone who values future rewards a lot (low time preference) advances money to someone who doesn’t value them as much (high time preference) to get them to do work that will pay off sometime later on . . . and then collects the payoff. Nothing stops workers from doing without the capitalist; they just have to be willing to buy the plant, equipment, and materials, and work without pay, until the day comes when they can sell the product. But a lot of people aren’t prepared to do that . . . and they don’t become capitalists.

               High time preference as such isn’t bad. It provides a labor force (though the ones who don’t care enough to show up on time, or do the job properly, or improve their skills aren’t the most useful part of it!). The problem is resentment of the people with low time preference, and confiscation of the wealth they generate.

               1. I very well might. The point still stands, though. You can’t change people’s behavior if they’re operating from a different set of ideas and principles of rationality than you are.

                  It applies to North Korea and Iran as much as to the underclass in the US, of course.

                  1. No. The best you can do with the underclass is up the rewards for work and lower the rewards for not.
                     It has redeemed countries before.
                     But that would involve not letting the left farm them for votes.

                     1. One of the things that most irks me about leftists discussion of political science is the idea that conservatives are in favor of hierarchies, as though we wish to establish and enforce said hierarchies, rather than simply acknowledging that they come into being naturally due to people’s different priorities, preferences, and abilities.

                        As I believe Dr. Pournelle was fond of saying (correct me if air am wrong in this), free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

                        1. This is why the complaints of “inequality” are bullshit.
                           Equality before the law is important. Every other type of equality? the only way to have it is to have a brutal society where everyone is equally destitute.

                        2. > hierarchies

                           *Their* world is at hierarchy, with every person in their allotted place in the pecking order. They see the rest of the world through that filter.

                           Remember the Sad Puppies craziness? *Someone* had to be telling all those Puppies what to do and what books to vote for. Or their attempts to name leaders of “alt-right” or “radical right” after the election; *someone* had to have instructed all those Deplorables who to vote for.

                           1. “But we cut off ALL their coms. No way they could get their ‘go’ signal after that!”

                              “Fool. They interpret coms cutoff AS the ‘go’ signal. Congratulations, you sent the go-code yourself.”

                              (Picture the final scene of Pvt. Snafu cartoon ‘Spies’.)

                           2. Pretty much, yes.

                        3. Complaint: “Capitalism ensures unequal distribution of wealth!”

                           Response: “Socialism ensures equal* distribution of misery.”

                           Most recent demonstration of this – Venezuela

                           *For some definition of equal.

                           1. Socialism does not, and never has, ensured equal distribution of misery. It always created a society in which people actually making things are poor and, and governmental parasites are privileged and (comparatively) wealthy.

                              Which is why the biggest proponents of Socialism are work-shy bums.

                     2. Eh. I have no problem with hierarchies, despite being contrary as the day is long*. Proper authority, properly managed is a good thing.

                        Mrs. Hoyt’s model is the one my father used to reliably turn around supposedly hopeless ships. It requires systems that are fair and functional if nearly everyone is squared away. That’s a kind of cultural capital, and the subject of well, more than one short combox reply.

                        Then, identify those who are chaffing at the bit with can-do squared-awayness (also a thing) and make sure they get all the perqs and rewards for their actions. At the same time, ID the worst high-time-preference, gold-bricking parasites and make their lives a living hell. The ~75% of the remainder will happily follow along the path of least resistance.

                        *It helps to recognize it is more of a situationally-useful vice.

                     3. Yep. It all comes back to election reform and fraud prevention. Which is why I’m working on that as much as for any candidate.

7. I did not vote Trump in ’16 (I voted straight Libertarian ticket), but I likely will in ’20. I honestly though, due to his political donations and the company he kept, that he’d have the same policies Hillary and Obama espoused. On the contrary, Trump has been a very pleasant surprise in his policies. And I will admit to being really glad the left is so violently anti-Trump–he’s been the master of “the deal,” and I think he’d be willing to “deal” if they hadn’t attacked him and his family so relentlessly. I’m honestly thankful for his vindictiveness, and have been for the past three years. I’m willing to vote for him again.

   I get what you mean by the “softheadedness”–I am kind of the opposite. Most of the appeals I’ve seen are pathos-based appeals, and I am automatically suspicious of them. Because I used to teach college composition, and I know how those are used in both advertising and politics. Most don’t have that built-in suspicion. I wish more people did. Show me the hard facts, please–and I’m pretty sure the hard facts will show the opposite of the pathos appeals.

   1. Trump tried to deal right from the start. One of the first things he did was to offer the Dems a deal of citizenship for “Dreamers” in exchange for the wall. The Dems refused.

      1. Yeah, from a New York Democrat, I expected a whole lot worse on the gun rights than he’s been. The bump stock ban – that’s classic New Yorker Democrat right there right there. But the fact that after the last round of highly publicized dancing in the blood, he wasn’t behind new bans, and was calling for (as any sane person should) better mental health? Tells me that when the other side clearly isn’t willing to negotiate at all, unlike the RINOs, he stops trying to compromise. This guy understands the ability to walk away from the table.

         And that has been a very, very pleasant surprise.

         1. looks like they might be trying stupid again with the reclassification of a Franklin Armory firearm.

            https://www.youtube dot com/watch?v=rFhGM083MVU&t=141s

            1. The ATF is, and always has been, a concatenation of idiots, stooges, and cowboys.

            2. Meh. This is an area where I can pity ATF. They’re stuck with a set of laws that are 85 years old, trying to cope with modern technology.

               1. I don’t pity them at all. They exist to violate the 2nd Amendment. They seem to enjoy it, too.

                  1. Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency.

                     1. *grin* Do you think that someone could get away with creating such a shop?

                        Or even a series of shops, right next to each other?

               2. So I’ve heard:

                  ATF has a chunk of knowledgeable folks on the technical side (firearms and explosives/fire – not sure about their alcohol and tobacco side of the house), a collection of agents with a very wide range of capabilities, intelligence and ethics on the enforcement side (i.e some are pretty good, some are pretty bad, with the distribution curve fatter and flatter than at other Fed agencies, exceeded only by groups like the HHS SWAT team), and management, subject directly to the policial winds, that either works to reign in and deskjob the worst of Those Agents Who Cannot Be Touched, or alternately sets those loose with goofy orders crafted to advance SES careers.

            3. I’ll be quite frank… the Franklin Armory ‘firearm’ was a deliberate attempt to skirt ATF regs anyway, and from the moment it came out i said that it was one ‘ruling’ away from being an NFA item.

               1. On the other hand, it met the letter of the… well, no, it’s not “law” as most people understand it. The ATF is an “empowered” agency; that is, they have the power to enact and enforce “regulations” as they see fit. And they’ve long been noted for changing those as the political winds blow.

                  The first time most people noticed was in 1969, when after initially declaring that pistols that originally came with detachable shoulder stocks (a popular accessory in the 1920s and 1930s) were not NFA items, they reverse their ruling and started sending agents to gun shows, confiscating property, and in at least one case, arresting and imprisoning the seller. Note this change in rules was never announced to the public; just decided and enforced out of the blue.

                  1. “Note this change in rules was never announced to the public; just decided and enforced out of the blue.”

                     I am not sure when the rules were changed to prevent that sort of arbitrary regulatory reversal, but thank G-d they were — and that failure to give due public notice and provide an adequate public commentary period for proposed regulations are things which cause courts (especially as Trump has replaced Posnerian idiots with judges ((and Justices)) who think the authors of our Constitution understood plain English and said what they meant) to look … unfavorably upon such administrative high-handedness.
                     [See: How to Comment on a Rule]

                     These comment periods are susceptible to the usual astro-turffing but still provide due notice and an opportunity to mobilize opposition.

         2. I have heard him in the past say, while he hated guns, and would love for them to go away, he didn’t think gun control was ever going to work. It made me less uncomfortable, but I didn’t trust him to not try something or sign something stupid if it hit his desk.

            1. Trump does his research, or more precisely pays people he trusts to dig deep for the facts.
               The NRA has something like 5 million members, but what casual observers don’t realize is that most gun culture folk are not joiners and those 5 million probably represent the feelings and attitudes of ten times their number, not by any means an insignificant block of essentially one issue voters.
               And speaking of research, thank Ghod for Great Britain, a shining example of the efficacy of both National Health Service and extreme draconian gun control.
               Hard to hide multiple incidents where patients are left untended to perish after sometimes days of suffering, or parents forbidden by law from seeking medical treatment for children deemed untreatable by the NHS.
               And while Britain has limited gun violence, but then it never did outside the troubles, last UN crime numbers one could trust had them at a violent crime rate roughly five times that of gun crazy America.

               1. Ten times? I suspect the actual number is a least one order of magnitude larger.

                  1. More important than quantity is the inability of pollsters to measure intensity. There’s a world of difference between “It would be nice if guns were controlled” and “Those are my rights you’re infringing, dadgummit!”

                     1. I think a more accurate metric would be ” What percentage of Americans would peacefully surrender (previously) legally owned firearms?” What do I know? Damn little, but I live in Texas. My grok may be biased.

                  2. Not to quibble, but 5×10 is 50 million which was my ROM for primarily gun centric voters. Given that total voters in 2016 was something around 130 million my guestimate seemed reasonable.
                     As for compliance with gun control overreach, our media has done it’s work well to disguise and conceal the resistance of such regulation in those progressive states that have implemented both registration and outright confiscation of certain classes of firearms.
                     Or take New Zealand for example, latest of the Commonwealth to knee jerk confiscatory regulations after a tragic shooting incident. If I recall correctly I saw a report of some 50,000 firearms turned in, presented as a success of the new laws. No mention made that the original estimate of eligible firearms was in the 2-3 million range.
                     Closer to home we see prudent county officials attempting to stem a potential bloodbath in Virginia, invoking the left’s sanctuary tactics against them, and refusing to carry out the threatened mass confiscations imposed by bought and paid for politicians with allegiance owed not to their constituents, but rather to Bloomberg and Souros, who’s massive funding efforts overwhelmed the will of the mostly rural population.

                  3. One order of magnitude is ten times.

                     if you’re saying one order of magnitude larger than that… 5,000,000 x 10= 50,000,000 x 10 (one order of magnitude)= 500 million- more people than there are in the US.

               2. some of us have sworn off the NRA for being too squishy and at times more concerned with their position in the order of things as opposed to upholding the positions of their membership.

                  1. Became an NRA Life Member in ’86, and upgraded to the next level (Benefactor?) in ’94 cuz of AWB. I believe I haven’t sent them a penny since for their ‘squishiness’. I figure I get a better ‘bang for the buck’ out of GOA & JPFO, (Jews *for* firearms ownership? *That*’s not in the narrative!” Except for the Never Again! bit.)

                     1. Was paying a life membership off (hit financial hard times so was lagging a bit) then some of the Katrina confiscation suits dominance games crap came about, and their Chet Edwards (One of 0bama’s short-list VP picks) full backing and giving his opponents a lesser rating, implying they’d be less gun friendly (though they were more so AND being Republican, not helping us get Speaker Pelosi) and I thought, “You know, I’ll just not finish paying that off and send it elsewhere once I am able.” like the ones they were spending my money blocking instead of fighting for rights of those in NOLA suffering confiscation. Every time I think about going back they manage to remind me why I stopped paying.

               3. > most gun culture folk are not joiners

                  Not of the NRA, at least. They’ve shat their nest too many times, actually backing gun control bills.

                  On the other hand, their PR keeps them in the public eye and the target-of-choice for anti-gun types, while other organizations that actually do useful work are completely ignored.

            2. Which is interesting, because Eric and Don Jr are apparently involved on some level with gun ownership. I hope he’s re-thinking based on the idea that the Democrats are going to red-flag them just because.

               1. A lot of the dems pushing controls are also gun owners (it’s those plebes who need to be disarmed! Look at Chicago. being Alderman means getting to pack a gun). This statement was also from years ago. Not the more recent stuff that kept me and I’m sure our hostess, worried about what he truly was.
                  I really knew nothing about Jr. or Eric, other than he seemed to trust them a lot, and I didn’t know anything else about them.

                  I think we need to remember he has had to be realistic over the years, because he is a businessman vs. a politician. He seems, so far, to have decided that to best kill 0bama’s, and Hillary’s legacy, is to keep things going well for everyone, making a win in 2020 more likely, he needed to fully embrace the true meaning of the Constitution, and get back to a basic gov’t (well close as possible). Before, when just a businessman, the leftoid policies really didn’t hurt him as much as hurt possible competitors, (he was/is a bit of a crony-capitalist, and of course, worked a lot in NYC and Jersey) and he was dealing with folks like that as well, while not really thinking on things.
                  I think, hope, he got POed by 0 and Hill at the Press Dinner and thought, not just “I’m gonna get those two, right where it hurts”, but what is the best thing for the USA (he always liked the place and it always showed) because that really would hurt the two the most. A better foreign policy, massive economy uptick, and carving back the intrusive gov’t, hits them both low.

   2. I hadn’t noticed any straight Libertarians on the ticket in 2016. Johnson and Weld seemed to be making the strongest possible argument against drug use, if not in support of the War on Drugs.

      1. All of the individuals I voted for had an L associated with the names…all I was trying to do was help the Libertarian party get automatically put on Missouri’s next ballot (3% of the vote…the L party got about 2%, if I recall correctly).

      2. With “Bake the Cake” Johnson and “Ban the Guns” Weld as the “Libertarian” ticket, well, it was enough to make a man snatch off his hat, throw it on the ground and stomp on it.

         I had just about given up, full “awkward stage”. Fortunately, Trump exceeded my wildest expectations so there remains yet a straw to grasp.

         1. and with his regulation killing, he is turning out more libertarian/small gov’t than either of the two nuts the fool Libertarians put on the ticket.

         2. (Nods) The 2016 election killed any desire I might have had to go for the Libertarian Party. Seriously, you have the two worst candidates in decades running for office, and you go with those two twits as your candidates?

            Yeah, sorry, y’all just told me that the only liberties you’re interested in are getting laid and getting high. No thanks.

            1. I watched the national Libertarian Party die in Portland in 2006 when a buncha neocons showed up to gut‘reform’ the Platform to make it more ‘palatable’. Also, since then they’ve nominated failed Repugnantcons for POTUS, Former anti-drug warrior Bob Barr? YGBSM!

            2. THIS.

   3. I tutored many a young adult in composition, once upon a time. Pathos based appeals were explicitly taught as part of the literature. Hell’s bells, they taught Marxist and feminist criticism for Pete’s sake, two of the *most* intellectually lazy concepts I’ve ever heard of. I first thought they were trying to teach them how to *spot* poor attempts and weak appeals to vacant thoughts. *shakes head*

      Hard facts or get stuffed. Feelings don’t feed a hungry belly.

      1. Feelings must be accounted for, but are a lousy BASIS for policy.

         1. They’re great for fiction.

            1. If I may expand and revise my remarks;

               I’ve been in therapy with my Lady for years (long story) and something that strikes me regularly is the vast difference between actual therapeutic practice and advice and pop psych. Pop psych holds that ‘feelings are real’ and drives much of the nonsense of the Left. Therapeutic practice says ‘feelings exist’; they must be dealt with, and can’t be ignored. But that doesn’t mean they are telling you the truth, or that you should do as they urge. Indeed, doing as they urge is often the worst option. But you must learn to cope with them and not deny them.

               The Left either never learned this, or simply doesn’t want to know. Therefore, they never get any better.

               1. Yes, because I’m a dangerous depressive and have been aware my feelings are real but not truthful. I.e. I feel them, but the reasons for them are not necessarily what they seem. I recently came across “The illustrated happiness trap” and realized I’ve been doing what it advises since at least my mid thirties.
                  OTOH the point of fiction is — always was — to allow you to experience feelings and catharsis from a safe place. This in itself is a form of therapy, which is why many of us have books we’ve read ragged because they heal something.

                  1. Which also illustrates the reason why “oppression olympics” fiction doesn’t do well. It doesn’t *heal*, it only “validates feelings”. Which doesn’t help anybody dealing with them. Sometimes (frequently?) it just damages people further.

8. Very good column, Sarah. These days I often find my self conversing with friends about current stories, and will typically say “You have to ask yourself – Why is this a story right now? What are ‘they’ trying to do by drawing your attention over to it?”

9. Sometimes I’m a sad puppy. Sometimes I’m an unruly puppy. I can take a smack across the nose now and then. It might hurt my feelings, but it’s temporary and I’ll get over it. 😉

10. It won’t be time for a physical fight until A) the Left starts it so hard that their media shills can’t cover it up, and B) the emergency troops (National Guard, right?) can’t or won’t stop it.

    (For the latter, I’m of course referring to how the police are supporting anti-FA in Oregon.)

    Virginia is going to be a very ‘interesting times’ state to watch. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Governor backs down (i.e. that the whole thing was a trial balloon that almost proved too hard to stop), but it also wouldn’t surprise me if he’s so insulated in commiescum-bubble-thought that he’ll believe that the red-blooded American counties aren’t preparing nearly as hard as the alt-media whispers suggest.

    Even if leftwing political aggression (has there really been any other kind in the last century?) erupts beyond the ability of legacy media to ignore, not only are we an empire – rather than a single nation-state like England, meaning disturbances in one state can be largely ignored in another, like how Dearbornistan is trending more and more sharia without much influencing states besides Michigan – but the distance between cities is so vast (outside of New England!) that the infamous commiescum inability to manage logistics may well result in what amounts to self-quarantine.

    For one example of commiescum incompetence, compare the evacuations of New Orleans and Houston when threatened by Katrina and Rita. (Remember that Houston was the bigger city, too!) Now imagine the panicked exodus from commiescum-rioting cities . . . that bog down in traffic jams and shortages of gasoline.

    And that doesn’t get into how milquetoast socialist partisans – national or international – have always proven when someone is allowed to fight back. Particularly when America isn’t footing their bills through aid.

    I admit, it would be interesting to see how quickly the media would start sucking up to Christians if we were as quick to terrorism as the followers of the bandit warlord, but I’m willing to let that question wait and get an estimate based on heavenly-tier psychology once I’m in the afterlife. (Not least because we could hardly claim to be followers of Christ in such a case!)

    -Albert

    1. I saw an article this morning about the Virginia budget calling for money to fund incarceration of gun-rights activists and was mildly alarmed until I saw the amount as a mere $250,000 — hardly enough to warm the cuffs that will be needed.

       I don’t doubt they would love to throw Second Amendment defenders in jail but do not believe a mere quarter-million will cover the cost. Besides, with (as of last report) some 90% of the state declared as 2nd A Sanctuaries I think that money is more likely going to pay for bunkers for the governor and legislators.

       1. The problem is that if something serious happens as a result of the Virginia stuff, there’s a good chance it’ll be an accident, caused by someone on the scene who should back down but won’t.

          Then it will escalate.

          1. It’ll take one incident of accidental shooting, especially if unarmed woman or child. Once that happens, for better or worse, the options will be to crucify the cop or circle wagons. If the latter happens the potential for things getting sporty will skyrocket.

             1. Since there’s a high probability of gangs or cartels being involved, I expect the 5-year-old-photos-of-a-serial-violent-criminal-that-happens-to-be-14 being the trigger, most likely via being falsely reported as a gun grabbing attempt when DEA and local cops do a big bust.

                Most likely strongly helped along by Reason magazine, and similar resources.

                1. What worries me is something similar to the flashbang in crib or a genuine error by a cop that injures or kills a kid or true bystander. Then the potential for “treat everyone as a combatant” mindset to grow will shoot up and run risk of more Dorners

                   1. The problem is that gun owners woken up by a home invasion mostly act the same and then the Police, SWAT, etc. go GUN and shoot on full auto until everybody but them is dead.
                      Let that happen a few times with the Media trying to blame the Gun owner for the death of his wife and himself.

                      1. Media and state will toss up the most unflattering pictures (even if they must doctor them) and bring forth the sob story of how having shot little susy will forever break the jackboot that pulled the trigger and that we need to double down on confiscation so this doesnt happen again.

                         It won’t take a lot of people getting the impression that the govt is going scorched earth and not caring for collateral damage as long as it’s someone on the correct side or related to someone on the correct side getting maimed or killed for things to go from passive noncompliance to replays of Dallas, to potentially even reverse wacos.

       2. “…some 90% of the state declared as 2nd A Sanctuaries…”

          Some of the very latest sources, like Walter Williams’ excellent column (but when are they not?) only yesterday at

          [https] www dot foxnews dot com slash opinion/walter-williams-the-second-amendment-is-under-attack-in-virginia

          do say over 90% (86 counties, there); while one really good source with maps over time and careful distinctions

          [https] sanctuarycounties dot com slash category/map-updates/

          is still stuck (as of Dec. 15th) at (of 95 counties)

          73 as full 2nd-A Sanctuaries,
          3 with lesser 2A “support” resolutions,
          15 awaiting hearing or vote,
          2 which have nothing in progress,
          2 which have rejected 2A measures.

          which is just over 3/4 gone full-2nd-A so far. Somehow I suspect simple Christmastide “stale data” there, despite later posts on the overall site.

          And, it’s not only that proposed “gun grab” law (House Bill 16) — there is, for instance, also a madly-restrictive measure (House Bill 2) “regulating” not just gun sales, but even gifts and loans of guns, even to non-immediate family members. (Hint: if that thing passes, giving a gun to your niece by giving it to her mother = your sister so she can give it to her daughter = your niece looks okay; giving a gun to your niece directly and without a “required” State Police prior background check puts you in jail for five years and her in jail for one year. Lending it except in a “hot” emergency, the same. IIRC. Yes, I am busily researching all this amazing, ah, stuff for a possible guest post…)

          The Va. Attorney General is out with an (unintentionally) hillarious letter, too, see link in Williams column, closing with:

          “It is my opinion that these resolutions have no legal effect. It is my further opinion that localities and local constiutional officers cannot nullify state laws and must comply with gun violence prevention measures that the General Assembly may enact.”

          Even when those (gack!) “gun violence prevention measures” have the effect of nullifying the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights of the Federal Constitution as interpreted in recent Supreme Court decisions (and see assorted NRA-ILA Web-posted research on that one, especially the quoted opinions of Clarence Thomas). Don’t do what we’re doing, do what we say!

          Good Lord, it’s like he’s part of the whole “no one is above the law” Schiff Show / Constitution-waving Pelosi Parade in Washington. Oh, wait, (D).

          1. “The Va. Attorney General is out with an (unintentionally) hillarious letter”

             Seems like an interesting time to initiate recall petitions for certain state officeholders. There is risk, of course, as survival might embolden them … although they seem plenty bold already for men who don blackface.

             Does Virginia have a statewide referendum process?

          2. Trump badly needs to tell him something like “OK. Now do Federal marijuana and immigration laws. Look up the Supremacy Clause while you’re at it, and realize that if you start prosecuting them on the basis of state law supremacy, I’m going to have you prosecuted the same day on the basis of Federal supremacy for ignoring both of those areas.”

       3. Once a precedent is set in including a budget appropriation, it becomes much easier to increase it later; either by add-ons in unrelated legislation throughout the year (New Jersey does this all the time) or when the next budget is pushed through the sausage grinder.

          I take the move as a sign of intent. The Dems know they may not be able to do it immediately, but doing so is part of their game plan.

          1. Going after guns so quickly is foolish. Better to consolidate power via instituting more changes in the voting system to solidify single party rule- California’s open primaries and Colorado’s vote fraud by mail come to mind.
             Then, when your state is Democrat now and forever, up the heat on the frog.

11. And now, having read it all.. yeah.. the Normal Response is to keep trying one last time… to avoid the “bugaloo”… for it is not, as another has said, a rheostat that can be turned up and down at will. It is a switch. And that switch has a nasty hysteresis – once flipped, it’s gonna STAY flipped even if thing appear to go status quo ante. It only flips back things are SURE that it won’t need to flip again right away. This is a very polite, clinical description, omitting the carnage of which there would be not merely plenty, but an excess.

    Is there a time for “bugaloo”? Sadly, yes. But only when EVERY sane (thus does NOT include surrender into servitude) alternative has been exhausted. Ain’t nobody EVER “home by Christmas.”

    1. A man, if he stands for something, *must* be willing to fight for it.

       Not frivolously, and definitely not without exhausting all reasonable avenues for argument, persuasion, and even peaceful disgreement. But if there is NO point at which he must say, “Thus far and no further,” he stands for nothing and no one.

       We are not at that point. May never come in our lifetimes, or those of our children’s children’s children, may Himself let it be so. But, should it ever come to pass, it will be an ugly, messy, bloody thing. What survives will definitely not be the same.

12. Trump drives the Left insane. This is due to his multi-decade success in playing them like hooked fish, to survive in NYC. This is also because he not only defeats them, he makes it look easy, fun, and entirely satisfyingly successful. His beyond-energizer-bunny throughput is also a maddening contributor.

    He was my “hold nose and vote” candidate. Now, he is a high-five candidate.

    The Left understands that if he is given four more years, with no concern about re-election, he is going to go for all the “win” he can. And they know, deep down, he -will- win. Thus, their madness.

    Personally, I see a Left-trend that intersects “off the deep end”, mob actions, etc. I want no part of such insanity, but I am prepared to defend the American way, because I feel obliged to preserve what so many better folks have given their lives to bequeath us Liberty.

    I will be very happy to have been wrong. Please.

    Let’s talk this out. Let’s persuade folks to play by the rules and respect the outcome. But in no way, this time, do we roll over for fraud and ” he’ll no!” do we roll over for Mob action.

    Rational deterrence. Rational actions. Precise response.

    As to your Troll issue, one does not allow the guests to track mud on the rugs. If someone is degrading your brand, by all means ban them. I have chided some folks elsewhere for allowing Trolls to drive off the normal/contributors. Respect has to be two-way. Trolls only respect themselves.

    1. I hadn’t really intended to vote for Trump, but at the end of a 10 hour workday, with the insanity of the election, and the fact that I could not for the LIFE of me recall the full name of the independent I had planned to vote for…I voted for him.

       The morning after the election, I was elated to find that Hilary lost–having gone to bed the night before fully expecting her to win. And then…I have been increasingly better pleased with Trump. I’ve even gone for “Well, I wish someone would take his Twitter account away until he learns to be polite” to realizing that all of it is calculated to keep the media in a gently roiling boil and pointed in the direction HE wants them. I admire that kind of cleverness, particularly when it does so under the guise of not being clever at all.

       Reading accounts of how polite, kind, and warm he can be to people not dedicated to destroying him, his family, and his country makes me think he’s even someone I could like. I wouldn’t want to date or marry the guy, but I think I’d enjoy sharing a meal or three with him–and I haven’t been able to say that about pretty much ANY president in my lifetime, ever. (At least not that I was old enough to be aware of in such light–I’d probably enjoy lunch with Reagan now, though.)

       1. Someone, on here I think, said that he uses Twitter like a laser pointer and the media are the cats. The analogy fits.

          1. I don’t know that I’m the only one who invented it, but I’ve been using it for a couple of years, yeah.

             -Albert

             1. Good on ya. I think I swiped that a couple years back, and it fits.

       2. Unlike McCain or Romney or W, he understands that the media is his (and our) enemy.
          The classic media bully trick was to pretend that they would be their friend if the GOPe politician would just compromise on this one point. Then laugh and mock when the sap caved in. The old game of Lucyball.
          Trump doesn’t fall for it.

          1. Not only understands, but is willing to state it outright.

             And don’t they just HATE that.

          2. He and the media have never really got along, even when he was attending social functions with his friends the Clintons, and winning leftoid run awards.

          3. Yeah, screw the ball, Trump hauls off and kicks Lucy. AS Charlie should have by at least 1970.

       3. I held my nose and voted, then went to bed Tuesday night mildly curious about the results – I was convinced Hillary had been handed the White House on a silver platter, but I was wondering what kind of a blip the Libertarians would get. Idly checked returns before shutting down the Kindle…”Huh.” Curiosity piqued, read another hour, checked again…and that’s how I ended up 1) staying up till 4 and 2) giggling madly throughout the night.

13. And, thank you for doing such a great job keeping this forum classy and rational. It is so very refreshing.

    1. Seconded. I learn things here. The people are, by and large, intelligent, rational, and well read. That ain’t all that common on the internet.

       1. yeah, I have had places go whonky, even ones supposedly on my side of things.

          1. Often enough that there are some signs I’ll flat bail on.

             1. oh yeah. getting now to see it coming from light-years away.

       2. It’s freaking rare anywhere. And it’s rarest on college campuses. In fact, it’s commoner in Civil War Reenactment Confederate Army camps than it is on college campuses, which (if they could absorb it at all) would make a LOT of Lefty heads explode.

          1. Heh. I know a few re-enactors myself, and I agree with you. Whether it be because the re-enactors in general read history from first sources to make sure they get things right or the fact that re-enactors must put their ideas in practice in the real world with real consequences close at hand. Perhaps college students would benefit from a bit of real world experience to balance the indoctrination (and some of that is essential for learning- memorizing facts and so on). *chuckle*

             1. I’ll push it a step forward and suggest you will find greater understanding about the World Outside America by attending any randomly chosen Missions Conference (Evangelical or Mormon) than attending any four-year university.

                1. Heh. No question. While there may be worrying issues in the Evangelical community at large, the missions people are normally level headed and practical. Two adjectives in scant supply at most any college campus…

             2. It’s because they’re geeeeeeeeks.

                When you are in love, you try to learn all you can about your love, and strongly desire to share it.

                1. Reenactors are my favorite source for my books! I think of them as free-lance open-air historians!

                   1. damn it, I wish I had my old plumber’s contact. He was… amazing. And actually very versed on the history of Texas.

                      1. And a lot of history there, too. It’s like the old comment about the Balkans – that they create more history than can comfortably be absorbed locally …

                   2. Daughter looked confused and asked me “Mom, what is a geek?”
                      “Someone who has a strong passion for a topic, generally about something intellectually focused. Dad really likes Batman, and knows a lot about it, so he’s a Batman geek.”

          2. My ex-plumber was a reennactor. He loved coming to our house on a call because we’d talk about history, books and blogs. Very smart man. Unfortunately lost touch with him after the company was sold.

14. Here’s what we’re fighting against:

    WATCH: Employees fight back against shoplifters attempting to steal $16,000 in jackets
    Employees of a men’s clothing store retaliated against a handful of shoplifters after they thought they could casually walk into the store and take thousands of dollars’ worth of winter coats.

    “They marched into the store in single file, dancing and making light of what they were going to do,” Alan Gibeley, the owner of the store Giblees, told the Boston Globe on Friday. “Like, ‘we’re going to take your coats, and there’s nothing you can do.'”

    Footage shows a group of people walking single file to the back of the store to swipe 16 Canada Goose jackets worth an estimated $16,000 collectively. “These jackets are 80 feet from the door,” Gibeley said. “They were brazen enough to walk through the entire store.”

    Employees were able to intercept them as they tried to make an escape and grabbed back 15 of the coats. One employee in his 60s was injured during the ensuing fight.

    Store employees gave a description of the getaway car to police, who then tracked it down and arrested the alleged shoplifters. Byron Vaughn, 23; Mekeda McKenzie, 19; Adriana James, 23; Lynasja Trimble, 20; and Kashawnii Roumo-O’Brien, 20, were all arrested and being held by the Danvers Police Department.

    They are due in court on Friday, according to the district attorney’s office.
    washingtonexaminer[DOT]com/news/watch-employees-fight-back-against-shoplifters-attempting-to-steal-16-000-in-jackets

    It is the brazenness such actions express that is anti-civilizational.

    I expect the usual suspects of Legal Aid and the Criminal Defense bar will be turning up to justify their attempted thefts as acts of expression to denounce Materialism and White Privilege.

    1. If the store is a chain, I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more of the employees are fired for putting themselves at risk.

    2. The casual looting of stores is getting very bad in California, since the police won’t even bother taking a report if the value of goods stolen is below (IIRC) $1,000.
       So the looters very carefully tally up their haul before walking out.
       I honestly don’t see how retailers in some locations will be able to carry on, at the rate their merchandise and profits are waltzing out the door.

       1. The big chains might be able to survive that, but it’s going to be hell for the small retailers. If nothing else, it will force a whole new business model, much like the old-school grocery stores where the customer gave the clerk a list and waited for a basket. OTOH, it’s going to suck for things like clothing stores.

          I wish I could think it was an unintended consequence, but there have been too many decisions/bills/executive orders like that that all went the same way.

          1. Remember – in Philadelphia they attempted to outlaw cashiers sitting in bulletproof glass enclosure because it was degrading to customers. I just looked it up because I was remembering it as Baltimore.

          2. I worked for a brief and interesting time in a fur salon in an upscale department store in San Antonio. The fur coats, without exception, were secured to the racks with a chain through the sleeve of the coat. Us sales staff had keys to unlock the coats for individual clients to try on. As soon as the coat went back on the rack – the lock was secured. I can see that high (and even moderate-value clothing) items might come to that, in theft-vulnerable venues.
             I can also imagine the usual suspects screaming like castrati that this is raaaaacist!eleventy!!!!

          3. > it’s going to be hell for the small retailers.

             That’s quite possibly a desired result.

       2. IIRC from working in big box hard lines (hardware, tools, etc.), we tried to keep loss by inventory (AKA theft) under 2%.

          Soft lines (clothing) losing only 10% by inventory is good.

          One thing soft minded individuals always say of small thefts is “Well, it’s only $10.” Let’s assume that item cost $8 to the store. Now we have to sell 4 more of that item to get the $8 back, and a fifth to make a profit and pay the staff and the electric bills and…. Everyone here gets the idea.

          1. Math is good! Pity that so many don’t understand it.

          2. When we were working on the other house, to put it for sale, son and I went to Lowe’s in the Old North End of Colorado Springs. For those uninformed, not a cheap neighborhood (We buy as expensive was we can possibly, usually distressed properties, and then more or less rebuild them while living there. Current is no exception. It means our kids were usually poorest in their class. Good humbling experience.) As we went into Lowes, two guys came out running with vacuum cleaners. The employees stopped at the door, watching them go off to their cars. And THEN they told us these same guys had been doing this every week.
             Think on that. The employees were forbidden from giving chase. The police didn’t bother.

             1. If it’s like some other stories I’ve heard, go check the local undocumented heavy construction sites.

             2. Which makes you wonder “why vacuum cleaners”? Until you realize that they are probably stocking a cash-only store somewhere, where such things are sold at a discount in small lots.

                Same as with other things that get stolen in the big chains, like razors and hair care items. “Specialty” hair care items.

                1. Went into a local CVS pharmacy men’s room, and noticed several *dozen* perfume/cologne boxes (with associated RFID tags attached) in the trash. Brought it to the attention of the on-site manager and watched her walk away crying.

                   Also, a friend of mine worked a Menard’s as early morning stocker. Apparently the #1 stolen item from there by volume is a garden hose washer.

          3. I worked at a gas station on the graveyard shift for about 6 years. When I started, losses due to alcohol theft were around a thousand a month, which meant that with the margins we were selling at, we had to sell ten thousand worth of product to make up for that.

             Fairly quickly, I started confronting beer thieves, against company policy (which was written with 95-pound girls in mind). Fairly quickly, alcohol losses dropped to a hundred a month. I carefully didn’t tell management about how I’d storm up to the would-be thieves and make them put it back, they carefully didn’t watch the videos of the relevant times, no paperwork was filed unless police happened to be on hand to cuff the perps as they walked out the store with stolen beer into the cops’ loving arms (although those rare times were _incredibly_ satisfying, there’s nothing better in retail than seeing ‘customers’ get arrested), and the store saved well over my wage in loss-prevention alone.

             I suspect it’s gone back up to a thousand a month in losses, since then.

             -Albert

       3. And then they’ll be called raaaaacist for leaving. Unfortunately, this nonsense isn’t confined to CA. DA here in Dallas said he wouldn’t prosecute theft of “basic survival items”. I’m sure that those clothes would qualify; can’t have people naked — unless they’re stoned out of their gourd on the street.

          1. I have lived in New Orleans. and worked in the French Quarter. Every year, there is a bowl game there for two historically black colleges. (Think Gambling vs. Southern.) Most of the business there are small ones, locally owned.
             A few years back (around 2005) many of the owners decided to close that weekend. Why? They were getting plundered by large groups of students that discovered that if they showed in force,( 50+) they were unstoppable by the severely outnumbered staff.
             The city’s response? Increase NOPD presence on Bourbon, and try to arrest the thieves? Nope. A public relations offensive. To call out those businesses to remain open or be branded racist.

             1. When I lived in SC, Myrtle Beach had similar problems with its two Bike Weeks. My college roommate would do all her coursework ahead of time and go home to wait tables at her uncle’s restaurant during the first one, which paid for that year’s living expenses. The other week, the whole family closed up and left town.

             2. Colin Flaherty has been documenting this for years. He’s written three books with thousands of links. It’s happening literally EVERYWHERE, and has been for 20 years. Of course, the media has consistently down played the whole thing, and Democrat mayors / police chiefs have helped.

                That mob of 50+? You’d never see the 50; you’d see the one or two that the cops might arrest. That kind of thing is why you shouldn’t believe the “declining crime rate” numbers: when you’re not arresting / prosecuting everyone (and in all too many cases ANYone), your numbers magically look better.

    3. That headline needs to be corrected : That was robbery, not shoplifting.

       I know, I know, expecting English competency from the media. ..

       1. Well Randy, “Shoplifting” is “Robbery”. 😉

          Admittedly, walking into a store and openly stealing goods isn’t the “standard” form of Shoplifting.

          In the “standard form” of Shoplifting, the thief doesn’t want to be noticed stealing the items.

          Those idiots weren’t hiding what they were doing. 😀

          1. Well, I’d agree that shoplifting and robbery are both theft, but (around here anyway) the legal definitions of those terms are different, with different penalties.

             Robbery involves the use of, or the threat of, the use of force to steal.

             Once a physical confrontation started in that store the thieves were guilty of robbery. In most states that has much harsher penalties than shoplifting.

             And no, it doesn’t matter if the store employees “started it” by blocking their exit from the store. (A claim I’ve heard from similar scum. It usually doesn’t go well in court).

             Pedantically yours… 😉

             1. yep, shoplifting is theft not robbery…

                legal words mean things

                just like i have explained so someone threatening to ‘beat me down’ that i can get him arrested for assault… most people don’t realize assault and battery are two separate legal charges…and that yeah, ‘just threatening someone’ can land you in jail if the DA can convince the jury that the victim took you seriously.

15. No comment on Trump, but I’ve been watching the tides in journalism with increasing skepticism. {Drat you, Sarah, for teaching me how to spot propaganda a little too well.} The enviro-wave came out of nowhere, and might be peaking. We’ve had “all vaping is lethal!” and it is fading at the moment, possibly because it collides with pot legalization.* I saw a piece claiming that Ecstasy ought to be legalized next, so I suspect drug-legalization might be the next wave. That or something about the “homeless” and the need to take private property in order to “house” them.

    These things just appear, are in all the media wall-to-wall, and then disappear. The pattern repeats so often that it’s almost boring. Almost.

    *It appears that all the mysterious illnesses linked to vaping have come from back-alley pot cartridges or back-alley other cartridges. Folks, pro-tip: things you inject, inhale, or swallow probably ought not be purchased on the cheap end of the black market.

    1. IIRC, the comment about black market purchases also brushes up against a lot of those who’ve died from opioid abuse.

       1. It also seems to correlate more with cannabis-vaping than nicotine use — likely because of the ingredient used to “liberate” the CBD oil.

          Of course, that ain’t legal either, is it?

          1. I think Insty carried an article that claimed something like 99% of the opioid deaths were due to illegal drugs. Similarly, the vaping injuries/deaths have all (as best as I can tell) been traced to the vitamin E oil used for cannabis oil extraction–ie, not due to legal/commercial nicotine vaping products. I think cannabis vaping stuff might be legal in the state; no idea how it’s regulated, if at all.

             1. Insty, hell, the DEA will scream it at the top of their lungs, given half a chance; the idiot activists have to hide behind fentanyl HAVING a medical use to drag “opioids” into anything but completely illegal drug deaths, even though to my knowledge none of the modern times deaths have been from stolen hospital fet. Why bother when it’s cheap and easily available from China?

                1. Honestly, you can get just about anything by mail these days. Shrug. I see to reason to curtail the liberties of those of us who play by the rules. Or pain management for dying people, for that matter.

                   1. Agreed. No human being should have to watch a loved one dying and in pain, when there is no rational reason they should be suffering so.

                   2. One of the many pieces of evidence that makes me think the cartels are spending cash like crazy on activists is how much solid BS there is out there about the DEA and their goals– and a lot of it is coming out of politicians.

                      The DEA guys I’ve heard from IRL are freaking pissed that they’re basically dragged off of useful stuff into duplicating what Diversion does– Cartel smugglers dusting their pot with fet is a much bigger cause of death, but some political idiot sees “opioid deaths” and scapegoats the legal pain treatment.

                      Not like they donate much, after all.

                      1. I suspect your last sentence is one of (if not the most important) key factors in the clampdown on legal opioid pain killers. The people I’ve known* with stage 4 -nomas have generally been more attentive to dealing with end-of-life issues than politics.

                         (*) Way too many; we’ve got a bit of a cancer cluster because reasons, not least the active and former smokers.

                   3. It is my opinion that the whole opioid “crackdown” is a way for government to extort/extract money from pharmaceutical companies, as such companies have been effectively declared “enemies of the state” by the left and bankrupting them puts them in the position of being controlled by government, either through bailouts or outright confiscation/nationalization. Doing so is essential for the left to achieve its goal of making the entire healthcare sector government run and controlled. The Republicans going along with it are playing the role of Lenin’s “useful idiots”.

                      1. /agree

                         If it works, they destroy the drug companies; if it doesn’t, they destroy another branch of law enforcement.

                         Again, one of their win/wins.

                      2. As I have said before, the rise and encouragement of euthanasia, living wills, DNR, etc. and the simultaneous discouragement of prescription pain meds does not strike me as a coincidence.

                2. Fentanyl, especially when its cut into other drugs is the killer. The chain between pharma and the deaths is from initial addictions and availability but actually enforcing borders and drug laws would save thousands

                   1. *nod*

                      Although note, it’s what they believe are prescription drugs, not DRUGS PRESCRIBED TO THEM, or anybody they know.

                      They aren’t copying recognizable pills just for disguising purposes.

             2. Here, three year old news article:
                https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2016/07/22/dea-report-counterfeit-pills-fueling-us-fentanyl-and-opioid-crisis

                1. I saw a news story with photos of fentanyl pressed professionally into Adderall pill format – exact correct color, shape and markings.

                   Trump has been launching trial balloons about declaring the cartels as terror groups, and I think he should proceed.

                   1. I have no objections to this. They’re groups of people using tactics of violence against the general public in order to effect political policy/change. That is terrorism.

                   2. YES!

                      The funding alone would be…illuminating.

                      1. And the most valuable part of such designation, rather than the admirable-in-itself more things for the SOF guys to shoot and blow up, would be the financial tools which have been deployed against AQ and Daesh to interdict and attack their funding, which financial tools reportedly have done more to castrate said organizations than all the ever so expertly drone strikes and raids.

    2. On journalistic tide (seems there ought be a detergent joke there but I’m using a borrowed head today as my usual one is somewhat the worse for wear) …

       We’ve got:

       The 1619 Projection is an obvious deliberate attempt to paint America as racist.

       The Nancy Pelosi, Super-Genius political tactician.

       The Exoneration double-standard: “Mueller didn’t exonerate Trump” vs “Horowitz totally exonerated the FBI”

       The “McConnell Must Recuse” vs “Schumer is completely impartial” dance.

       And yet, these have become fodder for mockery. The MSM is revealed as not the glamorous hot chick but the foundation-garmented dowager depending on a layer of Vaseline over the lens thick enough to nearly block all light.

       They’re throwing everything they can at the wall and none of it is sticking.

       1. “The MSM is revealed as not the glamorous hot chick but the foundation-garmented dowager depending on a layer of Vaseline over the lens thick enough to nearly block all light.”
          Basically Madonna then.

          1. Madonna?

             
             I was thinking Mae West or perhaps Dietrich late in their careers, but having seen some recent Madonna snapshots …

       2. I’ll go back a few more years (OK, decades) and EL&P’s “Karn Evil 9”
          “Soon the gypsy queen,
          in a glaze of vaseline,
          performs on guillotine,
          what a scene, what a scene.”

          1. And
             “Right before your eyes,
             We’ll pull laughter from the skies
             And he laughs until he cries,
             then he dies, then he dies”

             Interesting tidbit; H.R. Giger, the artist who was part of the team that created the effects and look the xenomorph in Alien, drew the cover art for Brain Salad Surgery among other albums.

       3. Yep.
          Trump is the road runner. They are the coyote.

          1. Super-Genius!

          2. I beg to disagree. Wile E. Coyote is a genius. His business card says so. (And I’ve been tempted to get a similar card made up)

             The Leftists are idiots.

             1. Actually, I believe he’s a Soooper Genius,

       4. > The 1619 Project

          That spans the gap between “misinformation” and “outright lies.”

          1. it is so bad, even Marxist Proffs are crying foul.

    3. I think I said this elsewhere, but this pattern is repeating more frequently now, at least as I see it, which makes it that much more obvious (well, to everybody except those creating the pattern). I think this means that many more people than expected have noticed the pattern and are no longer buying the hype. At least that is what I hope (going for cautiously optimistic here).

16. “And then with amazing suddenness it’s everywhere, including the most respectable sites on the right/libertarian spectrum.”

    I remember Brit Hume, years ago, discussing this type of occurrence, during (I think) the first George W Bush) election when the drunk driving charge emerged.) Hume referred to the phenomenon as being “NY Times-ed” and described it in terms of the Times‘ ability to dominate a conversation, even if only for a few days.

    The intent is to change a topic, to blunt momentum, to smother an issue. Expect to see it deployed as the Durham Reaper starts bringing cases to court.

    Think of it as Close-Air-Support for the enemy. It has the ability to disperse attacks and disrupt developments.

17. I voted by secret ballot. I maintain the secrecy of that ballot, because that is my G-d given and carefully defended right as an American citizen.

    That said, the very fact I hold that position probably tells you a lot about the likely drift of my past and future voting patterns.

18. “I’d appreciate it if you discuss the subjects rationally”

    Rationally? Rationally!!!???? Honey, I don’t do rationally!

    Rationally is for losers. Rationality is a blanket under which those incapable of handling absurdity try to hide.

    1. Pardon me — I forgot the obligatory Bwah-hah-ha-ha!

19. I’ve been watching the Virginia threads, and as far as I can tell everyone involved has a very acute understanding of the knife edge that must be traversed to not have regrettable results. They have also picked up on and are countering some possible psyops. Good news there.

    In the bad news column there seem to be quite a few who think that if the boogaloo does kick off there is no such thing as an illegitimate target. Sure! No problem burning the children of grabbers alive! And the primary reason isn’t even “this is the horror that will be necessary to win”, but “they will do it to you”.

    I guess you get a free moral pass to do whatever you want so long as you think someone somewhere on the other side did something as bad.

    Some people are going to be so busy dealing out blue-on-blue against the monsters they won’t have time to fight the enemy…

    1. The question is who’s the Feebs trying to incite in order to get an arrest, who’s the foreign agent trying to put us at each other’s throats, who’s the lefty trolls looking for points to discredit, and who’s the keyboard kommando looking to thump his chest and pretend he’s some kind of sooper warrior?

       1. Precisely.

    2. I’d bet you most of the monsters aren’t really American. And yeah, some people are influentiable, but those influencing it aren’t “of us.” I was shocked at finding foreign trolls here, which hasn’t happened since the last blog war.

       1. I don’t know the people involved well enough; I’m not actually an arfcom member, just a lurker. But I’m pretty sure these were long standing members.

          If they are trolls they have been playing one hell of a long game.

          And they didn’t exactly have much in the way of people dissagreing with them.

          1. Have you seen what happens when people disagree? Yeah.

          2. And they didn’t exactly have much in the way of people dissagreing with them.

             Don’t feed the trolls.

             1. I was apparently too subtle: everyone was (textually) nodding along.

                The trolls on the other hand were getting told to shut up.

                1. Trying to figure out how to say this gently….

                   If it was notable enough to see, but still say on the site, why didn’t you say anything?

                   1. As I said I don’t have an account there.

                      And their sign up system is wonky due to anti-troll measures.

    3. “I guess you get a free moral pass to do whatever you want so long as you think someone somewhere on the other side did something as bad.”

       Of course, after Waco “think” needs to be changed to “know”.

       The ATF and FBI absolutely DID burn children alive because the ATF opted for a publicity stunt to justify their budget rather than quietly arresting Koresh away from his compound — a course of action they explicitly rejected.

       1. Add in the FACT that Koresh was unarmed and outside when the trucks pulled up. He was shot but managed to get back inside.
          Think about that. Their target was waiting for them and they couldn’t stop their attack.

          1. You misspelled “wouldn’t”. Wouldn’t stop their attack.

20. The fact that you’re getting paid trolls is, in its own way, a compliment. It shows that you are making enough of an impact to be worth somebody’s dollars. As the saying goes, “if you’re taking flak, it means you’re over the target.” (I’d quibble about the details–over, or on the approaches to, a target, might not be the target you were aiming for but it’s a target.)

    1. meh. Good hits is 20k unique. Average is more like 4k. Except of course last week or so, because holidays.

       1. For comparison, however, a good day for me (not counting instalanches) is a couple hundred. Average is probably aroudn 80ish.

       2. But how many readers are like me? I’ve been around since Sad Puppies, although I don’t comment often. I’ve signed up to get posts by email and I read them daily. When working, I don’t have time to read the comments, though I really like how informative the comments tend to be. That is one daily reader that only shows up in your stats about a fifth of the time.

          1. Oh, yes, it doesn’t count email.

21. Dr. Pournelle made a great case for Trump here on these pages, and helped me turn from Never to reluctant.
    Then came the realization that despite all his flaws, he didn’t hate and despise America, her history and her ideas.
    Hillary, on the other hand, does.
    And it’s clear now that President Trump actually takes his position seriously.

    1. Hillary didn’t “hate and despise America, her history and her ideas.” She just couldn’t stand Americans, especially the ones who think politicians accountable for their actions.

       1. That too.

       2. Embrace the power of “And” there.

       3. Hillary is the American political equivalent of Cersei Lannister, right down to marry Robert Baratheon/Bill Clinton for power.

    2. Dr Pournelle was one of my friends.
       The other, who sat me down in person, was L. Neil Smith.
       I figured when those two agreed….

22. The top two things I worry about in 2020 is voter fraud and the alternate reality bubble that the dems and the MSM continue to push. Facts don’t matter if all the typical person out there hears is the narrative.

    1. I worry about Supreme Court packing by the next democratic president and the Popular Vote Compact thing. If Trump gets to replace Ginsburgh I think court packing it is inevitable. They can’t actually get their gun policies with a Supreme court that respects the constitution. The vote compact will be more of a slow burn it will take people a few years to realise that their votes have been made meaningless and nobody bothers to campaign in low population states or address their issues.

       1. SCOTUS, by long precedent, decides to seat new Justices.

          They have already dropped some clues they will not seat 10+. Going along ends SCOTUS as any meaningful separate branch, and the effective end of the Republic.

          I doubt even RBG would cooperate in such madness.

          1. If even St. FDR couldn’t do it, there’s no way any of the current (D) pack could manage it.

          2. The number of Justices on the Supreme Court is up to Congress & the President not the Court itself.

             The “packing” Scott referred to involves talk by the Dim-ocrats to increase the number of Justices in order to get more Lefties on the Court.

             As usual, they ignore the current make-up of the Senate and ignore that removing Trump doesn’t mean getting a Democrat as President.

       2. That would require a constitutional amendment. And, as TXRed notes, not even FDR managed that. Trump with two appointments so far, and a likely third replacing Ginsburg, and possibly Thomas, will have created a majority conservative Court for a long time. I consider this a good thing.

          1. A constitutional amendment? I don’t think they think so. All the reporting I’ve seen on it says the Constitution is mute on the prescribed number of Justices and History makes clear that their interpretations of even explicit Constitutional language can be … highly inventive.

             If they get sufficient majority and the White House they can shove it through and the MSM would fill with learned heads sagaciously explaining why it is permissible.. Note, as even RBG has said, doing so would destroy the legitimacy of the SCOTUS. Seriously, though, when has a quibbling little detail like that ever deterred them?

             1. You’re right. I went back and checked (it’s been several years since I had to teach intro American…). Judiciary Act of 1869 set the number at 9. So, it would take a bill, which would have to go through both House and Senate, and then get signed by POTUS. Assuming Trump is re-elected, that won’t happen. And, they won’t do anything while he’s president, because he’d get to appoint the new justices. FDR’s court-packing plan was too much even for his strongest supporters in Congress. Messing with the structure of SCOTUS is viewed as truly undermining government. And, even if the next POTUS is a D, I’d guess s/he wouldn’t sign it either. That’s a political death warrant.

                1. The Democratic Party candidates have expressed support on this. If the Democrats regain control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency, expanding the Supreme Court, along with impeaching Kavanaugh, will be at the top of their to do list. The Democrats believe they are entitled to have a leftist controlled Supreme Court. They need to gain dominance on the Court so the patently unconstitutional policies they intend to institute, such as wealth taxes, gun bans and confiscation and restrictions on speech they don’t like. They want to elevate the “resistance” Judges to the Supreme Court.

                   This is perhaps the most important reason this election is so crucial, just as it was crucial to keep Hillary from being able to pick Justices.

23. I’m reminded of something that Neoneocon observed on her blog during the lead-up to the 2016 election. She’d noticed that there’d been an upsurge of people attempting to comment on her blog. And the new commenters all had very similar IP addresses.

    On the positive side, the similar addresses did make it easier for her to screen the problematic individuals.

24. When I troll, it’s purely pro bono and for my own amusement.

    For sometimes, one simply has to laugh.

    1. There’s a Most Interesting Man In The World men there, I just can’t complete the connection…

       1. Meme. Meme meme meme. Darn you autocorrect – darn you to heck!

          1. Give it some nice socks

25. So… is anyone else going through their mental lists of likely culprits? Because there’s this one jerk who shares a handle with Barbie’s boyfriend I’d love to be a figment. >.>

    1. Oh, that one? He’s one of Clamp’s Chlamydia accounts.
       I’m honestly not sure the creature is REAL in any sense of the word. But if he is, he’s not a WELL person.

       1. That… explains a great deal. I think he somehow missed my autoflags with that one; I’ll adjust the filter going forward 🙂

          1. He keeps coming up with ways around it.
             And honestly I’m not SURE he’s not an entire troll farm, and I’m not SURE he’s not for pay.
             Yes, I know what’s been said, but considering that the same week he was supposed to be under a court order he was trying to post here… well….

             1. Well, the tech bans, yeah. But his weird sentence structure in-a-particular-way usually hits my brainmeat filter like a hammer, and somehow Ken people-are-dumb-because-my-mom-never-told-me-to-bathe didn’t trip it.

                Honestly, him being a troll farm with a style guide would explain it well enough 🙂

                1. Oh, that one? Nah, that one is mental patient. We told him that, and he self-banned.

26. I seem to remember in the August time frame a consent decree that, in essence, handcuffed the GOP from fighting, discussing, etc. Voter fraud was allowed to expire. I would not be surprised to see an EO requiring voter ID being issued (with enough lead time to work through the courts).

    1. OK, key question: what will Trump do if Democrat/RINO jurisdictions ignore the EO, just like they did his Elections Commission? There was no penalty for ignoring the Commission. See New Hampshire Senate race (and electoral votes). See another example of obvious fraud, no action here:

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

       What anyone SAYS doesn’t matter, because the Democrats will ignore / subvert the ruling. And do you think there won’t be violence if anything is DONE?

       1. What I think is that there’s a difference between shooting your neighbor because you know he’s planning to break into your house and kill you, and shooting him as he breaks into your house.
          The second is self defense.
          You know that damn well too, if you stop and think.

       2. What I know is there is a difference between shooting your neighbor because you KNOW he’s planning to break into your house and kill you, and shooting him after he’s broken into your house with a knife in his hand.
          The second is self defense. The first will see you locked up.
          You know that difference damn well, too. If you stop and think.

          1. You’re right. Hell, in our “system of laws” your second scenario may not qualify depending on which side of an arbitrary jurisdictional line on a map or in the mind of a prosecutor you’re on.

             Which means that we’re GOING to lose, because once the election’s over no one is giving those offices up, and we’ll all pretend that the laws these fraudsters make are real. See California, stolen Congressional elections, several dozen.

             1. Nah. Look to Europe.
                And twenty years ago I thought Europe was lost. I just recently realized it’s not. Not even close.

27. Further…. see https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/09/rnc-ballot-security-consent-decree-328995… and I guess it was in January.

28. My favorite thing about Trump is the way he makes the left froth at the mouth. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that to my brother but said brother was seriously getting on my nerves.

    As for politics, I see voting as a civic duty. But my thoughts turn more and more to religion and the inner peace that can be found there. Please delete this if it comes across preachy, that’s not my intent.

    1. I just kind of wish he could get them to froth at the mouth without acting like a particularly undisciplined third-grader. It’s really not that hard to do–just post any kind of info that disrupts their narrative and watch the rage.

       1. “particularly undisciplined third-grader’

          I suspect he is tailoring the tweets to their acting reading level …

29. “I might smack noses” Will that be with a rolled up newspaper, like used on a naughty dog? Or with an open palm?

    1. for the cats, when running into trouble, it’s usually a finger-flick.

    2. When a body posts something they really ought to know better- I have done so- someone will usually come along and apply the appropriate response. As my uncle used to say, if you got your head up your bum, the kindest thing might just be a kick in the appropriate place. With luck, it might get dislodged, and you can finally see the light! *chuckle*

30. I was one of those who couldn’t stomach Hillary getting the nomination and appointing Supreme Court Justices. No matter how rude and crude Trump was, he didn’t have her kind of record.
    Trump didn’t have to DO a blessed thing. Anyone who could generate that much foam-flecked spittle from enemies couldn’t be all that bad. I was most pleasantly surprised that he made such a serious and prolonged attempt to keep his campaign promises.

    Maybe not quite yet, but you take your wins where you can get them.

    1. Trump didn’t help much on the judge front when he quipped he might nominate his sister to SCOTUS. He did walk it back fast (like a few sentences later) but it did not help him with folks like me.
       She is more the Kagan end of things than what he did nominate.

31. Not related to your post, but I just looked at my account, and the kibble donation I sent to you shows as “According to Chuck” is this normal or did it get sidetracked?

    1. it got sidetracked.
       Mine is accordingtohoyt.

    2. I don’t even get how that could have happened.

       1. I clicked from the front page. Did you get a sawbuck with a comment about Greebo Kibble from Paypal?

          1. Probably a few. I usually get a few. I’ll ask husband to look specifically.
             The chuck is weird. I’m not chuck, nor is the account.
             Paypal might have crisscrossed thingies?
             I will investigate.
             You know, if he is okay (we won’t know for 3 months. If it’s cancer, we can repeat the treatment, but it might prove futile and we’re… not made of money) I’m going to start up a page for him (as part of my blog, and on FB) with tips and quips for writers. Seems fair. And he has more fans than I do….

             1. I know we’ve bought a few (NEW!) cars worth of care for several of our cats, worth it every time. Heck, we’ve got one who showed up late last year that’s eating $140 a month of prescription food. He’s a sweetie, a /smart/ orange tabby (more rare than a male calico in my experience.)

                1. Our cats cost us more than our cars, which ain’t saying much.
                   It’s just with Greebo, the doctor said if it’s cancer they might have to go through radiation 10 times, at 2k a pop. I’d have to write A LOT for that.
                   Meh. I’ll write a lot anyway. But what we found with a previous cat is that the cancer had already spread to her jaw and she died of that…. 😦

                   1. Condolences. Honestly part of why haven’t gotten another dog since last year. Had to make that decision and still hurts sometimes

                   2. We were told that Thyroid cancer was the only cancer that was curable in cats (I think the dose used 31 years ago might have been higher … goal was to destroy the Thyroid), as long as it was confined to the Thyroid. Cats mass was too small and lean, by the time other cancers manifested/detectable, that it was too late. Second cat to have cancer was 28 years ago, who quickly died of it (at age 3). Have been told small dogs (toy size) have the same problem. Granted haven’t discussed it with a veterinarian in 28 years … so who knows now.

                      1. The problem is they can’t kill the thyroid with Greebo. If they do, he’ll die, because I can’t medicate him. It’s not in things he’ll tolerate. You can medicate him once, then he’ll hide from you.

                         1. Yes. Being able to medicate is a definite plus. Helped that our thyroid surviving cat was hand raised.

                      2. I’m dealing with Type B canine lymphoma in our 15 pound now 13 pound terrier-poodle mix. They’ve improved the treatments radically, and he’s benefited from it.

32. When the election came around, I voted for Zombie Margaret Thatcher, because there was no way Trump was going to win in California.

    I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Trump, even if I wished he was a bit more…polished? Charmingly witty? He’s a street fighter, no doubts about it, and he keeps fighting like hell and surprising everyone. And, he did something that I didn’t think was possible without a lot of luck-that all of these would-be Emperors are ass-naked.

    And not very pretty as well.

    2020 is going to be very, very interesting…

    1. The more I’ve seen of what he does to get the left screaming in the twitterverse and elsewhere, versus what I have heard/read/seen of him in situations where he has no NEED to be combative?

       It’s deliberate. Sure, him talking off the cuff is sometimes a bit scattered (very few people I know of can talk off the cuff and sound totally coherent the entire time), but it strikes me more as “very smart person babbling at the near-speed of their thought process”–which, for the record, also sounds remarkably like someone who hasn’t got two brain cells to rub together.

       But this is a man who was able to get the little lunatic from North Korea to at least TALK more than once. Trump mostly knows what he’s doing with his “unpolished” approach.

       He’s upper crust NYC money. Maybe not “old money”, true–but you can’t tell me the man has operated for all these decades in the Big Apple and can’t schmooze and charm just as well as he can bluster and insult. It’s ALL deliberate.

       (I think the man himself, without an act going, is probably a bit blunt, a bit hot-tempered, but more given to kindness than not. He wouldn’t have THREE ex-wives who are notably not out for his blood, not to mention apparently very good relationships with all his kids if he were a cruel bully. At a holiday dinner in a normal world, he’d likely be the grandpa who tells mildly off-color jokes and stories to the kids, but not so bad that the moms get really mad at him, and the kids think he’s awesome, if a bit weird.)

       1. I think Trump survived in New York because he’s the classic New York success story. And, he proved that if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

       2. My wife (who’s a Brooklyn born New Yorker until 40 yo) says that Trump is a typical Queens construction company boss at bottom, and he’ll be very pleasant and even generous…. until he decides you’re BSing him.

    2. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Trump, even if I wished he was a bit more…polished?”

       I believe the term for which you’re groping is “more eruditier.”

       I voted for Trump as NotHillary and he’s proven every bit that. I vastly prefer Trump’s occasional crassness over Hillary’s oleaginous disingenuousness.

       1. I do, too. Hillary! would have probably caused a civil war at this point, only because she is that stupid.

          1. stupid and arrogant is a deadly combination

             1. Stupid and arrogant is fun to read about and watch on TV. As long as what you’re watching or reading isn’t current events.

                1. it would be grand if we could keep it off C-Span.
                   A man can dream.

          2. The way things were going, she could have started more than a civil war; probably one with opponents who could throw some serious damage.

             1. In 2015 we still had military advisors in the Ukraine, I think. I remember thinking Hillary would have bungled us into a war with Russia if she was elected.

                1. I remember hearing calls for heavy aggression and no fly zones in Syria. Giving benefit of doubt to the admin would have likely ended in some sort of confrontation thru just fog of war. But being more cynical I think that Assad was more the enemy of the prior admin than ISIS was and that could get out of hand real fast

                   1. “I think that Assad was more the enemy of the prior admin than ISIS was and that could get out of hand real fast”

                      About that Christmas present Kim Jong Un promised ….
                      North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un failed to deliver his “Christmas gift” — a new missile test, perhaps — by Christmas, but he may yet come through. Yet even if he does, it would be wrong to see President Trump’s dealings with him as a failure.

                      [SNIP]

                      Yet the odds of [Kim abandoning his nuclear weapons program] were never high; Trump, to his credit, has been trying to beat those odds. Yet unlike President Bill Clinton — or Barack Obama with Iran — Trump has refused to make major concessions until he’s sure Kim is de-nuking.

                      Obama, by contrast, lifted sanctions and shipped $100 billion-plus to Tehran upfront, before Iran even had time to prove it was acting in good faith. Obama didn’t even require a permanent scrapping of nuclear weapons activities but only a delay.

                      Clinton, similarly, provided aid on the North’s mere promise to give up its nukes, yet Pyongyang never made good; today, it’s said to have dozens of nuclear warheads.

                      Should Kim come through with a “gift” signaling an end to negotiations, Trump can ratchet up pressure. But Washington will be in a stronger position having shown it doesn’t make bad deals just to look good.

                      1. My point was more that if our nominal effort was to defeat ISIS, there were opportunities to ally with both Russia and Syria to do so. But imo more effort was expended to make enemies of both. This made no sense to me, even without the potential issues of supporting allies of Al Qaeda that iirc occured on occasion

                2. There have been rumblings that we were supposed to go to war with the PRC under Her Tyrannical Magesty.

                   And lose.

                   1. I question that, mostly because I do not see what Clinton would gain from it.

                      1. The thought processes of lizard people are often incomprehensible.

                         Both Clintons often did things that failed the “what’s in it for me?” test.

                      2. The scenario tied into the deliberate degrading of our military capability at the same time China was ramping up; one was inclined to wonder if the Clintons (and Obama, etc) were answering to people higher on the food chain than themselves.

                         1. Um…. China were major contributors to Hillary’s “Foundation” so, you figure it out.

                            1. I am sure that Hillary foresaw many ways in which she could be of great use to our new Chinese overlords.

                               It isn’t as if they’d immediately replace all of our political institutions, after all. They’d still want a Federal government to enact and enforce their … guidelines, just as they’ve practiced in Hong Kong.

                            2. It’s also quite interesting how our “democratic operatives with bylines” seem to be unable to criticize China for most anything they do.

                            3. Now the USSR is gone, China is their beau ideal.

                         2. Am I too much of a Pollyanna to think MAYBE they were just stoopid?

                            1. I’m inclined to go with stupidity myself. All signs point to foreign policy incompetence on the part of Obama and the Clintons, not malfeasance–or, at least, no more than the usual “domestic political concerns override good strategy” problem that has plagued American foreign policy since the beginning–combined with some oikophobia.

                            2. Operating from an invalid premise (or two) is stupidity or incompetence, yes, but it does not mean malfeasance is not also operative. As has been noted in other arena, the heart often follows the purse.

                               But there is scant doubt their underlying assumptions were … flawed. The problems of this world are not particularly a consequence of America’s big feet, our withdrawal from international engagement will not cause all problems to correct themselves or recede into insignificance, other nations and international institutions are not notably more altruistic than the United States and, like Blanche Dubois, “depending upon the kindness of strangers” is likely to have disappointing results.

                   2. The utter silence of the media on the topic of intervention in our politics by China may be telling.

                      1. I am not going to scroll back through Instapundit, but several days ago there was a link to a report about how the NY Times and Washington Post had been fooled* into running tens of thousands of words of Chinese propaganda as news.

                         I’ve little reason to doubt the broadcast news outlets are any more rigorous in their coverage. If China threatens to block Disney product does the Mouse’s ABC news affiliate report what China doesn’t want known? As CNN’s Eason Jordan confessed after Saddam’s fall, the big lie of MSM reporting is that the same standards apply to all their “journalism” wherever it occurs.

                         *Fooled? Can a willing dupe be truly deemed fooled?

33. I voted for Trump, nose clothespinned. Didn’t like the man. He seemed boorish, unreliable, and quite frankly unbelievable. I preferred Cruz, but then he seemed the most “like me” candidate. Cruz would probably have lost, in retrospect. I am pleased with the outcome. Of Trump, that is.

    Republicans in Congress have *not* pleased me. With the presidency, the house, and the senate, what did we get? Obamacare repealed? Spending cut? Anything they ran on? No, not really. They paid for it, and we are *still* paying for it. Trump exposed the rot in the party.

    We have been lied to for so long by the Stupid Party it became normal. It should not be normal. The R’s and the D’s ran Congress like two wolves deciding how to gut a sheep, us. When Republicans were in the minority, they all voted for things that would never happen, show votes that would get them re-elected. When they held the majority… they failed us. Specific ones, true, killed it. But how many of them cheered it from behind the scenes?

    This is why we need more Trump. I don’t think term limits are going to happen any time soon. But if we can drain the swamp and the entrenched bureacracy even a little bit, we should *definitely* stay behind the guy that says he’s going to do it. He’s kept a good many more promises than I expected of him. May he continue to do so in 2020.

    1. many people forget that the GOP was named The Stupid Party by its own base.

    2. If you haven’t read Codevilla and his description of the UniParty / Ruling Class / Country Party, you should.

       Warning: It will make you less inclined to think any of the current parties will be on our side.

    3. I remember warnings about term limits in California at the state legislature level. The concern was that it would put untoward power in the hands of the bureaucracy, but that was before the state was transformed into the One Party Goatrope that it is now. Now, it’s the leadership of the Cal Dems (and the people they are beholdened to) that hold the power.

34. Personally, I’m looking forward to 2020. I’m old enough to remember (albeit through the eyes of a pre-teen) the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Democrats are looking at a rerun of the 1972 election…except that this time, the Great Big Scandal won’t be on the GOP side. It’s the Dems who have dates with prison cells.

    Not to mention that I’m seeing hints indicating that Trump may move against Soft Graft. Hunter Biden isn’t the first or only child of a powerful Dem who got paid big money for a job he was unqualified for. It’s a running sore in the Federal Government. If Trump goes after THAT business, it’s going to get ugly.

    On top of this, a Trump win may well lead to a permanent shift in Republican politics. The GOP, from it’s creation in the 1850s, had a Populist and a Plutocrat wing. The Plutocrats normally had the upper hand…mostly because they paid attention in the off-years. Populists would win ONE election, find that winning once wasn’t enough, get dispirited, and walk off.

    But in the last decade, we’ve seen the Populists win in 2010, 2014, and 2016. When the Plutocrats held the upper hand, in 2008, 2012, and 2018, they went to defeat. A 2020 win will give the Populists the upper hand…and they will have won often enough to keep it. It will mark the finish of a 25-year shift in which Big Business sold out to Dem crony capitalism, and the lower-middle-class realized the Democrats no longer gave a damn for the working man.

    We need to be wary, of course. The Dems know they are overextended, sense the counterattack is coming hard. And will do damned near anything to avoid their deserved punishment.

35. I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps, like Reagan (who I liked much better. Where is this worship Trump nonsense coming from anyway?), Trump is as effective as he is *because* he came out of the Democratic camp?

    I’m *sure* though, that being a lapsed Democrat is the primary reason he’s being impeached.

    1. Sounds like the troll army *sigh I don’t worship Trump.

       1. IMO The Anti-Trumpers so completely Hate Trump that his supporters Worshipping Him is the Only Reason that they can think for supporting Trump.

          Of course, many of them “know all about worshipping Politicians” as they worshipped Obama. 😈

          1. No, I’ve run into it. Not IRL, but online? It happens, about as much as it did for Obama supporters when he was POTUS.

    2. it gives him help in pushing the buttons, and he uses their methods (in the primaries it was a sore point with me, and a split with long time acquaintances happened when they took up the cry after first saying no he shouldn’t lie like that)
       Impeachment was inevitable to cover their crimes by pointing the finger.

    3. Just like biting my tongue and sitting through coteries of leftists talking freely from college through publishing industry get togethers gave me a unique insight into how their minds work, and how they justify their vapid, self-aggrandizing meanness and ideological discrimination..

    4. “Where is this worship Trump nonsense coming from anyway?”

       Assertions of “Trump Worship” come from those opposed to him, as means of delegitimizing supporters of Trump without honestly addressing the basis of their support.

       It is in no way nearly so prevalent as the once fashionable Obama worship or Hillary Love. But it is quite convenient to those uninterested in arguing facts nor holding any qualms against degrading political opponents.

       1. It’s a short circuiting talking points trap. Like accusing people of watching Fox News, as though that alone means an argument is lost.

          Especially infuriating to those of us who don’t watch the news at all.

          1. Indeed – I haven’t watched network news in at least fifteen years. I wouldn’t know who any of their anchors or reporters are … if the worst of them weren’t mentioned so frequently in the blogs that I do follow and read religiously.

36. This puts me in the soft-headed side. I KNEW from the first Trump speech that he would win. I felt scared that the other candidate would have the ballots stuffed in other places besides my hometown. I was relieved when he won.

    I’ve pretty much laid low because of the progressives and the Never-trumpers. It’s gotten crazy out there. I admit that I cringe sometimes at the President’s tweets. But then I notice how the tweets make certain people look one way while he is doing something else. Since it has happened so often, I can’t believe that it was an accident.

    The paid espionage provocateurs have been slipping into our politics for years (I think we have been hearing about it as early as WWII since the boundaries solidified). The Cold War was entirely spies and provocateurs.

    So hearing about the paid trolls… it makes a lot of sense. We are seeing the rise of cheap espionage.

    1. I don’t understand how that makes you softheaded.
       Far seeing, maybe.
       The current set of soft heads ON BOTH SIDES* are falling for the provocateur trolls. Though probably not as much as the trolls wish….
       *The trolls haunt lefty blogs and sites too with “all is lost, we must hit those evil right wingers with everything now.”
       Note they get a ton more buy in on that side. Only one small mistake. As with charity, the left prefers other people do the real violence, outside safe cities (like Portland) for them.

       1. IMHO it was softheaded because FEELz. Yep, I didn’t use logic that time. But I like “farseeing” better. 🙂

       2. Even when trolls are not whispering across the internet, it is easy to worry. That the trolls are trying to cause civil discord… may they rot in hell.

    2. I don’t follow PDJT tweets real time (not on twitter). So by the time the outrage shows up on Fox News collage of CNN/MSNBC/etc outrage reporting, I’m looking for the low key report equivalent of “oh by the way, in the mean time 50 or 100 judges on PDJT list approved by the senate”, “9th Federal District court strikes down court opinion for IRS to release PDJT taxes for the last 20 years”, “Federal district court out of NY strikes down law requiring presidential candidates to release state & federal taxes” … okay the latter hasn’t happened, yet (& I suspect that the way it is worded it’ll be 100% of salary gone to these charities, everything else is in hidden trusts & N/A until out of office) … but the first two have. Since when has the 9th District Court sided with PDJT, before now? AND no one is screaming about it … Tweet, Tweet, Tweet …

    3. Yeah, I’ve concluded those “crude” tweets are 100% calculated — they ‘out’ the opposition and make ’em run in circles screaming about nothing much.

       1. 90% of the Media hates Trump and he knows it. So he tweets distractions & misdirections.
          He’s using a laser pointer and the media keeps trying to catch the red dot. That gives him room do get things done while the Media is focused on their outrage over the insignificant.

          1. When they get as upset over this:

             
             as they do over Trump’s coarseness, i will consider giving them credence.

             1. THIS THIS THIS THIS.

37. I made a few comments here today: https://pjmedia.com/trending/virginia-weighs-deploying-national-guard-to-enforce-new-anti-gun-laws-things-could-get-ugly/

    Picking out the trolls and agent provocateurs (or is it agents provocatuer?) in the very long thread of comments seems pretty easy. If you know from the start they’re going to appear.

    1. One of the “tells” on the trolls is they caricature what they imagine we behave, not how we really act. So they sorta stand out like John Kerry shopping for a hunting license of Professor Warren guzzling a beer.

       1. … John Kerry shopping for a hunting license of or, dammit, or Professor Warren …

          Sigh. Freudian finger syndrome.

          1. I dunno. Perhaps there should be a season for hunting beer-guzzling elitist politicians. Oh yeah, 🙂

          2. Wallaby just got added to another of Fred’s lists

38. I’m really not looking forward to the upcoming social media wars. To you Ms. Hoyte and the rest of your Merry Band of bloggers, I wish you all the very best of luck dealing with these parasites.

39. Like others here, I went to bed on election night 2016 dreading the news of the result in the morning. On getting the unexpected news, I felt like our nation had dodged a bullet.

    Back when Trump had been one of many faces on a stage, I hoped we’d get Scott Walker. But I told my dad I could do a little quick hip-pocket analysis on this Trump character. But what do we really know about the guy that’s not signal noise?

    First, he’s basically Hillary’s age, but in better shape. Second, he’s a businessman. What do all of the successful old businessman say in interviews these days? “I couldn’t do it today.” The taxation and regulatory hurdles prevent ambitious potential titans of industry from reaching nationwide success. The old millionaires and billionaires wonder how the country will fare in the future without young guys able to do as they had done in the past. Trump is part of that group, I told Dad. One of the top things on his agenda will be addressing the stifling business atmosphere. And after holding office, he started on that right away.

    The next feeling of relief Trump gave me came unexpectedly. He took on media figures bent on destroying him through negative public perception and gave them a taste of their own medicine in the public eye. After years of watching conservative figures resign themselves to whipping boy status and recede, this was a welcome change.

    Trump offered more solid conservative solutions and got better results than any Republican in my lifetime. And as far as I can tell, his opponents have nothing to offer but an American Venezuela.

    1. And let’s face it that no other candidate — actually possibly no other human being — would have taken what Trump has taken and remained standing.

40. and occasional (very occasional) posters on this blog are actually trolls and probably paid

    Dear leftists, I post here often and am very annoying. Please send small bills.

    1. You are not annoying. And you wouldn’t post what they want you to post.
       Though you might make an AMAZING froll….

       1. Shhhhh. You were supposed to play along to drain coffers

          1. Oh, oh, oh. That.

41. That first thing I posted in Saturday’s thread, the apology, is something I started drafting after coming to my senses when I decided I needed some time away from here. Wasn’t entirely successful at staying away, but stayed away from the comments. Which was the essential goal.

    The actual apology part was written later, after I realized that between my draft structure and my behavior, I had something specific and certain to apologize for.

    It between, I read the first part of today’s column, and was wondering if the apparent Fen reference was about me. I’ve since reread the context, and remembered that he was going on about that stuff. Interested only in blood, guts, and death still feels more apt of description of me than is really desirable. I asked myself what other things I am interested in, and am a little disappointed in my answers.

    I’ve just never put a lot of emotional investment into other things, and it feels like that was a wrong decision. Probably need to widen my horizons some.

    I think I probably am a softhead. I’m very uncomfortable with how easily I am stampeded by emotion.

    I’m unenthused about how bad things are likely going to be for me soonish.

    Thank you for your forbearance. This place has comforted me many times over the years. It has felt like I can be myself, talk interesting things, and been seen for who I really am.

    1. FWIW, I think you were not wrong, but probably about 30 years premature. But we still have a chance to turn the tide, so in 30 years we can wonder what we were so worried about. Most notably, if we can eliminate all the damn vote fraud. (Montana had our share, which is why we still have Jon Tester in the Senate. Watched the vote counts in realtime, and funny how the two most techie counties came in on the late train, with just enough votes: 14,000.)

       Europe, OTOH — I think it’s too late; we’re witnessing the opening shots of WW3. Might not heat up to a shooting war for another 50 years, but I don’t think there’s any stopping it.

       China, tho… their intent was apparently to provoke a conflict over their claiming most of the South China Sea, but Trump halted that with his trade tariffs and other be-good-or-no-more-money provisions in the new trade agreement.

       1. I think that is giving me entirely too much credit.

          I suspect some of my theoretical approaches have merit, but the ‘future scenarios’ I am wired about are probably more personal interest than serious prediction.

          The cultures fighting wars in five, ten, twenty years are not going to be exactly the same as current cultures, and we definitely can’t just calculate based on historical versions of those cultures. Thirty years is definitely too far out to make any useful predictions about populations and cultures.

          I can’t help but see that there is a lot more work to do, if I wanted this analysis done decently, and I maybe cannot afford the time or energy to do it decently.

          I think there are military things we can plan and execute over the thirty year time frame, and a great deal we cannot.

42. BUT more importantly, I’d appreciate it if you discuss the subjects rationally and allow yourself not just to reconsider your positions, but to consider what I’m saying, and also where you might have got the ideas/influence pushing you the other way.

    Excellent advice, and as such it reminds me of a slightly older one such:

    I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.

    Not to compare our Most Beautiful And Terrible Space Princess to Oliver, but in both cases, honest disagreement should lead to a through questioning of one’s premises, and discussion of the alternatives, before entrenchment and other things difficult to reverse.

    Despair is a sin; Epstein is like Christmas ornaments; even retired, Judge Posner is Still An Idiot; WP Delenda Est, and it is vital to use the Boxes in the correct order.

43. in VA its like… the Governor and incoming assembly can’t even read the FLAG…

    that they ignore that the most popular custom plates are Gadsden flag plates…

    as well as all prior interpretations of the Va Declaration of Rights.

44. I am a committed lurker here! It is one of my favorite sites. Due to my work schedule and general laziness, I tend to binge read your post, even when I have time off. Lately I have been reading your archives from the beginnings, including the comment section, and throughly enjoy your regular Commenters almost as much as you.
    I was a Ted Cruz supporter, but Donald Trump was always high on my list, but frankly I would have voted for anybody other than the criminally corrupt and incompetent Hillary! Let me just say I have been very pleased by the result!
    I agree about trying to avoid the collapse of Civil Society. I am too old to want to go schlepping through the woods at night carrying a rifle. Still, I want to be prepared, although most of my preparations involve things like fire, tornados, floods and such. But the collapse of society is very concerning because so few anymore are self sufficient for anything! Mass riots followed by mass looting, starvation, and disease is not something I want to see.
    But enough of such depressing thoughts! My 401K is doing very well, (thank you Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, and President Trump), and I may be able to retire early to enjoy spending it on English sport cars, travel, books and guns, my favorite vices!

    P.S. I just finished “Deep Pink”. You are seriously insane! 🙂 Keep it up!

45. Re: Trump

    Yeah, I didn’t vote for him in 2016. There was nothing in his background that indicated that he was trustworthy, and he seemed like he’d be as bad as Clinton for the republic, albeit in different ways. I compared him to an arsonist and her to a termite infestation.

    Now? There’s a pretty good chance that I’ll vote for him in 2020. I’m not a fan of his tweeting (don’t care whether or not you’re acting like a jerk because it’s you or because it’s performance art, you’re still acting like a jerk, and you could get better results by just retweeting statistical data), and he doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing most of the time.

    But. That last bit is also true of literally anyone who’s going to be running against him in 2020 (and that is the charitable interpretation), pretty much everyone running against him is a jerk, they just don’t use Twitter to say whatever crosses their mind, and so far he hasn’t betrayed the people who voted for him. That changes the equation significantly.

    1. I used to think he just spewed, until I started paying attention to the results. Yeah, he’d get better results with *rational* people. But those “outrageous” tweets aren’t aimed at rational people; they’re aimed at emotional idiots and traitorous politicians, who are thereby stimulated to reveal their true colors, so the rest of know what we’re dealing with. Works every damn time, too, because the leftards can’t resist.

       

       1. Thing is, that may be who they’re aimed at, but the law of unintended consequences also applies to Trump.

          While of course the MSM would be doing its level best to spook the low-information middle into voting Democrat, the fact is Trump does sometimes make their job considerably easier.

          Considering how nuts the Democrats have been acting, they shouldn’t have a prayer of winning in 2020. Instead, it looks like it’s going to be tight, at best, though since we’re nearly a year out I’m not committing myself to anything more definite.

          1. With the media and the fraud on their side (and the polls are designed to cover the fraud) it was ALWAYS going to be tight. Remember to lie to pollsters. It’s our only hope.

46. Spectator USA has a more pessimistic take based on the Chick-Fil-A capitulation to the social justice mob regarding charities it donates to:

    https://spectator.us/culture-war-lost-americans-live-post-christian-age/

    The piece does make a good point; if wildly successful and profitable corporation Chick-Fil-A with its family leadership capitulates to the social justice mob, it becomes very hard to see how any other corporations will not capitulate to the mob.

    1. I am not sure Chick-Fil-A caved — it is possible their actions were already planned and they’re disinclined to get into a pissing match in the Media over their charitable agenda. I note that some of their donations to “dubious” groups have been through several layers of beneficiaries, rendering it possible to have been unintentional.

       More, it is clear they’ve made some imprudent hires of ex-Obama functionaries to oversee their Foundation and the redirection and under-mining may owe more to that than corporate capitulation.

       I also believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the possibility of our government balancing a budget in my lifetime.

    2. Spectator can be a bit sob-sister.
       Look, corporations will roll over, because they see the tweets as bad publicity and don’t think. Also, they’re run by MBAs who learned there’s an arrow to history, etc.
       But it’s okay, they roll over, they die, something else comes in.
       This is why I say we have to undermine Marxism as a positional good.

47. Geeze, I can’t imagine how Trump could imagine he has enemies out to destroy him by any means possible!

    Psychiatrist Claims Pelosi Has the Right to Force Trump to Submit to an ‘Involuntary Evaluation
    Yale psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, told Salon that as a “co-worker,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi has the right to force Donald Trump to submit to an “involuntary evaluation.”

    Breitbart:

    “As a coworker, she has the right to have him submit to an involuntary evaluation, but she has not,” Lee told Salon. “Anyone can call 911 to report someone who seems dangerous, and family members are the most typical ones to do so. But so can coworkers, and even passersby on the street.”

    If that’s true, why hasn’t Lee dialed 911 and reported Trump? Why get Pelosi to do her dirty work?

    And Dr. Lee should probably crack open a book on the Constitution, the separation of powers, and just who is a “co-worker” with the president of the United States. It sure as hell isn’t Pelosi.

    “The law dictates who can determine right to treatment, or civil commitment, and in all 50 U.S. states this includes a psychiatrist,” she continued. “The advantage of a coworker starting this process is that a court can mandate a mental capacity evaluation before the dangerous person returns to work.”

    Lee also believes that those surrounding Trump may be suffering from a “shared psychosis.” She said that “the severity by which others are affected is what induces me to believe that Trump is sometimes truly paranoid and delusional rather than merely lying.”

    These sorts of horse’s ass diagnoses are common among liberal “mental health professionals.” The rest of the profession takes a rather dim view of diagnosing a patient without a professional examination. Lee knows this, which makes her statements even more outrageous.

    [END EXCERPT]

    It stands to reason that all who support and defend Trump are also nuts.

    Naturally it is inconceivable that psychiatrists transgressing codes of professional ethics to engage in “long-distance diagnoses” might be the crazy ones.

    1. Bandy also apparently assumes that any such evaluating psychobabbler would somehow be selected by Empress Nancy of Pooptown, and would thus adhere to the monolithic thoughtcrime-free predetermined views that Bandy espouses so publicly.

       Either that or Bandy’s just a publicity-seeking woman of easy public virtue, notching up her wokeness points score for the next Yale faculty party awards show and buffet.

       And the press feeds her need for publicity because duh!, and the story is written that way because “Asian Woman, Damaged by Personal Compromises Required to Get Past Racial Quotas to Gain and Keep Token Asian Faculty Position at Yale, Shrieks Angrily and Incoherently at World” is too long for a headline.

48. Jeepers, I was sure I’d put this up for Fifth Night

    I’ve a good excuse for the failure and as soon as I figure out what it is I will use it. Meanwhile, let’s just say WP lost it.

    1. Sixth Night! Sixth, sixth! mumble-mumble, used to be I knew what night it is but now …

49. I am not a troll, but have lived underground from late ’70 to late ’78.
    I’ve been out of electronic touch for a month or so.

    1. but have lived underground from late ’70 to late ’78.

       Not under a bridge, I hope! 😛

       1. pretty sure that reference is something like an AF missile guy’s joke.

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