So, Trump set social media afire – apparently making comments about sh**hole countries. Vulgar – but my take is that he’s merely pointing out that there isn’t much wisdom in just willy-nilly taking in everyone. A judicious selection has to be taken. We don’t actually need any immigrants…so, if we’re going to take some in, might as well take the best of the best. Progressives and NeverTrump are up in arms about it…but, no one really cares what they think.
Twitter “shadow bans” Conservative voices – this is where they just don’t allow a Conservative’s comments to be easily noticed. I’ve seen it going on for a while…and what trends on Twitter isn’t what is trending, but what Twitter chooses to have trend…invariably whatever it is that Progressives are yammering on about.
Chrysler is building a new factory in Michigan, it would seem. This is just proving my point that manufacturing is entirely viable in the United States and it has mostly been tax and regulatory policy keeping it down. There isn’t that much of a plus in cheap labor, which is all any foreign nation can offer us. When you relieve the tax and regulatory burden and combine that with our superior infrastructure and rule of law, we just can’t be beat.
The crime lab – useful; but like all things government these days, it seems that our crime labs are often just making it up…and sending innocent people to jail. We’ve discussed this many times before – those who are charged with enforcing our laws are often not doing their jobs and we need to find a mechanism to force them to do so, and punish them when they don’t.
Senator Feinstein leaked some Fusion GPS transcripts and has now come up with several, equally absurd excuses as to why she did it. I go with the obvious: she released them as a cheat sheet for everyone who will be called to testify about it in the future: “make sure your lies square with these!”. The Trump/Russia Collusion scandal is rapidly morphing into the biggest political scandal in American history…and its all about Democrats.
Blogs For Victory 
When did Americans become so offended by words? In a country that was founded on free speech, it’s ironic and disturbing that we have so many hyper sensitive people who are not only offended by mere words, but also seem resistant to the unvarnished truth. Haiti is a s***hole, and thanks to the Clinton Foundation, their financial resources have been plundered, leaving them very little to work with to repair their country. And why isn’t the Clinton Foundation under scrutiny for their dealings in Haiti? Wasn’t the Clinton Foundation a very well funded, benevolent organization ran by people with big hearts and compassion who work tirelessly to improve the lives of victims around the world? So why is Haiti still such a mess?
Once the punitive regulatory and tax measures are lifted from manufacturing, A lot of it will return in vengeance primarily because Americans are the most productive and efficient work force in the world.
Re: collusion – I think the Democrats are starting to realize that they are in deep kimchee. They did use fabricated oppo research to secure FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. This is now undeniable. The Obama DOJ was complicit, they did collude with a foreign country to personally harm a POTUS candidate, they did destroy evidence when confronted, and the media has covered their tracks all along the way. This is the greatest scandal in our nations history.
Haiti is a s***hole
Lots of areas of this country are s***holes because we’ve allowed people from s***hole countries to come here and not assimilate into our culture. I think a lot of Americans are finally fed up it. It’s one thing to come her seeking and working toward a better life, but for many immigrants, it’s never about that.
BTW, Trump has denied he use the term “s***hole” during the meeting, but I don’t care if he used it or not. It’s an apt description of many parts of the world.
BTW, several years ago I had to go to El Salvador for business. The people evidently had a higher standard of living than those in some other South American countries I had visited. That is based on some personal observations—-for example, even out in the country the tiny houses—shacks, really—seemed well tended, painted, and with extravagant flower gardens and window boxes. It seemed to me that people who are miserable and starving probably don’t spend a lot of time and energy on flowers. In San Salvador, I noticed how many veterinary clinics there were—-again, in most of the South American countries I had visited veterinary care seemed nonexistent or at least not a major concern. These things seemed, to me, to indicate a certain level of economic comfort, if not prosperity. “Comfort” in the sense of a sense of stability and sustainability.
Yet when we were in the country, the big landowner of the area where we were driving was recognized by the peasants walking along the roadsides, and they always stepped aside and literally knuckled their foreheads in salute, something I had only read about in books on medieval times. It was a very odd feeling—not exactly that these people were slaves, but more like serfs, tied to the land and to the lord of the land. But they were well dressed, they were smiling and chatting with each other, and gave every outward appearance of being comfortable with their lives. Being a political geek, I gave this all a lot of thought. I had known an American who had fought in El Salvador in the old Sandinista days, and I had his take on what had happened there—that, among other things, the United States had gone in and armed and trained thousands of young men to fight the Communists, and then we just left, with those thousands of young men with no jobs and no skills other than fighting, leading to criminality and a dangerous society. I didn’t see that in the country, and thought that perhaps a lot of Salvadorans who did not choose to be part of the secure but confining serfdom were at risk from these gangs, felt that these gangs were their only options, or felt that they had no future in the country.
When I had a free day in San Salvador I told the desk clerk at my hotel I wanted a taxi so I could do some shopping and he kind of freaked out and told me it would be a while, and eventually I was met by a man who not only drove me but insisted on accompanying me as I shopped—because it was too dangerous for me to be out alone. I could not just take a taxi, because I might disappear. I could not walk freely on the streets or in the big shopping mall or at the little markets, without a guard next to me. I had to be with someone vetted by the hotel.
In San Salvador, the capital city, most homes were behind tall walls. When I visited one of these homes a gate opened and we went through it with an armed guard standing sentry on each side, and it quickly closed. That host told me he seldom goes out in public, for safety reasons. He and my other business hosts who drove me to various meetings were always in armored cars, with armed guards in cars in front of and behind us. At a toll booth, a car of armed (and I mean with machine guns) guards would pull ahead and pay for the other cars, the gates would open, and then the cars would all speed through without stopping. A friend who had attended the same meeting a couple of years earlier had been a guest at the country home of one of the guests, and said that the wife had told him, as he went to the guest house, that there might be some noise later in the night as the army would be holding some sort of exercise in the nearby jungle. The “exercise” was jets screaming in at what he thought was rooftop height, shooting into the jungle a few hundred yards from his casita, with armed troops rushing in behind the gunfire. My group was hosted by a different local host, and as we sat on his patio late into the night sipping whisky and chatting I was aware that on the ridge behind the house, and all around it, stood men with machine guns to ensure our safety.
My take on all of this was that yes, in some ways El Salvador IS a sh**hole, but that this is mostly due to the Communists trying to take over the country. I understand that the wealthy elites I met were showing me and the rest of us their best faces, and were probably invested in maintaining their power, but they are also sophisticated men who would probably accept changes in the economic structure of much of the country, such as modifying the serfdom aspect, in exchange for allowing the country to move into the 21st Century. I understood that I couldn’t apply my multi-generational heritage of freedom to the multi-generational culture of serfdom of Central America, knowing that when the Marxist took over Peru and implemented what they called the Agrarian Reform, either killing or driving off the big landowners and dividing up the farms among the peasants, the peasants had no idea of how to manage farms on their own. They partied, they ate the horses and cattle, they ate the seed corn, and then they starved. That’s a sweeping generality, but it pretty much sums up what happened, and centuries of poor but sustained and secure peasants starved and/or became fodder for Leftist propaganda and recruitment into groups like Sendero Luminoso.
Back in the mid-70s I attended one of these meetings in Lima, Peru, during a term of President Fujimori, and went back with my husband as a tourist during the same general period. Fuji had pretty much wiped out Sendero Luminoso, and we could freely walk the streets of Lima, at least in the better neighborhoods. When Fujimori got caught with his hand in the till and had to leave the country, it started to slide back into Leftist influence, and now Lima is one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
So yes, there are s**tholes. But as far as I can tell, most if not all of the s**ttiness is directly due to suppression of freedom and imposition of Leftist doctrines, including the use of terrorism and mob rule. It has nothing to do with skin color. It has everything to do with politics.
Yet now the use of some words is a crime. It can get you prosecuted for committing a “hate crime” and prevent you from entering some countries. The non-use of some words is undergoing an effort to make it a crime, as well, so the failure to adopt one of the nonsensical non-words to describe a non-gender will be illegal.
Once “being offended” qualifies one as a victim, it is a short hop to defining the means of the offense as a crime and the speaker as a criminal.
On the surface this sounds like the sillification of the country, but in fact it is a movement toward complete tyranny, as control of the language means control of who can and cannot be prosecuted for the most innocuous of actions. The Left has always promoted Thought Police and imposing of sanctions for thoughts not in line with the State, and words illustrate thoughts, so criminalizing words is part of this whole fabric of State control. The fact that the State is, for now, using mobs to enforce what may become codified as actual law is just another aspect of Leftist strategy.
In this case, though, the Left is so frantic, so desperate for something—-anything—-to distract from the rapidly developing cases against the DNC and the Obama administration, including the heads of some of its agencies, that it is willing to throw a wall-kicking temper tantrum about the alleged use of this term.
If in fact the Left denies that some nations are shitholes then they will not object to moving the United Nations and its pampered diplomats to one of them. Let’s let them take their pick.
BTW, s***hole is mild compared to many words Liberals frequently use to describe us. I think they’re more upset that Trump keeps borrowing sh*t from their playbook than anything. I’ll remind again that one of Alinsky’s rules is to force your adversary to live by his own rules and moral code. Sorry, Libs — not gonna work anymore.
Oh, and I guarantee you that, Dick Durbin’s claim not-with-standing that no other president ever used such language, LBJ used that kind of language and worse on a regular basis.
I despise these moral preening POS’s. Durbin can go F**K himself
Geez, Cluster, tell us how you really feel. In all seriousness, I feel the same way, and I think the number of people who also are coming to the same conclusion is increasing exponentially.
What can be funnier than the F-bomb dependent Left suddenly getting the vapors over a common word used to describe excrement? The poor babies, they just can’t help stumbling over their own hissy fits. When Trump used the dreaded P-word, the Left swooned in horror—till, a few months later, its females were parading around dressed as genitals and proudly calling attention to their pussy hats. They frequently associate Trump with the orifice responsible for the elimination of excrement, using the full term, yet now they are getting the vapors over the word itself. No Leftist mob is complete without the F-bomb proudly spelled out, often on professionally manufactured (and purchased by anonymous agitators) signs happily waved at any camera in sight. They revere potty-mouth Ashley Judd and adopt her as a spokeswoman, praising her profane ranting. Few Hollywood pundits can post or tweet without much more explicit and offensive profanity than the alleged comment by Trump.
They just can’t get out of their own way.
Think about it …. Democrats have called states like Mississippi far worse than s***holes and have repeatedly denigrated the people that live in Jim Crow states, so please spare me the faux outrage. Grow the F**K up.
God Bless Trump. He is calling these ass holes out.
They haven’t just denigrated people who live in Jim Crow states—they have denigrated all conservatives as “deplorable” and stated that those of us who live in Flyover States shouldn’t even be allowed to vote for the presidency because we’re just too damned stupid.
S-Hole: Truth is an absolute defense to defamation.
Your brevity is refreshing
Molly Hemmingway, Senior Editor of the Federalist and frequent Fox News contributor is fast becoming one of my favorite talking heads. She put the sh*thole comment in perspective on Martha MacCallum’s show tonight. She said the comment was connected to the extension of temporary status for refugees who have come here from countries that were devastated by natural disasters like the earthquake in El Salvador in 2001. Seventeen years later they’re still here, and the Democrats’ argument is that it would be inhumane to send those people back to the sh*thole country they came from. (although I’m sure they used much more civil language than that).
I am a big Molly Hemingway fan …..
It’s fun watching all the moral preening progressive pundits express their outrage over the S**Hole comment. I have news for them …… They are ALL A***HOLES and many of them who live in Hollywood and Washington DC also live in S***Holes. How’s that?
Honestly this entire media and Democrat temper tantrum is a ruse to try and shame Trump and conservatives into apologizing so we can all act civll and get a long again – I have more news for them. WE DO NOT LIKE YOU PEOPLE AND DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU THINK. Progressives are vile, repugnant, duplicitous people who lie as easily as they breath and possess no moral compass. In other words they are empty vessels who deserve contempt, so let them preen on and on, while conservatives continue to push the politically correct envelope just to piss them off.
Does everyone remember when I called Democrats vile, repugnant, and duplicitous people?
Oh yea, that was in the last post. Anyway, here’s more proof:
…..it is unclear whether even this program was permitted under federal law. The IRS does not typically allow taxpayers to receive reimbursement for charitable contributions, which is exactly what the bill proposes. If the provisions of the bill were to come into effect, residents of states like California would effectively circumvent the elimination of the state and local income tax deductions entirely.
So while the progressives in California defy immigrations laws, they are now preparing to evade our new tax laws and protect their 1% wealthy people from paying more taxes. That seems ironic doesn’t it:
http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/12/california-proposes-dodgy-state-run-charity-scheme/
Well this is unfortunate. An excerpt of an article on Obama’s thoughts on Libya:
Mess is the president’s diplomatic term; privately, he calls Libya a “shit show,” in part because it’s subsequently become an ISIS haven — one that he has already targeted with air strikes. It became a shit show, Obama believes, for reasons that had less to do with American incompetence than with the passivity of America’s allies and with the obdurate power of tribalism.
Just a sampling of why Haiti is and has been a sh*thole for decades.
I especially loved the title of the Rolling Stone article, “Beyond relief — how the world failed Haiti”
“Beyond relief — how the
worldCLINTON’S failed Haiti”I wonder how the Left feels about the British interfering in American politics…
https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/01/12/trump-cancels-london-visit-citing-bad-deal-but-some-brits-say-trump-is-not-welcome-here
I’d love to see some ambitious photo journalist do a piece on third world countries where where defecating in public is tolerated.
A Seattle politician seems OK with it.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449421/poop-covered-sidewalks-racially-insensitive-clean-them-says-seattle-councilman
Yet more evidence that Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Spook, we just need to add cleaning of human feces to the ever-growing list of things that are racist, such as banana peels and cotton balls and math.
It begs two questions: (a) why do people who fancy themselves refined intellectuals apologize for such behavior, and (b) why do they pay a premium to live in such areas? (I’m actually glad they choose to live in such areas and not near me.)
I know a woman, a distant relative, who retired back to her home town and is absolutely miserable because she is now surrounded by conservatives. She, of course, has reduced their personal and political positions to (surprise surprise) RACISM and is thinking of trying to sell her house and move back to a place where she is not surrounded by such political heathens. She has very earnestly tried to explain that her good friend is is gender-flexible and wants to be referred to as “they” and is quite offended by the laughter this induces. Her anti-gun stance doesn’t fit in with the goose hunting deer hunting pheasant hunting family that now surrounds her and she is very deeply depressed.
Not learning a thing, just being depressed. The thing is, she would be depressed even if surrounded by her own kind, because there are few as miserable as Libs.
They are pretty weird, aren’t they? I lurked over a Twitter conversation between a Conservative and a Liberal the other day – it was odd in that everyone did keep it polite (which is why I was willing to look in on it), but the bottom line is that the Liberal was absolutely convinced that we can’t be free unless we’re free to freeload. He was certain that almost everyone would work very hard, and those few who wouldn’t could be cared for in their sloth…not the slightest understanding that without the whip of hunger, hardly anyone would ever work. They don’t understand human nature…and I think it is because we don’t teach theology any longer. We don’t, that is, even try to impart an understanding of human nature to the young. Unless the learn it at home or from hard experience, they simply don’t know it.
What??? Black slavery was not limited to savage white North American slaveholders? But…but…what about the narrative?
https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2018/01/12/review-vazante-offers-look-history-slavery-latin-america
Does anyone know why the Weather Channel is flogging the whole climate change thing? I check the web site for weather in areas where I plan to be driving, and it is full whines and predictions of disasters due to “climate change”. They obviously have a dog in this hunt, and it sure ain’t the promotion of actual science. This is on today’s page:
California is spending billions to protect the millions at risk of a megaflood, but thanks to climate change, it’s too little too late.
Of course, in California they are preaching to the Lunatic Choir, but still…..
Hey I have an idea for California – build some reservoirs. Not only would you save water for dryer times, but it also may help mitigate the flooding. Then if they managed their forests and thinned out the kindling and other “fuel” fires thrive on, they may able to lessen some of the damage done when “climate change” happens.
Hey I have an idea for California – build some reservoirs
Right after they finish the high speed rail project.
David Burge had a bit of a run about how we should feel about Other Peoples Problems:
And that is how it is supposed to be – if the rural folks want more internet, they can pony up for it. If the city people are pissed off at traffic and high housing costs, I suggest they invest their money in roads and houses. It ain’t my problem, in either case. I live in an area of reasonable housing prices and good roads…we’ve made our choice.
LOL I saw a report on that “high speed rail project” – what a joke. Can you say “cost over runs on a massive scale” without any light at the end of the tunnel?? Pun intended.
Great Job Moonbeam
They have this theory that if they don’t have enough water then people will fall into line and just stop using so much water—will go back to “if it’s yellow, let it mellow: if it’s brown then flush it down”—-and will replace their lawns with cacti and river rock, will move into 500 square foot cottages and in general start to act the way they are SUPPOSED to act. They will live in the human equivalent of ant farms, they will stop reproducing, and will become good little communists.
The land will be “natural” and return to “wilderness”—not that any of them will ever stir themselves to actually go into the “wilderness” but it is ever so important to have it unspoiled and and the way the Goddess made it.
That was the dream—until the fires came, and burned the Birkenstocks along with the Humvees. Ooops.
It always sucks when Leftism bumps up against reality.
Nice language and imagery, David. You know, if somehow all profanity and vulgarity were to be suddenly, miraculously, excised from our language, the Right could continue having conversations and writing books and articles, and the Left would muted, reduced to insulting hand gestures and grunting. In a few short lines this guy has expressed his bone-deep bigotry against rural folks—-“hicks”, “Hooterville” and “East Bumf**k Nebraska”. Charming. I’ll bet he is one of those who doesn’t think people in Flyover Country should be allowed to vote, what with not being as smart and edumacated as those city dwellers on the coasts. And no doubt he also wants us to put his kind back in power. I do hope he and his kind make this kind of argument in the next elections.
“if the rural folks want more internet, they can pony up for it” More to the point, if a company wants to provide internet service and charge the same thing for it across the country, it is free to do so. After all, this would be a competitive advantage and in a competitive market place companies can do what they want. This is why allowing health insurance companies to sell plans across state lines would give them the ability to insure higher-risk people at more reasonable costs. It’s the economy of scale.
It’s so much more fun to ridicule the Left as opposed to arguing with them. I don’t have to disinfect my keyboard nearly as often.
I suppose we should feel guilty about laughing at them. it’s so easy, and often cruel. But then they indulge in such spite and malice that laughing at them doesn’t seem so harsh after all. And they make it so EASY!
Actually, they make it inevitable. No intelligent being can possibly take them seriously.
There might be unintended consequences of only bringing the best of the best into our country. It’s all supply and demand. If the best paying jobs are being given to the increasing numbers of qualified immigrants then it will be harder for citizens to get those jobs. If there are fewer and fewer of underqualified immigrants in the country to fill the low wage, low-education needed jobs, then our citizens will more and more fill those positions….hence average working wages will drop for citizens but increase for immigrants.
Maybe instead the President should be playing the old negotiations tactics of already assuming that merit based immigration has passed and start debating on what that system should look like. If he does that, I’m guessing the American people will fall quickly into line behind a merit based system like Canada’s.
Points for speaking English, points for already having a job prospect (any job, not just neurosurgeon type things), points for having a certain amount of capital, etc.
Doug, I know people who have gotten professional (H1-B) visas for some specialists, and they had to (1) provide documentation about why someone from another country should get the jobs–that is, that there were not enough qualified Americans to fill the positions (2) advertise the jobs in several major newspapers around the country to show a willingness to hire an American for the jobs and (3) continue to document, for the duration the visa, that the foreigner was being paid the same as an American would be paid. The foreigners had to fully document education and work experience. So there is no real reason to jump through all these hoops to hire someone from another country except, possibly, for intangible reasons like a better work ethic as one example. And if that is the case the Americans who lost out deserved to.
I am now working with a 30-year old professional woman who is having a horrible time finding decent employees, She has her own business and has lots of applicants but finding young people who can and most of all WILL work is very difficult. They have the credentials but simply are not up to doing the work. And when they do, after much hand-holding and encouraging, she has to proof read every single word they produce before any of it can go into a report.
Those of you who have seen me fret here about bad grammar and spelling would have been amazed to see this young woman voicing the same complaints—bad spelling, horrible grammar, total ignorance of homonyms, etc. For myself, I found it very refreshing–and fun, too, as we volleyed pet peeves back and forth. Rogue Apostrophes used in possessive pronouns and plural nouns. Change of number (“a person can change their mind”) and so on.
I have had foreigners ask me why so many Americans have less understanding than they do about OUR language. I once had a young woman from South America, fresh to the United States, tell me it drove her crazy to hear Americans say things like “less than 20 people attended” when, as SHE knew, “less” is for volume and “fewer” is for number.
So I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Americans who get edged out of the job market if it is because they are lazy, have no work ethic, don’t write or speak proper English, etc.