I’ve been reading a biography of President Grant. Early take: he was the First Trump. To be sure, there are gigantic differences between the men – Grant being very humble at all times and, also, a man of very strict Christian morals. But, Grant, like Trump, was a normal man who succeeded by beating the upper crust types…who despised him for beating them. Part of the reason why Lee became so revered (north and south) was because people who hated Grant – which included a lot of people up north, especially in the GOP leadership – built up Lee to help tear down Grant. You gotta remember, though it is hard, that Lee’s greatest triumph, Chancellorsville, was actually botched. He should have bagged the Union army just as Napoleon did the Austrian army at Austerlitz. He failed to do so. And his attack on the last day of Gettysburg was a dismal failure of imagination. Grant had his mistakes, too, most notably Cold Harbor…but Grant never failed of his aim: in war, he always accomplished what he set out to do. It is rare that a general can boast of that.

Democracy is always very much a fight between the ins and the outs. The people on the inside want to remain inside and will only be pleased if other insiders get in…they will fight tooth and nail to keep the outsider out, or destroy him if he slips in. What we’re seeing play out here has happened before…some times the outsiders win, most times they lose (Grant could never quite defeat the political forces arrayed against him: he got re-elected, but when he left office, the insiders still controlled the destinies of the Republic). We’ll see if Trump does better.

There are rumors that the Minnesota Democrats are seeking a primary challenger to Rep. Omar. They won’t get one – they can’t. In the end, racial bean counting has become so ingrained in how Democrats view the world that the only person who could possibly be allowed to challenge Omar would be someone just like Omar.

Don’t send your kid to college – send him or her to trade school:

…consider Dan Maurer, a journeyman pipefitter with United Association Local 190, a plumber and pipe trades union in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He’s one class away from an associate degree in applied science. He left general construction and carpentry to pursue the mechanical trades and today does welding, plumbing, and medical gas piping for Boone & Darr, a mechanical contractor in Ann Arbor. A rock-solid middle-class breadwinner, Maurer is the sole support for his stay-at-home wife and two young daughters, no small feat today for any young family.

A future in the trades begins even before you graduate high school, he says: “Pay attention while you’re in public school to the education that’s right in front of you. It’s free. It’s a gift. When you go on from there to pursue a trade, remember that whatever you put into it is what you get out of it.”

More and more of that, please. We need hands-on people who know how things work…that is what we need for the practical reason of making things work, and for the future because innovation really comes from the ground up as people doing the work think of better ways to do it.

Ace collects some horror stories from the Trans front. What the State is doing – allowing/forcing – vis a vis kids who claim to be trans is appalling. If you’re the parent of a young boy or girl and that kid suddenly decides they are trans, you’re not going to be able to stop it. You might find yourself in grave legal jeopardy if you tried to stop it…and as the article notes, there seems to be unlimited funds for kids to transition. Who is ponying up this money? How did this get decided? We need to look very deeply into this, totally unafraid of the names the left us will call us for doing so. This isn’t about whether and adult can choose this (they can) nor whether we should show respect to those who have (of course we should)…this is about whether or not a minor child can choose this without parental consent…and whether or not doctors should be allowed, even with consent, to permanently, physically alter a child (I say, “no”: hey, if the kid is really determined on this, then at 18 he/she/xir can have at it…but no permanent alternations until the kid is at the age of consent).

Beto announced he’s running for President on the “hey, don’t I look young and cool?” platform. Geraghty points out:

If Beto had an R after his name instead of a D, you’d hear he was boarding-school-attending judge’s son who dodged serious charges for the DUI & burglary, used eminent domain to gentrify poor Latino neighborhoods & married into a billionaire’s family.