Apple is bringing back $250 billion in foreign cash – thanks to Trump’s tax reform. This is just tip of the iceberg, folks.

Turns out, allowing collective bargaining for police and teachers isn’t such a good idea.

Senator Cory Booker went on a rant against DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The left is loudly applauding this…but had a Republican man used the exact same words to a Democrat woman, Cory Booker would have been first in front of a camera to denounce GOP sexism…

Ace nails down what Trump is doing on the culture warfare front:

Trump’s manner of engaging with The Blob of left-wing virtue-signalling and status-conferring is to attempt to degrade the left wing cultural Borg of its own social status, thereby reducing its ability to set tastes, serve as “gatekeepers” of what the right-minded people agree are proper attitudes and beliefs, and demonize dissenters.

This is often ugly — but that’s how the sausage gets made. It does not matter if you produce a well-researched and well-cited bit of argument as to your position if the cultural princelings of the left can simply say “You’re a Nazi and you hate women” and thereby, with seven stupid words, raze not only your argument but your entire claim to basic human dignity.

The only way to rob them of that ability is to reduce their own social status to a low level. You cannot confer or reduce social status unless you yourself have a great deal of it.

Raise your hands if in past years you held back from saying things because you feared being socially ostracized by the Elite. Ok. Now raise your hands if you are now entirely uninterested in what the Elite thinks about you. I see all your hands raised. Good. Had a little Facebook discussion today where, for the zillionth time, I was called a racist. Why? Because I didn’t agree that racism is whatever someone says it is – I insisted upon a hard and fast definition, and if an action didn’t fit that definition, it wasn’t racist. The affect of being called racist was zero…but, more importantly, the other people in the discussion weren’t afraid to point out that I was merely making a rational demand that we at least agree on our terms if we are to debate. Trump is winning the culture war. This might be the most crucial thing he does as President.

V the K over at Gay Patriot has another take on the same subject, well worth reading.

A Tweet from Razor – well worth following, if you have a Twitter account:

You know a Republican is in the White House when Apple announces a commitment to the economy of $350B and 20,000 new jobs, North and South Korea are talking, the Dow closes above 26,000 for the first time… and the news media is focused like a laser on the President’s weight.

Polls are worthless, of course, but I understand the Rasmussen poll shows Trump at 46/53 approve/disapprove…which, oddly enough, is precisely what Obama’s rating was in the Rasmussen poll on 12/28/09. Honestly, I suspect that Trump’s actual approval rating is in the 53-55% range. The MSM/Social Media bubble is very distorting…one has to pull away from it and look at things from time to time. I have just not heard in real life any strong expressions of disapproval of Trump. Meanwhile, more and more people – like me – are going from qualified, I-Just-Didn’t-Want-Hillary resignation towards enthusiastic support. We’ll see how it all comes out, but I suspect that the Experts will be just as wrong in the future as they have been in the past.

This is disturbing: Don Surber picks up on a Sharyl Attkisson report that the sort of domestic spying Obama engaged in started under President Bush…and before 9/11. Do read the whole thing. This is just wrong. I don’t know, of course, if President Bush was precisely aware of what was going on (we’ve seen recently how the Deep State tends to go on its own). As you guys know, I’ve long had grave doubts about our intelligence services – both as to their effectiveness and their risk of corruption/tyranny. The bottom line, for me, is that they don’t very often pick up on the bad guy’s plans in time to stop them and that they engage in domestic spying is just flat wrong. We need a massive overhaul of our intelligence services…make them smaller, and strictly targeted at gaining intelligence in foreign lands.

NFL won’t be going with Sunday Night Football on the 31st…it would probably be a ratings disaster, if they did. New Years Eve, but also a season-long decline in viewership. The rule is: go Social Justice Warrior, go broke. Lots of reasons are given for the NFL’s mistake, but it is really quite simple: Goodell is a big, ol’ liberal and he simply couldn’t face his liberal buddies if he didn’t inject massive liberalism into the NFL. They wouldn’t have forgiven him…and that the owners ok’d a renewal of his contract shows that most of the NFL owners are more interested in Elite opinion than in what their customers want.

Liberals have taken to flinging poop to express their views…much like monkeys in the zoo. This surprises none of you.

When not flinging poop, they’ve taken to shouting at the animatronic Trump at Disneyworld. We’re not dealing with sane people.

Trump did an epic troll on Global Warming:

In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!

Some people persist in saying that Trump’s tweets are just wrong. Sorry, Trump’s tweets are things of epic beauty.

Schlichter strikes gold, again:

Trump owns his foes. They are mere satellites orbiting around him, and his gravity is all that keeps them from spinning off into space. They have willingly submitted to the reality of a Trumpocentric political universe. It’s hilarious.

Their impeachment fever dreams are fading, so they look at popularity polls and take solace at the numbers. They took solace in them on November 8, 2016, too. It’s a bit over 10 months to the midterms, and there is a growing, gnawing fear in their guts not that tax reform will be a disaster but that it will succeed. They look at their swelling 401(k)s and mourn their prosperity. They take cold comfort in the fact that with a zillion dollars they managed to beat by less than two points an accused strange-o whose campaign strategy was to ride around on his horse. But they fear that the Republicans won’t oblige them again by nominating more weirdos.

Why you’ll get more Trump:

Two professors from San Diego State University claim in a new book that farmers’ markets in urban areas are weed-like “white spaces” responsible for oppression.

Pascale Joassart-Marcelli and Fernando J Bosco are part of an anthology released this month titled “Just Green Enough.” The work, published by Routledge, claims there is a correlation between the “whiteness of farmers’ markets” and gentrification.

“Farmers’ markets are often white spaces where the food consumption habits of white people are normalized,” the SDSU professors write, the education watchdog Campus Reform reported Wednesday.

So, after Pence finishes his eight years in office, who is next? What up-and-comer is there in the Trump team who will roll into office in 2032 based upon the fact that the Democrats are still insane and waiting for the Marshall of the Supreme Court to arrest Trump?

I’ll be driving most of tomorrow and then with family for Christmas Day, so I first off wish all of you a Merry Christmas! Even if you don’t celebrate – Merry Christmas, anyway!

Thing to remember about Christmas – it is either about nothing at all, or the most important thing which ever happened. Personally, I couldn’t see the point in celebrating it unless I believed (as I do) that it celebrates the most important thing which ever happened.

Israel gets a surge in Christian pilgrims this Christmas season. Israel: the only place in the Middle East where a Christian has some assurance of safety and liberty.

Jerry Brown is busily pardoning people who face deportation – this is just bizarre. And I think this sort of thing will prove devastatingly bad for Democrats as time goes on.

Trump taxes Harvard. We all laugh.

Have a great and safe holiday, my friends!

Having a chain-migration guy who is from Bangladesh try to blow up commuters in New York City will tend to strengthen Trump’s hand in the ol’ immigration debate. Not, of course, with his critics – but as his critics are mostly kinda dumb, who cares what they think? The key to Trump getting re-elected is that reality is going to continually back him up and, of course, he has the dumbest opponents any political leader has ever had.

That aside, chain-migration is about the most silly thing anyone can think of. If you decide to move to the United States, it is implied that you are willing to cut your ties to your family and your old country. That is kinda how immigration works, ya know? Each person asking to immigrate has to be taken on a one by one basis. You don’t get to come here just because you’ve got a cousin in Brooklyn.

Malmo, Sweden has a very large immigrant Muslim population and is now become a hotbed of anti-Semitic action. This surprises precisely no one; not even those who want the immigration.

The wife of that DoJ guy who was demoted for bias? Yeah; his wife worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign. Shut the darned investigation down. Really: end this charade. I’m getting more confident that Trump eventually will – hopefully soon after the first of the year. No more of this allowing Progressives free reign to try and nullify the 2016 election results.

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) goes over the horrific investigation of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. He’s calling it the “Cheesehead Stasi”, and he’s right. What they are doing to Trump they first tried on Scott Walker. And we really have to think on ways we can prevent this sort of thing from recurring. I’m thinking along the lines of stiff criminal penalties for people who abuse the police power of the State.

Kurt Schlichter notes our greatest power: the power of not caring what our opponents think.

Trump wants us back on the Moon and reaching for Mars. This is what great Presidents do: challenge us to rise to new heights. I’m hoping that he lights a fire under NASA – the Orion program envisions sending an unmanned spacecraft around the Moon in 2019. Make it manned. The mission after that was scheduled for a manned flyby around the Moon in 2021. Make it a landing. In 2020. Let’s do this!

I just love Robert Stacey McCain’s writing style:

Like every other pouty teenage Goth girl with a Tumblr blog, Sara fancies herself a writer…

Read the whole thing. Content warning: he’s describing complete lunatics.

Hadn’t noticed this, but Trump in his Jerusalem announcement apparently went out of his way to use “AD” rather than “CE” (for Common Era). Use of “CE” bugs the heck out of me. We started using it because “AD” stands for Anno Domini, ie; The Year of Our Lord. I totally dig non-Christians perhaps not liking that, but the fact remains that this is 2017 AD. It isn’t “Common” to anyone but Christians. The year is perfectly meaningless except in relation to the birth of Jesus. If you don’t like “AD”, don’t try to change it to the fallacy of “CE”, make yourself a new calendar…and then try to get people to use it. Good luck. The French revolutionaries tried it and it lasted about 10 years…because it was a stupid idea. Anyways, our Progressive friends naturally had a fit over Trump using “AD”.

Chancellor Merkel is having one heck of a hard time forming a government – not entirely surprising for a party leader who only got 33% of the vote (the lowest vote for her CDU in the post-WWII era). She won’t work with populist AfD, and the classic-liberal FDP couldn’t go with Merkel’s immigration and economic policies. Latest is she’s trying to work out a deal with the socialist SPD…and that a supposedly Conservative party would want to work with the SPD is all anyone needs to know about how corrupt politics is these days (earlier, she was trying to work with the downright fascist Greens to form a government). It has got me thinking: Germany is nothing but a mistake.

I know, kinda harsh. But, really, what is Germany? It was a mere geographic expression until Bismarck dragooned most of it (less Austria and a couple other bits and pieces) into joining Prussia in the misbegotten German Empire in 1870. Prussia, itself, wasn’t much to write home about – like all German States, it was really no more than the personal property of one family – in this case, the Hohenzollern’s, who started out as the Margrave of Brandenburg, and managed to get their estate raised to the dignity of a Kingdom in 1701. It had no organic connection to, say, Bavaria or Baden…heck, even the type of German spoken in Prussia was different from that spoken in Bavaria. And Bavaria and Baden had vastly more culturally in common with France and Austria than they did with Prussia. But, the deed was done – and it was fused together by Prussian militarism and Bismarck’s bleakly amoral Realpolitik. In hindsight, the proper policy to pursue after the monster was slain in 1918 was to re-break up Germany. All we did by allowing it to survive is to give Hitler his chance – and since the defeat of Hitler, what we’ve got in the center of Europe is a still powerful entity which doesn’t even know what it is or what it wants. Unified Germany has been a bane to rational policy in Europe for 147 years. I feel for a people who can’t be patriotic because to be a German patriot would mean either honoring the Kaiser or the Fuhrer – broken up into constituent parts, a Bavarian or Saxon patriot would have something to talk about. What is to become of it, I don’t know – but as long as Merkel is in charge, it’ll just go from bad to worse.

Legal Insurrection points out that the Mueller investigation looks more and more like the revenge of James Comey, and I can’t find much to disagree with on that. On the other hand, some observers I’ve come across figure that Mueller might have switch to the pro-Trump side and is actually setting up a massive attack against the Deep State – there is some sense in that. After all, we all look at is as bad that a whole bunch of Obama- and Clinton-bots were brought in by Mueller but, think about it: these people are no longer at Justice or the FBI and thus can’t gum up the works there. I’m still in favor of firing Mueller and bringing this charade to an end – but I guess Trump has his reasons for holding fire. I can’t believe that it is fear – the man clearly doesn’t fear what his opponents will say about him over any particular action he takes.

Snowflakes demand we stop calling them snowflakes because this hurts their feelz. I’m sure all of you will accord this demand all the respect you can muster for snowflake whines.

The Bake the Cake court case has caused a lot of social media argument. My view: no one should be compelled to work they don’t want to do. Unless the public safety requires it, everyone should be free to refuse service to anyone, at any time, for any reason…or none at all.

Most of those we deport are sweet, well-meaning Dreamers who just want to help terrible criminals we don’t want in our country. I know, you’re totally shocked.

Our tax-loving liberals are displeased they’ll have to actually pay their taxes. Advocating for high taxes is merest virtue-signalling…most often done by people who are rich enough to pay the freight/canny enough to hide their income.

Conyers has called it quits – and endorsed his son to replace him. Funny, I thought we tossed out monarchy in 1776.

Interesting observation from a comment over at Instapundit:

Did the prosecution tell Flynn’s lawyer that their main witness against him was removed for bias? Since Strzok led the interview and his testimony would be needed to establish untruthfulness, he is a critical witness not just a prosecutor. If not disclosed, would this not be a Giglio violation? This is the kind of misconduct that can get a case dismissed and a lawyer disbarred. It is a Constitutional violation. This has bothered me since I heard about it.

It does seem odd to me – the whole case seems to hinge on the word of a man who is clearly on the side of Hillary and opposed to Trump.

Personally, I think that Flynn is being railroaded and he copped a plea simply to make it end – unlike certain Clinton people we know, Flynn hasn’t amassed a gigantic fortune over his years of public service and thus can’t afford the massive legal team a drawn-out case would require…and as he’d be tried in DC, where 91% of the people voted for Hillary, even a first-rate legal defense might be unavailing. As there was no Trump/Russia collusion, there’s nothing Flynn can say, even if he wants to, which would in any way compromise the President. Given that Trump has been in the public eye for decades and has never run afoul of criminal law before, I suspect there’s nothing Flynn can say which will cause Trump legal trouble in that direction. He might be able to help Mueller get someone else on a process crime, but that would be about it. Given that one of Mueller’s investigators was revealed to be a pro-Hillary hack, there are grave doubts about the entire investigation. My view remains as it has been: fire Mueller. End this charade.

Our liberal friends are reacting to the Senate passage of the tax bill in the calm, reasonable way we’ve come to expect: America has been killed. Outside of that, there are some things to like, and some things not to like in the bill. Everyone, I think, can find things to delight and dismay in the bill…and such is the way of things when laws have to be enacted on consensus. The basic thrust of it – a reduction in tax rates – is unarguably good. Be better if there were deficit reductions attached, but we also know (“we” as in Conservatives; liberals don’t know this because they refuse to know it) that the spur to economic growth will result in revenues far in excess of those projected, so the long-term effect will be deficit reducing. I’m in favor of the elimination of the SALT deductions – sorry, high-tax-State fellow Americans, but I don’t think it right that low-tax States should essentially subsidize your profligate and almost entirely Democrat-run States. Don’t like it? Vote in some tax-cutting Republicans. Increasing the child-tax credit is generally a good thing, but anyone thinking that tax credits actually help in demographic matters is foolish: Americans aren’t having kids because they’ve lost hope. Restoration of hope will result in a higher birth rate.

Poll says Roy Moore is ahead. Poll says Roy Moore is behind. Polls are bogus. Especially the poll showing Moore behind – supposedly, Donald Trump is approved by 50% of Alabama voters. Just a year ago, Trump got 62% of Alabama’s votes…and I can’t think of a single thing Trump as done which would make Alabama voters sour on him. Still, don’t go with polls…remember, you’re being told to trust “free” information provided in a partisan election. No one provides “free” information in such a setting unless they’ve got an axe to grind, one way or the other. I think that this is what was missed in most polling over the past 50 years: the people providing the polls are not disinterested. And in these days of hyper-partisanship, just less so than before. Personally, I think Moore wins it by about 10 percentage points – but, we’ll see.

The latest Fake News flare up was ABC’s Brian Ross putting out a bogus report on the Flynn plea – asserting that something happened during Trump’s time as a candidate when it actually happened when Trump was President-Elect. The crucial aspect of this is that what Flynn did for President-Elect Trump was not only legal, but fairly routine for a Presidential transition. Ross reported it falsely and it stirred up quite a storm…even tanked the stock market for a bit. Ross is now on suspension. Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) has long advised that we should treat MSMers as Democrats with by-lines – I go a little further and advise to treat them like Pravda. The MSM, as it relates to Trump, has not the slightest interest in telling the truth. I can only assume they’ve got their marching orders from the DNC and have been told to just say whatever comes to mind, as long as it works out anti-Trump. This can’t just be error; it can’t just be partisan Democrats getting ahead of themselves – they are telling such stupid and egregious lies that it must be coordinated. Someone on the Democrat side has decided that this will work to Democrats long term benefit. I can only suppose they hope the constant drumbeat will eventually convince Republicans in Congress to abandon Trump. There is something to be said for that…but I think, in the end, too many GOPers in Congress know that crossing Trump is political suicide for themselves. A Corker, Flake or McCain out there doesn’t care…but I also note that Corker and Flake aren’t running for re-election while McCain’s prospect of surviving until his next election is thin. Unless something Earth-shattering comes out about Trump, the Congressional GOP will stick with him…and, meanwhile, the MSM lying all the time will just make it ever more likely that nothing Earth-shattering can come out because even if it did, no one will believe it.

I’ve been saying that Never Trump would move over to Progressivism – and over the past couple days I’ve seen prominent Never Trumpers say the TEA Party was motivated by racial animus against Obama and that the tax reform plan is just a giveaway to the rich. So it goes – and I’m more and more convinced that the reason these people called themselves Conservative is because they didn’t want to be in a party which had working class people as it’s backbone. As the Democrats abandoned the working class, so have they become more acceptable to those we now know as Never Trump. It’s really just all an attitude on their part…and they spoke the words of Conservatism because, from Reagan to Trump, there was no real worry that being Conservative would have you associating with those uncouth, redneck morons. On reflection, this shift was inevitable once the TEA Party got started…once, that is, that common folks who aren’t government dependents started speaking up. Trump merely accelerated the process…and it makes me think that Trump saw what I saw: that there was a chance for the GOP to poach lots of Democrat votes if they’d jettison the Country Club/Chamber of Commerce style Republicanism. Never Trump – and the Democrats – think that they’ll now capture the suburbs and thus return to dominance. What they’re going to find out, however, is that playing well in the ‘burbs is nation-wide political poison. You’ve got to get working folks on your side – most Americans fall into the working stiff category. What I expect to actually happen over the next ten years it that the GOP, now Populist-Conservative, will start to make inroads into working class votes in the cities to go along with their working class votes in the rural areas. Never Trump will join their Progressives and be happy sneering at us…and we’ll be happy they keep losing.