Protesters are setting out to wreck Trump’s inauguration. I don’t think these guys realize just how badly outnumbered they will be by the Trumpsters. It could be that they simply (a) don’t know anyone who voted Trump and (b) actually believe that DNC garbage about how Hillary actually won save for Russian hacking.

Just to give a flavor of what we’re up against – regarding Jeff Session’s nomination for Attorney General, the Democrat leadership has pretty much convinced their base voters that Sessions is a Klansman. Think about that – the man who once worked diligently to put the head of the Klan to death is being accused of Klan loyalty. This is what we’re up against, folks – people who will lie brazenly, and people who will eagerly swallow whatever lie is presented to them. As an aside, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ, But Really Lives in NY) is using the Sessions confirmation hearing to launch his 2020 Presidential bid.

Why smart people were never, #NeverTrump – Congress to take up national reciprocity bill for concealed carry. Had Hilly won, this would never even get started.

We’ve had this as a subject recently – Trump may be consulting anti-vaxxers. My bit of Libertarianism does allow me to support parental opt-out in some cases. Personally, I think the anti-vaccine crusade is about as valid as the anti-GMO crusade…based upon anecdote rather than evidence. But people must have the right to live as they wish – and parents are ultimately responsible to God, not the State, for the raising of their children. However, diseases with high mortality rates which can be vaccinated against must be vaccinated against…and even for low mortality rate diseases, there might be a necessity, at times, for large-scale vaccinations. Clearly, a lot of issues will be tackled from a different angle over the next four to eight years…and as long as the people are regularly consulted on what is done, there should be no long-term harm in it.

The anti-Israel (and, often, flat out anti-Semitic) Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement just had a major failure – it is to be hoped that we’ll soon inter the whole idea, for good.

Our Progressive friends are arguing about who is Most Oppressed – pass the popcorn as this goes on. It was thought by some that after the 2016 disaster, the Progressives would at least mute their identity politics program…they haven’t, and looks like they won’t.

Gay Patriot unearths this cry of despair from a Prog:

A vote cast for Trump is kind of like a murder; there may be context to consider — a disadvantaged background, extenuating circumstances, understandable motives — but the choice itself is binary and final, irrevocable. There’s a case to be made that it’s indefensible; that his supporters have forfeited any right to be respected or taken seriously.

Turns out, now that Obama is leaving office, there isn’t a lot of demand for Progressive liberal arts grads and they’ve got the sads about it. Please try not to laugh too much when you read that link – we have a duty to be kind to our Progressive friends.

This guy allegedly committed a murder:

Gomez has worked at the Alliance for Climate Education, a climate alarmist activist group. In 2014, he spoke at a climate event with Governor Jerry Brown, billionaire climate change activist Tom Steyer, and University of California system President Janet Napolitano, former governor of Arizona and Homeland Security secretary under President Obama.

Getting into a fight at recess could send a kid to jail. I got in a fight at recess. Twice. Once I ended it by punching the other kid in the stomach. The other time, the other guy ended it by clocking me in the eye (I had quite a shiner for a few days). In neither case was anyone sent to jail and we all grew up and lived our lives as if nothing had happened.

As long as we’re on the subject of just who is the Putin Puppet, there is a good chance that the anti-Frackers are in that group. The last thing Russia and OPEC want is for the United States to fully exploit it’s energy resources…same reason the rest of the world doesn’t want us fully exploiting our manufacturing, mining and agricultural potential…if we did, we’d crush the global competition. We really do live in the Land of Plenty, folks – we’re slopping over with resources human and material and if we ever decide to go flat out, everyone will be buying from us. The rest of the world doesn’t want that because it affects their bottom line (temporarily, of course…they’d soon get the benefit of American production bringing prices down for all manner of goods)…our domestic Progressives don’t like us because rich America is an America which doesn’t need Progressives.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds notes a rather large problem we’ve got:

So the problem here is that you can call for an investigation, but who do you trust to investigate? The news media? The national security bureaucracy? Congress? All of them have gone out of their way to prove themselves untrustworthy. That’s not a good thing, but it’s reality.

The first major news outfit which will declare and enforce a policy of only reporting what can be verified as true, will win this battle. No more anonymous sources; no more writing the articles to put a spin on the information; no more burying the lede – back in World War Two, General Stillwell, in command of the China-Burma-India theater, was asked what he would allow in the Army newspaper; he said, “if you can prove it, print it”. That’s all there is about it – if it isn’t proven, it isn’t news. Speculation belongs in the editorial pages, as do polemics. The news is what happened that can be verified, nothing more and nothing less.

The juicy story is the life-blood of the news media – we understand that; if it bleeds, it leads. At bottom, the MSM is always waiting for the next Watergate or Profumo scandal. Click on that link about Profumo – that was just wonderful stuff for news…it had illicit sex, possible espionage and a senior member of government lying about it in Parliament. That is the sort of thing MSMers live to uncover…but the thing about the Profumo scandal is that it was all true, and could be verified as true. It wasn’t a report from anonymous sources saying that they heard Profumo was doing wrong…sure, it probably started with such things, but then the MSMers went out and confirmed it…viola! Great story, resignations from government, the party involved defeated at the next election. For an MSMer, what more can you want? And the kicker was that by reporting on it, the MSM of the day did a public service…it was bad what Profumo was doing, possibly risking the safety of the people of Britain. But if all you got is a guy who won’t even attach his name to the story, then all you’ve got is rumor-mongering…and if you report on that as if it were news, rather than rumor, then your credibility will be shot when it is revealed you’ve got nothing. And so it has gone…and not just gone with the MSM, but also the bureaucracy and Congress. In the urge to harm an opponent, all three have destroyed their own credibility by reporting rumors, most of which later turned out to be false.

Get your credibility back, MSM – only report the verified truth.

I was thinking about Winston Churchill a bit lately – it is said that towards the end of his life he said, “I have achieved much to achieve nothing, in the end”, or words to that effect. Those who know the story of Churchill might be a bit shocked about such a statement but it must be kept in mind that Churchill was the defender of the British Empire…and as he headed into the end of his life, the last shreds of the British Empire were being undone. What he believed in and worked for was no more – and never to return.

The bottom line is that by the time Churchill was called to save Britain – and freedom in general – in 1940, it was already too late to save the British Empire. If it was to be saved, it had to be saved in the First World War, and Churchill could well have done it. But he was First Lord of the Admiralty at the start of the war, and various events while he was First Lord forced him out of office before the war was a year old…and he just had to sort of sit there, on the side lines (even when brought back into the government to be Minister of Munitions), watching lesser men run the Empire up on the rocks so that, in Churchill’s words, “victory was bought so dear as to be indistinguishable from defeat”. The loss of life, the loss of wealth and the loss of prestige that Britain suffered in the First World War were irreparable. But why, really, did Churchill fail to rise to Prime Minister during the First World War? Because his blinding ambition in the years leading up to the war had made him enemies numerous and vindictive – and when they had their chance, they went after him…and kept him down and out essentially until it was nearly too late.

The lesson here is that ability when not married to humility is a terrible thing. Ability loses the capability of doing really great and enduring things if humility is lacking. Reagan had humility. So did Lincoln. Washington, too. We’ll see if Trump has it. If he does, then he may go on to great things…if he doesn’t, then even if he does some spectacular things, they are very likely to turn to ashes, in the long run.

Social Justice Warriors are going on a rampage over the fact that Simon & Schuster are paying big bucks for a Milo Yiannopoulos’ upcoming book, Dangerous. I don’t think our SJW’s are really getting the current situation, at all. First off, all they are really doing is making sure that Simon & Schuster (and Milo) massively cash in…the target audience of the book are going to go out and buy the thing in droves, just to stick it to the SJW’s. In fact, Milo could probably just put out 300 blank pages at the moment and it’d wind up on the best seller list. But more than that, our SJW’s are just doing everything they can to ensure that Trump goes for 8 years…and that it is, perhaps, a very long time before anyone on the liberal/progressive side of the aisle obtains real power. This is fine and dandy for us Conservatives, but for the SJW’s, they might want to re-think this. The vote for Trump was largely a reaction – against a stultifying, PC culture which, in Peggy Noonan’s exquisite phrasing, amounts to regular folks “being condescended to by their inferiors”. Sorry, SJW, but you ain’t all that big a deal. While Obama was in office, you had a government which would run to hold your hand when you had a tantrum…but that was never how the overall American people viewed it. We were (and remain) nauseated by this special pleading and demands for un-earned privilege.

Ed Morrisey has some excellent advice for Republicans. One of the reasons I’ve kept reading Morrisey is that, unlike a lot of other Conservative writers, he kept an even keel all through 2016. It is clear from Morrisey’s writings that he has vast reservations about Donald Trump – as any thinking person should have. But Morrisey never went “Never Trump” and, also, kept things in perspective – if Trump, then what? This allowed Morrisey to actually offer some wise commentary and some good advice. This is in stark contrast to many Conservative writers who not only drip with contempt for Trump, but also for anyone who would even consider voting for him. You know the type, I’m sure – people who completely abandoned the GOP, and then wrote an insulting article about GOP voters on their way out the door. And even now, after Trump has made some moves that any Conservative can love (as well as some which Conservatives can have large reservations about), they are still out there, proclaiming how glad they are they got out. How does it feel to be out? How does it feel, that is, to have essentially no say in what is going to happen? Pride is the real explanation for it – because the GOP didn’t do what they want, they washed their hands of it…we’re not good enough for them. Perhaps because I’ve developed a more realistic appraisal of myself over the past 10 years (being Catholic does that), I’m not about to get on any high horse. Sure, it’s a clown show – but I’m a clown, too; at least at times. We all are. None of us are perfect – and if we’re to wait around for the perfect party or the perfect candidate, we’re done for. Suck it up, sunshine – work with what you’ve got.

Thinking about Russia – they are the great, schismatic Power of the West. Not quite with us, not quite against us. We think of the sheer size of the nation and are amazed – but Russians look at is as an endless, vulnerable frontier through which enemies can march at any time. Russians, you see, aren’t like us. I know this will shock some. I read somewhere – in my rather large amount of reading Russian history (it is a fascinating nation) – that the Russians have a whole etiquette about lying, which outsiders are never able to fully understand. Some times they lie for serious reasons, some times just for the fun of it. During the Congress of Berlin called to iron out the post Russo-Turkish War situation, the gathered Powers had agreed upon a map of how the Balkans would look – the Russian delegate tried to slip in a different map showing revised borders. Why? Did he not think he’d get caught? Did he think that if he hadn’t got caught that everyone would then just accept borders different from agreed upon? Who – other than a Russian – can know? Russia is not our friend, but, also, not necessarily our enemy. It is best to try and put yourself into Russian shoes and see how they might see it – and then figure out if you’ve got to go to war with them, or work a deal. I think a lot of people are inclining towards hysterics regarding Russia (this isn’t remotely the first time Western statesmen and regular folks have done this, by the way) – and I think a lot of it right now is based upon, “if Trump doesn’t hate Putin, then I must hate Putin”. Give it a rest, folks – first off, we’ve got bigger fish to fry and, after 8 years of Obama, I doubt the readiness of our military for a confrontation with a major power…and while we might not be aware of our real capabilities, I bet the Russians are fully aware.

That horrible event posted on Facebook – bottom line it is what I’ve been saying about all these terrible, senseless events: it’s the morality. Or lack thereof. You and I would never dream of doing such a thing to a fellow human being – but we don’t just “have” that. We were taught that decent people don’t do things like that…and, further, that being a decent is better than being lousy. It might seem that good behavior is intuitive to you, but only because you don’t remember learning it. People who do what was done to that poor man either never learned it, or forgot it. In order to make sure such things never happen – or happen very rarely – our only course of action is a moral revival. Until we start being decent and insisting on decency, we’re just spinning our wheels.

As regards that horrible attack posted to Facebook: first off, let’s not be like our Progressive friends and immediately leap to the worst possibly conclusion on this. Secondly, don’t engage in overheated rhetoric about it. From what we can tell so far, it is a horror and what we don’t need is everyone adding more fuel to the fire. I’m serious about this – we’re an ace away from someone starting to shoot. In a few weeks, we’ll have a new attorney general and my hope is that this – as well as so many other things – will be investigated.

That said – the whitewashing of this event by the same MSM which made “hands up, don’t shoot” a national phrase is disgusting.

Robert Stacy McCain has a lot to say about why we get terrible things like this:

In her recent book The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe, Heather Mac Donald described how false narratives promoted by the Black Lives Matter movement were “amplified by the media, college presidents, and the left-wing political class.” Despite clear evidence that the group’s protests were jeopardizing public safety and inciting crimes against police, President Obama, Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement. In their book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama, authors Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan describe how the president’s public rhetoric has shown “a tendency to use race as a wedge to divide Americans,” politically exploiting the death of Trayvon Martin and the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson.

Read the whole thing. Start a fire, pour gas on it – don’t be surprised if things go up in flames.

So, Hillary is reportedly thinking of running for Mayor of New York City. The new AG simply must indict her – for her own sake. This is an unhealthy obsession with being in politics…

This subject came up in discussion recently here – Statins may have a lot of problems.

Obama’s version of draining the swamp seems to involve letting terrorists out of Gitmo.

US House votes overwhelmingly for a resolution condemning the UN resolution on Israel. That’s nice – but get back to me when we vote overwhelmingly to defund the UN. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be overwhelming – 218 in the House and 51 in the Senate will be fine – as long as we eventually cut our ties to that corrupt, useless, anti-American, anti-Israel organization.

Ace on the subject of experts – and a lot of other things, do read the whole thing.

Suppose you want an architect to draw up plans for a house. You want a dining room because you never had one as a kid, and always associated it — from old magazine pictures, from old movies, whatever — with a stable and happy home.

Suppose your architect comes back with no dining room — just one big great room combining living room, kitchen, and dining area.

“Where’s the dining room I asked for?” you want to know.

“No one has dining rooms any more,” the expert tells you. “It’s all Open Concept now, one room sweeping into the other, bringing together the family in one big room at all times.”

“That may well be, but I want a dining room.”

“Walls are passe,” the experts smugly tells you. “They interrupt the sight-lines.”

“I don’t care about sight-lines. And honestly, I love my kids, but I’m not so crazy about them so much I want to be locked in a giant room with them 24/7. I want walls and I want a dining room,” you say again.

“No one eats in a dining room and anyway dining rooms are too formal.”

“I’d like to be formal on occasion.”

“Well,” the architect tells you, “I’ve decided that dining rooms are in bad taste and I’m the expert and you can’t have one. You’re getting Open Concept whether you like it or not, Trump Voter.”

At this point, you begin beating the architect about the face and neck and eject him forcibly from your home.

That Russian hacking is beginning to look like Fake News.

Don Surber’s sequel to Trump the Press has been sent to the editor. I think we’re all going to want to read this one.

Former Obama aide figures that Trump is akin to cross burning…keep it up, Progs…not only will you get Trump for 8 years, but Pence for 8 years after that.

The Democrats plan to convince at least their own base that the election was stolen from Hillary is proving a great success – 52% of Democrats believe that Russia altered the vote in favor of Trump. Remember, the election wasn’t hacked – Podesta’s e mails were hacked (and not one person has disputed the information in those e mails). But the MSM – which I believe must have been instructed on these lines – morphed “hacked DNC e mails” into “the election was hacked”. And a lot of Democrats believe this. The bad news is that this will make a good portion of the Democrats relentless in their opposition to Trump…the good news is that the Democrats who don’t believe this nonsense are, in my view, already getting primed to vote Trump in 2020. As long as Trump doesn’t have a monumental screw up on his watch, I don’t see much risk of him losing…and if he gets some genuine success to his credit, 2020 may be a replay of 1984.

The experts did, indeed, get it wrong in 2016. A reminder from Lord Salisbury:

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of common sense.

The experts will be wrong, again – and again and again. The reason is, in my view, is that there are no real experts outside the hard sciences and mechanic arts. You can be an expert plumber – you can’t be an expert politician. When dealing with human activities, you just can’t be sure – things just don’t work the way you think they should. A wise person just tries to do what is right and is always ready for the entirely unexpected.

Start second-guessing every police action and the natural result will be the police being ever more cautious before acting. Remember, police officers are people – they’ve got bills to pay and a life to live. Being an officer is a job (a noble job, just still a job) and if there’s a dicey situation which is unclear but could cost you your job, you might shy away from it…or just not patrol often in neighborhoods which have a high propensity for tricky, protest-generating situations. The result of all the over-heated rhetoric about the police is a spike in violent crime as police back off. I’ve been an advocate for criminal justice reform for a while; I dislike the over-militarization of the police; I think most big city police forces are badly organized for the job of crime prevention, which is 99.9% of what the police are actually for…but I also know we need our police and that almost all of them are splendid people. One thing Trump must do over this term is restore respect for the police – and we, the people, have to make sure that our police are given their proper due, and that our justice system is reformed.

Charles Moore gets it:

…The cultural signals from the powerful are almost unthinkingly hostile to majority populations. This month, to take a minor example, a report into ‘diversity’ in the theatre commissioned by Andrew Lloyd Webber reported (reusing a phrase from Greg Dyke years ago) that it is ‘hideously white’. Why should the dominant racial characteristic of all western societies be considered ‘hideous’? If you said that anything was ‘hideously black’ you would (rightly) be shunned by polite society. Such asymmetry inspires revolt…

You keep telling people that their nation is nothing but a racist, sexist, homophobic tyranny and call people who’s grandfathers repose in veterans cemeteries that they are “deplorable” and you’ll eventually just piss people right off. That is what is happening – not just in the United States, but around the world. We’re seeing the rout of the global Ruling Class. They are quite finished – though they still don’t quite know it, and never will.

Kurt Schlichter strikes again – some New Years advice for our Progressive friends:

Be the Sorest of Sore Losers: Or should I say, sore winners, since Hillary obviously crushed Trump in the popular vote election we didn’t have. Keep being angry! Talk nonstop about how Trump is illegitimate – we’ve already totally forgotten that whole thing about how not promising to recognize the validity of the election results is un-American. And oppose everything Trump does – everything! After all, people don’t want change. The last eight years have been terrific for everyone who matters – just ask Obama!

Vegas: always on the cutting edge:

Those tiny bubbles in the wine — you know, the ones that make you happy, make you feel fine — are only a golden token away if you’re in the 23rd-floor Sky Lobby at Mandarin Oriental on the Strip. Those 21 and older can trade $20 for a token at the front desk and use it in the only Moet & Chandon Champagne vending machine in the United States.

Steve Martin put up a nice Tweet to mark the death of Carrie Fisher – the Progressives hated it and bullied him in to deleting it. This is why you got Trump.

DC schools are snubbing Kellyanne Conway’s kids. This is also why you got Trump.

Obama sanctions Russia – in my view to distract from the growing story about how Obama and his Administration deliberately engineered the anti-Israel UN vote. Alternately, they are just playing up the “hacked the election” story as part of the Democrats clever plan to attack Trump. This, by the way, is also why you got Trump.

There’s a woman who is terrified of raising her child in Trump’s America. You know, Progressives, it’s almost like you actually wanted Trump.

I felt a great disturbance in the Force. As if millions of nerds had suddenly cried out in sorrow. RIP: Carrie Fisher.

Seems that Progressive men are going to have to take a lot of cold showers for the next 4 to 8 years.

Trump’s election seems to have improved consumer confidence. People do seem pretty upbeat…and I can’t recall the last time I got so many “Merry Christmasses” from people. I think it’s really just a relief – I feel it. I won’t have to be lectured to by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. I won’t have to worry about what regulatory “Pen and Phone” nightmare is being cooked up…it’s just a better time, now.

World War Two still goes on a bit – a German town got evacuated while experts disposed of a blockbuster bomb dropped during the war. As an aside, even World War One goes on a bit…there are still areas in France which are no-go for humans…still too much unexploded ordnance and decaying chemical weapons in the area.

Analytic models did Clinton in. It was reliance upon them which did the trick. Trump re-wrote the political book. Every campaign will now have to actually get out there into the sticks and see what people are saying and doing. Word is that Biden saw it coming – and I believe the story. Say what you will about Biden, but he knows his people…and he was seeing his people going wild for Trump months before the election. All that scorn poured on yard signs, small-donors and rally attendance…well, such things were actually more important than in-depth analysis of how counties had voted over the past 6 election cycles, or what have you.

There were a lot of brawls at the malls on the 26th. Like others, I’m wondering: just happenstance, or is someone testing out a plan?

Known Wolf: Morocco warned Germany about the Berlin killer. Twice. We’ve reached a stage in the West where the Authorities simply refuse to act upon clear intelligence – because to act would offend Progressive sensibilities. It really comes down to it being easier, in their view, for the Ruling Class to deal with a couple score dead people than deal with outraged social justice warriors and Islamist apologists.

Scott Adams talks about Trump’s “talent stack”. I’ve read Dilbert for years and as a cubicle-denizen, I’ve enjoyed it a lot. Never thought much about Adams, himself. Over this past year, I’ve discovered that there’s a lot of things I think him wrong about – but he clearly picked up on Trump’s appeal early on and in spite of relentlessly attacks, never retreated.

Huge news – Ivanka Trump flies coach! Oh, and jerks also fly coach – a nitwit decided to go on a rant at Ivanka Trump, while her kids were present, because it’s ok to be vulgar to people associated with Trump, or something. Remember, our Progressives hold themselves to be the calm, reasonable people…unlike those crude Trumpsters. I’d like to find an example of a famous Progressive woman being accosted in coach, but from what I can tell most such people fly first class.

The guy who runs (or ran) Snopes – the internet fact-checking website – is, well, not someone entirely reliable.

The best immediate course of action when you hear about a “hate crime” is to doubt it. A lot.

Twitter’s stock is in the dumpster – Don Surber wonders if their banning of Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) had something to do with it.

V the K over at Gay Patriot notes that Trump is already draining the swamp in DC. It might prove easier than expected – after all, if Trump is going to sally forth each day to take on the bureaucracy and the asinine way money is spent in DC, then he’s going to win every battle.

Not quite satisfied with how divided we are, Obama decides to take one, last shot at making us all hate each other.

Well, got some bad news for you – the Progressives believe our Constitution has failed – as you might suspect, it has failed because it prevents the people of Los Angeles and New York telling everyone else how to live. Our Progressives live for the day when the United State is a unitary State where all decisions are made at the center – the grand and glorious day when no local community will be able to opt out of what their wise, all-seeing, Progressive leaders know what’s best for them.

Some Progressives are upset that Hillary didn’t publicly embrace the plan to subvert the Electoral College. The theory here is that if Hillary had got out in front on this, then a cascade of Democrat Electors voting for Romney or Kasich would have convinced the GOP Electors to follow suit, thus preventing that horror of all horrors, the election of Donald Trump. This only works if one thinks that Trump is the personification of all evil. I think our Progressives have constructed yet another one of their fantasy-land ideas here – after being force-fed “Trump is Hitler” by the overall Progressive Establishment, our Progressives are of the view that everyone believes Trump is Hitler and that only Russian hacking got Trump above 270 and, so, plenty of GOPers were just waiting for their chance to turn on him and only needed permission from Hillary to do so. Yes, this is mind-bogglingly stupid…but it’s no more stupid than the basic premise that Trump is Hitler.

Obama says he wants to help build the Democrat party. We wish him as much success in this effort as he’s had the past 8 years.

Paul Krugman is simply not taking this Trump thing very well.

Michael Barone tends to be smarter than anyone else about politics – so, read this.

All through the campaign, people were trashing Priebus – blaming him for Trump and the GOP’s coming defeat. I always asked just what Preibus was supposed to have done to “stop” Trump. Other than rigging the primary as the DNC did for Hillary, there was nothing Priebus could have done. At all events, Trump won – and now as Trump’s Chief of Staff, Priebus is rather on the rise. Wonder how his detractors are taking that?

Public pensions are a mess – and a potential financial crash in the making. Mostly this is because public pensions work on the assumption that everything is peachy. That might be changing – and, of course, some people are critical of the change because, well, it is a real problem requiring painful solution and that sort of thing doesn’t help you get re-elected on a promise of ever more lavish pensions for government employees.

Kurt Schlichter gives us an overview of the bullet we dodged.

Our Progressives have taken the masks off – their efforts to subvert the Electoral College have stopped being pitched as a good government proposal and are becoming a naked attempt to bully GOP Electors in to voting Hillary.

It won’t work. But it does show that the left is scared – very, very scared. They’ve spent 8 years weaponizing the government and now fear they are to be on the receiving end of what they’ve dished out. Fear not, my Progressive friends – we won’t pay you out in your own coin. The laws, though, will be enforced…now, if none of you have maintained a massive slush fund based upon donations from shady characters, you’re probably in the clear.

As an aside, Jeh Johnson says there’s no evidence of hacking the voting or the counting…of course, we all knew that. What Democrats have been trying to do is confuse the issue of the hacking of the DNC (which did happen) in the public mind with hacking the vote (which didn’t happen) in an effort to get people to think that Putin hacked into Michigan’s vote and changed the result from D to R.

So, the Muslim student who claimed Trumpsters tore off her hijab was making it up. Have any of these things ever proven true? You can put it in the comments if we had one – but over the past 10 years, I can’t think of one such incident where investigation verified it…but plenty where investigation proved it false. Anyways, our Progressives are never at a loss – they are now claiming she made it up because of her fear that things like that will happen because Trump.

A lot of people are giving Obama grief over Aleppo – let me be one to not give him grief. Folks, the only way we were going to stop it from happening was to send an army over there and fight pretty much everyone in the area. Did you want to do that? Did you call for that to be done? Now, a policy can be constructed which justifies just such an action – back in the olden days when we had a spine, we called such actions a “punitive expedition”. But, we don’t do that sort of thing any more. And unless we’re willing to spill very large buckets of blood in the effort, there’s nothing much we can do to actually stop the fighting. To be sure, Obama appears to have stepped aside because his buddies in Tehran insisted rather than out of some humanitarian impulse…but I’m not going to condemn the man for not doing what none of us wanted done.

When the President of Ireland bemoaned the death of Castro, I resigned my Irish ancestry – this, however, makes me wish to reclaim it:

Irishman Dies from Stubbornness, Whiskey

Chris Connors died, at age 67, after trying to box his bikini-clad hospice nurse just moments earlier. Ladies man, game slayer, and outlaw Connors told his last inappropriate joke on Friday, December 9, 2016, that which cannot be printed here. Anyone else fighting ALS and stage 4 pancreatic cancer would have gone quietly into the night, but Connors was stark naked drinking Veuve in a house full of friends and family as Al Green played from the speakers.

Under Capitalism, the rich get powerful – under Socialism, the powerful get rich. Four richest counties in USA are suburbs of DC.

Sylvester Stallone as head of the National Endowment for the Arts? Artbo: First Painting, Part II.

Ace has some words for the #NeverTrumpers:

…There was lots of room for discussion of character and policy and all the stuff this (guy) talks about. But there was also room for discussion of the binary choice of “Which is ultimately better for the country, warts and all, and which is ultimately worse– Hillary or Trump?”

The #NeverTrumpers did not wish to talk about that question, preferring to preen about perfect Platonic Ideals and how much better they were than everyone else.

I’ll say it: I want them gone. They say we’ve revealed our stripes; fine, I’ll say they’ve revealed their own.

Go. Get gone, be gone, and stay gone.

Join the liberals, which 90% of you are already 90% of the way along to doing. Just make it official, so we don’t have another crop of fake conservatives appearing in the liberal media for the only purpose of collecting a check while bashing other conservatives — the ones who are actually looking out for this country’s future, rather than their own reputability and acceptability to their would-be liberal media employers.

Yeah, I’m on board with those sentiments. It was a binary choice – we had a choice in November between Hillary being President and Trump being President. I think I made it clear through the election that I had grave doubts about Trump. I still do – a bit pleased with some of his actions so far, but the jury is still very much out. But Hillary was, is and always will be the worse choice. Period.

If you’re planning on hiking across Antarctica, bundle up. A lot.

Madonna and Hillary – sisters in arms. Yeah. I can see that. They’ve both irritated me since about the second time I noticed either of them.

Rep Jim Himes, (D-CT) isn’t taking Trump’s victory very well, at all. I guess that with write-ups of the popular vote, recounts and even Russian hacking not propelling Hillary into the White House, our Progs are now pinning their hopes on a revolt of the Electoral College. Sorry guys, that isn’t how this works. Sure, the Founders set up the Electoral College a certain way, but after the 1824 election, the Andrew Jackson forces changed the laws in the States to make the winner of the popular vote in the State the winner of that State’s Electoral College votes. The Electoral College voters are not actually free agents – they can technically vote for whomever they want, but that would work out to a betrayal of what they were set to do…which is the formal ratification of what the State electorate decreed. If you don’t like it, change the law – try and get the Electoral College abolished, or have the States set it up so that the Electors are genuine free agents, in no way bound by the vote. You’ll never succeed, but have at it. But, meanwhile, things are as they are – and if Progs keep pressing on this, all that will happen is that States will make it iron-clad that their electoral votes go to the State-vote winner…perhaps by not even having actual Electors, but just assigning the votes to whoever won. People will not long put up with this nonsense of trying to overturn an election because Progressives didn’t like the outcome.

Related: Ann Althouse digs through the definitive, New York Times expose’ of the Russian hacking and comes away with, ‘meh’. There’s no there, there, folks.

Turns out a Hollywood “thriller” about a policy wonk taking on the “gun lobby” wasn’t box office gold. Who woulda thunk it?

Don Surber is unsurprised at Trump’s rather Conservative cabinet picks. I’m not, either – and for much the reasons Surber suggests. Trump won’t appoint out-and-out liberals because he must know, by now, that there’s no making peace with them (his nice-nice with Hillary right after the election only got him recounts and, now, Team Hillary joining in the “faithless elector” effort). He also doesn’t have to make nice-nice with the GOP Establishment types – he will make nice-nice, but only as he thinks it helps him. The GOP Establishment was either in direct opposition to him, or wasn’t being at all helpful during the campaign. Trump owes them nothing – and if the GOP Establishment wants a seat at the table, they now much go, hat in hand, and ask pretty-please, may I. This is a grand advantage for Trump…and his Cabinet picks are reflecting these advantages.

Comment of the day from Instapundit:

I’M INCLINED TO THINK THE BUZZ ON THIS WAS JUST A HEAD-FAKE: Ralph Peters: Rex Tillerson would be a “terrible” choice for Secretary of State.

But who knows? Surprise is Trump’s chief weapon. And unpredictability. And an almost fanatical devotion to Twitter.

And if you don’t get that last joke, I feel sorry for you – but I’ll also be helpful: