Out and About on a Wednesday

Pear Harbor Day. Remember men like Dorie Miller and his skipper, Captain Mervyn Bennion.

In preparation for having a Republican Administration, the MSM is finally noticing that the jobs being created under Obama are often sub-par…no blame will be given to Obama for this, but it is believed by the MSM that this can be used against Trump starting January 20th. Look for the MSM to rediscover the homeless issue, as well. They have learned nothing from 2016 – and they’ll just go further down the Progressive rat-hole during the Trump Administration.

Progressives are reacting to Trump as Time’s Person of the Year about as you’d expect.

Story is that Trump sold his stock portfolio in June…which was a rather presumptuous action by a man who apparently thought he’d win in November.

Hillary is going to throw her big money donors a party…which is nice, except it wasn’t exactly the payoff they were expecting. I’m betting that somewhere in the back of her mind is a desire to try again in 2020. It will depend on the circumstances in late 2018, but I don’t think her ambition has been lessened by two humiliating losses.

Obama gets an underwhelming response from the troops.

Maybe Einstein was wrong? My take: who the heck knows. But anyone talking about “settled science” is probably talking nonsense.

Obama’s Defense Department – wasting $125 billion per year. That’s enough to build about 10 Ford-class aircraft carriers. Big defense budgets don’t equal military strength – if we properly used our resources, we could have a much more powerful military force at a much lower cost. The concept that eliminating waste and fraud for reducing spending is always ridiculed…but ridiculed by those who profit off the current way of doing business. My guess is that at least 1 in 3 federal dollars is wasted. I bet we could cut spending by 20% and provide better for our needs than we do now…if we just had the will to make the government do the right thing. That would be about a $700 billion reduction in spending. The 2016 deficit was just about $600 billion.

Yes, Trump can cut off funding for sanctuary cities.

Precious snowflakes are so upset about Trump winning that they cancelled their Christmas Holiday party. No, seriously – they really did.

Why are our Progressives such wimps? Andrew Klaven explains:

I mean, really, why are they such pansies?

Here’s my guess. A right-winger turns on his favorite television show and has his favorite character tell him his favorite candidate is demonic. He turns on the news and hears “journalists” edit out stories of Democrat malfeasance while emphasizing Republican corruption. He goes to the movies and has his political beliefs insulted and derided. His favorite singer hates him. His professor excoriates him. His employer would fire him if he knew what he thought…

…A leftist? He floats in a candy-cane cloud of self-congratulating self-reinforcement. Hollywood, the news media, academia, they all tell him: “You’re smart. You’re good. You’re right. You’re nice. You’re going to win the election. Anyone can see that. How could you lose? Anyone who disagrees with you is bad, stupid, mean, wicked.”

No wonder these people whine and cry when things don’t go their way. Spending their days in a pink haze of bias, how could they ever have seen it coming?

Things are Happening Fast Open Thread

If you’re thinking of staffing up your intelligence agency, this kind of guy is probably not your ideal choice.

What will really upset you about this is that we lost to these guys in 2008 and 2012: 42% of Democrats think the recount will result in Hillary winning. That’s why Stein is able to get so much money! Ask anyone with an above-room-temp IQ and they’ll tell you: there is NO WAY the recount will change the result. But there’s 42% of Democrats thinking it will. These are the smart people? These are the people who got degrees? This is the Reality-Based Community? If brains were dynamite, these guys couldn’t blow their noses…

Rumor is that Trump is considering Senators Manchin (D-WV) and Heitkamp (D-ND) for Cabinet positions. Both are centrist Democrats. Both can help build more Trump bridges to a lot of Democrats turned off by the hard-left turn of the Democrat party. Both are up for re-election in 2018 in States where Trump crushed it. Both seats would almost certainly fall to the GOP, should they take positions in Trump’s Administration. This is brilliant politics, folks.

That terrorist in Ohio? He was taking a class in micro-aggressions…but, as it turns out, it’s still your fault that he attacked.

How Trump can create an economic boom:

…The basis of any Trump Revolution would have to be energy. The shale-led revival of America’s energy production was the most important economic development of the Obama administration, and Trump is likely to double down on it. The turnaround in America’s energy fortunes is almost a miracle. Over the last ten years, U.S. oil production has grown by more than 3.6 million barrels per day—an output increase of roughly 75 percent. Natural gas production has seen similar joy, rising nearly 52 percent over the last decade. This hydrocarbon boom has defied the predictions of most analysts, who expected American oil production to plummet alongside falling crude prices over these past two years. Instead, the shale industry has relentlessly pursued innovations that have allowed it to keep the oil and gas flowing, despite unfavorable market conditions…

The follow-on effects of a completely unleashed American energy sector are countless – just in making American energy so cheap that manufacturing becomes competitive in the United States would be a major boon to our economy. Don’t listen to the naysayers who are insisting that we can’t revive manufacturing in America. We can. They’ll use the hook of “those jobs aren’t coming back”…which is true, but only in the very narrow and meaningless sense that the particular manufacturing jobs of 20 years ago aren’t coming back…but a new, automated factory employing 100 workers is still 100 jobs in manufacturing that we didn’t have before. We can set this up so that cheap, consumer goods are made here and exported to China, folks…but also to all manner of nations which are rising out of poverty and demanding the sorts of consumer goods we’ve taken for granted for a half century or more. We can do it.

Democrat Congressman: we have no strategy. Our first clue on that was the re-election of Pelosi as Minority Leader…perhaps to be Much Smaller Minority Leader before too long…

General Mattis is to be Secretary of Defense. The change will be rather night-and-day, I suspect. I don’t think our military will be spending a lot of time on diversity awareness over the next four years…

Out and About on a Tuesday

Looks like Stein might not be able to recount Pennsylvania – appears that the real deadline for contesting the vote was November 21st…she can take it to court, but even that appears to be a long, tortuous process. In my view, this proves that the whole thing was a scam from start to finish…plus an expression of someone who despises the Constitutional governance of the United States.

Star Wars is a treasured memory of my youth – the three prequels, however, sucked. I haven’t seen the latest sequel and now I never will. Can’t stand mindless Hollywood types thinking they have anything to add to the debate. Don’t these nitwits realize that the golden age of Hollywood is immediately available? We don’t have to watch the utter crap they are producing these days…

Seems even in Canada you should never go Full Social Justice Warrior.

One of the reasons the troops love General Mattis.

That terrorist attack in Ohio? It’s your fault.

Rat Bastardism is always with us – but this is a bit of Rat Bastardism that really needs to be quickly caught and then tarred and feathered.

The Iranians are getting their last licks in before Trump takes office.

Should Conservatism embrace Populism? Andrew McCarthy says, “no”. The reality is that Conservatism, properly understood, would defend Populism…because we do live in a democratic republic and that means the popular will, limited by Constitutional stricture, must rule the political day. Certainly we must preserve the Constitution…but that requires us to preserve the role of the people not just in voting on the issues but in deciding what issues will be voted on. One may not like what the people are on about, but if the people are not able to decide what issues are important, than we live in a tyranny…you may not want to debate free trade and protectionism, but if the people want to debate it, then you darn well have to have a debate over it, or there is no freedom.

Weekend Recount Open Thread

It’s now Christmas season – a season of love and mercy. But Progressives are making it difficult. Jill Stein managed to sucker enough people into paying for a recount – so far, only in Wisconsin, but it looks like Pennsylvania and Michigan will get the sore-loser treatment, as well. Do note that our Progressives, in their relentless pursuit of electoral purity, aren’t challenging the results in New Hampshire and Minnesota – even though New Hampshire was closer than Wisconsin. It won’t work, Progressives – if anything, it will just increase Trump’s margin in all three States slightly.

According to this article, Obama and his team are the adults in the Democrat room. The allegation is that Obama convinced Hillary to concede – and now some Team Clinton people are bent out of shape over that. The article says that some on her team want to have the multi-State recount; they apparently believe that this election result can be reversed. These are people who nearly became our government, folks – completely divorced from reality. The votes were cast, they have been counted – recounts, at most, move a few votes either way. If Hillary had lost all three States by, say, a couple hundred votes each, that would make it worthwhile to fight it out…but she lost Michigan by more than 10,000 votes, and that’s the closest vote total (to overturn it, it wouldn’t be a matter of just finding 10,000 Hillary votes that were somehow overlooked – given the way it went, any uncounted/miscounted votes are likely to be roughly even between the two candidates; for this to work, Democrats would have to find like 30,000 votes…and with Hillary getting a miraculous percentage of them…and they’d have to do this three times to change the election result). There’s no possible way that any conceivable form of recount can alter that. Taking one thing with another, I’m pretty sure it is Team Clinton people ultimately behind Stein’s recall effort…but as Obama’s former communications director put it, they’d have been wiser to put the money into the Louisiana Senate runoff. The good news in all this: our opponents are monumentally stupid. Trump might be in for a very easy time, after all.

And for all the talk about Russians hacking the vote to give it to Trump, it is Russians who are pushing the recount issue in social media.

There is a gutsy prediction out there of what it’ll look like after the recount is completed.

The European Union has halted talks on making Turkey a member. Good to point out right now that Turkey is a NATO ally…which means if Russia were to attack Turkey, we’d be committed to going to war against Russia; you know, sending our sons and daughters to die in the defense of Turkey’s tyrannical regime. Please explain to me, again, just why we have to retain NATO…

The fires in Israel are quite terrible – and perhaps there is a terrorism angle?

SJW business owner denounces Trump supporters – sister of SJW decides to cut into SJW’s business.

Some people are saying that Trump’s business interests amount to an emolument from foreign princes and potentates, in violation of Constitutional provision. Some people need to get a life. Suppose Trump divested himself of all his properties and holdings…ok, so now he’s got $10 billion in cash – what’s he supposed to do with it? Stuff it under his mattress? No, he’d have to put it somewhere…and anywhere he puts it might (and probably will) have some sort of foreign connection. Demanding Trump divest is to set up an impossible situation – which is probably why some people are bringing it up.

Should Trump deny access to MSMers who were in Clinton’s pocket? I say, “yes”. Why in heck would you want to give access to people who are doing to deliberately lie about you? Who are nothing more than stenographers for the DNC? Deny them access – give access to new, upcoming reporters who will know their access depends on reporting honestly.

Open Thread

It is said that 2.8 million ballots remain to be counted in California – this is an indication of a government system which is massively incompetent. Suppose California decided the election – suppose we did go to a popular vote system – we’d still be waiting for the results two weeks out.

Meanwhile, Michigan is still not officially called – even though they finished counting on November 10th and Trump leads by 13,107 votes. My guess is that Trump will wind up north of 63 million votes while Hillary will finish somewhere around 65 million. That makes Trump the best vote-getter in GOP history (beating out Bush by about a million votes from 2004), and will make Hillary the second best Democrat vote-getter (getting beat by Obama in both ’08 and ’12).

We GOPers should really press for a revival of the California GOP – first off, because we shouldn’t be just resigning 55 electoral votes to the Democrats, secondly to give us a boost in popular votes so we don’t give our Progressives even the slight satisfaction of their guy getting more popular votes. Back out California’s total, and Trump won the popular vote in the rest of the nation (59.7 million for Trump, 56.5 million for Hillary); let’s move our vote total towards 6 million in CA…even if the Dems win, it would make the difference in the total national vote.

Kellyanne Conway notes that the MSM seems to be suffering from a sort of PTSD about the election.

Don Surber notes that Trump remains expert at trolling the MSM and making them go after things which are trivial.

The main thing about Senator Sessions being made Attorney General is the fact that if we enforce the laws already on the books, a lot of people are going to catch it hot…and that, I think, it what they are afraid of. We’ve kind of done this phony game where we need “Comprehensive immigration reform” in order to figure out what to do about the illegal aliens…thing is, we’ve got it all covered in law, except for any amnesty package. Obama – and, let’s face it, the GOP as well – has refused to enforce the immigration laws because this creates a “crisis” which then requires an amnesty. This is exactly backwards. Sessions, I think, will get it going in the right direction – enforce the laws and once we’ve cleared out the bad guys and got the border secure then we can consider amnesty for those who remain.

Kurt Schlichter, who had his doubts about Trump, is starting to enjoy this:

It’s important to understand why liberals are so angry and so scared. They are angry because they believe they have a moral right to command us, apparently bestowed by Gaia or #Science or having gone to Yale, and we are irredeemably deplorable for not submitting to their benevolent dictatorship.

They are scared because they fear we will wage the same kind of campaign of petty (and not so petty) oppression, intimidation, and bullying that they intended to wage upon us.

And their fear tastes like sunshine puked up by a unicorn.

I was considering being magnanimous in our total victory, but that lasted until a bunch of loving, tolerant, peaceful anti-Trump demonstrators jumped my friend and hurt his dog. So now, their pain is my sugar, and I say let’s spend the next four years having our coffee Sudden Impact-style.

Out and About on a Friday

Some Democrats, after four straight House election losses, are looking for new leadership. It won’t happen. Nancy Pelosi is a woman – Democrats can’t force her out because that would be a sexist thing to do (per Democrat ideology). Until she quits, they are stuck with her.

Story is that Ford called Trump and let him know they aren’t moving a factory to Mexico. If true, then elections really do have consequences.

Democrats using Trump Hate for fund raising. Given what we know of our Democrats, the money will come pouring in. I’d like to note, however, that Hillary massively outspent Trump and it didn’t work. Money does not win elections. Period. End of story.

Don Surber is rather pleased as punch at the way Trump is treating the press.

Keith Olbermann offers himself as Leader of the Opposition. I’m now looking forward to the 2032 primaries when there will be a hot fight to succeed President Pence.

There are two ways you can find out about the inner workings of modern Feminism – go and study it deeply with the real risk of chronic depression, or you can just let Robert Stacy McCain do it for you.

Mark Steyn:

The problem for the left is that, when everyone’s Hitler, nobody’s Hitler.

At which point, enter the Teflon Pussygrabber.

Stephen Carter rather nails it:

Too many of my progressive friends seem to have forgotten how to make actual arguments, and have become expert instead at condemnation, derision and mockery.

But, we here already knew that – just from reading the comments.

Ann Althouse:

Trump needs help, she says. And these people need jobs and power, she doesn’t say. The elite, her people, lost the election, but they should have the victory anyway, because a “young man” and a “beautiful lady” spoke of fear. Throughout the whole political season, Trump was battered with the fear of fear, and now he’s won and he’s told to pander to the people who said whatever they could to oppose him, the people who stoked the fear that he needs to prioritize calming. As if it could ever be calmed, as if his opponents will ever stop stoking it.

Barbara Boxer – the good news is that she’s retiring.

There’s a guy who is a “Beyonce scholar”…and he’s just about what you’d expect him to be.

President Trump’s toughest fight will be with the bureaucracy. My thinking: bring in Governor Walker as point man on reforming it.

In a country still about 70% Christian to some degree, turns out that attacking Christianity wasn’t a winning idea for Democrats.

The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. – G K Chesterton

Open Thread

People are saying that Bannon is an anti-Semite…of course, a lot of the same people support the egregiously anti-Semitic Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement…

It was observed, as an aside, that one can have objections to Bannon, but where do liberals get off thinking they get a say in whom Trump appoints?

Terrible the things said about women…by those opposing Trump.

Limbaugh brings up the possibility that Hillary’s vote total will include a lot of people who shouldn’t have voted. He’s probably right, but it is an irrelevant point as far as Narrative Setting goes. The Progressives will forever say that Trump actually lost – even though that is only true if we jettison the rules which were in place during the campaign. Someone pointed out on Twitter that a football game would also have a different result if a Field Goal was worth 7 and a Touchdown 3, and only one team knew this. No one can possibly know who would have obtained the most popular votes if the whole campaign had been run to get the most possible votes – neither major party candidate ran that race. Who got the most votes overall is irrelevant…and we on our side should stick to the facts as they are and completely disparage any effort by Progressives to even raise the subject of the overall popular vote.

Keep in mind that no matter what, the left will never surrender it’s Narrative. It doesn’t matter what actually happened, all that matter is what what they say happened. The Party Line gets set, and all Progressives just fall in line and endlessly repeat it.

Rich Democrats get together to figure out what to do, next. My guess? More of the same – they are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, folks.

Obama thinks that Trump will keep the climate and Iran deals. He won’t. But he’s not going to flat out and just undo everything on January 20th. Trump is prioritizing…and the first thing to do is the reforms to government and the economy. Appointing special prosecutors and busting the Iran deal, while important, are issues which would distract from the 100 Days effort. Lay them aside – plenty of time to get to them, later.

I’ve noted a great deal of speculation about who will be running the Trump Administration for Trump. I think it will be Trump, myself.

Feminists are taking last week’s defeat about as you would expect.

The Democrat who persecuted Christians for WrongThink in Oregon? Lost re-election.

Stockholm decided to place gender-equity in front of snow removal. Yes, it worked out just as you would expect.

It was my fellow Catholics who gave us Trump. Seems that nominating a pro-abortion fanatic who has anti-Catholic staffers didn’t go over too well.

The Black Sea has some odd water structures and this means that ships which sank 1,000 years ago are still pretty much as they were when they sank. This is way cool for a history/archeology nerd like me. Hope they eventually raise some of the ships…from what I can tell, whatever goods they were carrying should be intact.

Some Thoughts

You know what a free trade treaty should say? This:

Goods and services may flow freely between Country A and Country B, unless such goods or services are illegal in the receiving country.

Or, if you’d like to have semi-free trade with a small tariff – this:

Goods and services may flow freely between Country A and Country B, unless such goods or services are illegal in the receiving country.

A tariff no larger than 5% of the purchase price in the receiving country may be levied.

That’s it – it is all you need, if what you want is free trade. Now, take a look at the text of the Trans Pacific Partnership. It is page after page of incomprehensible, bureaucratic gibberish which is designed to allow the maximum latitude for un-elected bureaucrats to “adjust” things based upon who is bribing the best at the moment. It isn’t a free trade agreement – it’s a mechanism whereby whomever is in charge at the moment can claim it means whatever they want.

The trouble with our political life is that we’ve raised political issues to the status of religious dogmas. Free Trade has become a dogma and you are not to question it, period. But that is just one of a thousand political and/or economic things we are told we’re just not allowed to dissent from. Nonsense. I can dissent from any statement issued by any man or woman – God and His Word are eternal and unchanging…everything else is subject to revision.

Of course, expert opinion says we must have free trade – but, what is expert opinion? It astonishes me that the same experts who were saying a few weeks ago that it was certain to be Hillary in a landslide are now, straight-faced, saying it is certain to be Hillary in a squeaker; or any variation between those two points. Experts this year seem a very strange thing.

For example, on Friday night on Twitter the experts were agog over a rush to vote in Nevada on the last day of early voting – they were tweeting out shocked statements about how amazing it was that so many people, strongly Latino, were just jamming the polling places…lining up for a couple hours to do so. This was IT – proof that Trump is completely DOOMED on Tuesday. Did none of these people think for a moment that these people jamming the polling places late on Friday evening had two weeks in which to early vote and, of course, could still vote on Tuesday? I mean, sure, I totally get a strong anti-Trump vote from Latino voters…it is expected. No one doubts that Hillary will crush it among Latino voters this election. But the fact that all of a sudden, right at the end of early voting, a huge number of them just “happened” to show up means that it was planned that way. For crying out loud, are we to believe that these people just suddenly remembered they hated Trump that much? “Oh, my goodness! I forgot that I hate Trump a lot – better get to the polls right now! Even though I could have done this any time in the past two weeks or could easily do it on Tuesday…I’ll do it NOW…”. It was a stunt – a well-managed stunt, I grant, but a stunt nonetheless. It was a Narrative-driver, an attempt to get people talking about a surge of Hillary support on the eve of the election. It was, folks, politics – which is street theater writ large. Now, it could well presage a huge anti-Trump vote on Tuesday…or, it could be that they’re just milking their Tuesday vote. We’ll find out on Tuesday…but to read some cosmic truth into a political stunt is absurd.

But it has been like that all year – people picking out small pieces of data and extrapolating from that to a complete theory of what is going on. Here’s the kicker – if their predictions wind up in line with reality, they’ll be hailed as political geniuses…and if their predictions are wrong, they’ll just blame bad polling and move on to the next election. For crying out loud, people – the experts are mostly liberal Democrats who are members of the MSM and thus share a strong desire that Hillary wins and Trump loses. Maybe they’ve got it right, maybe they’re wish-casting. But until the votes are actually counted, no one can be sure. Lots of people are saying that Reagan’s win in 1980 surprised no one. They are either lying or they simply weren’t around or aware at the time…it was a shocker. No one was expecting it. The 2014 mid-terms were also a complete shock – right up until the votes started to come in, everyone was thinking that the GOP might actually get beaten…right before the GOP gained 9 Senate seats and the largest number of State legislative seats since 1928. And yet, here we are, hanging on the words of people who are only right by accident…

If your expert analysis is that the Browns will lose against Dallas tomorrow, then you’re probably be right…but that won’t make you a genius. And they’ll still have to play the game…and maybe the Browns get lucky? Or the Cowboys unlucky? You want to prove to me that you’re a genius at predicting things? Then I want to see your prediction from a few weeks back – before the game was played – wherein you said that the Bolts would be up 13 points half way thru the 4th quarter and then would give up two fumbles resulting in scoring drives by the other team. You don’t know the future. Ever.

Trump got rushed off the stage in Reno by the Secret Service – from what I can tell, it was because a nut was acting like a nut. Good job on the part of the Secret Service being so alert.

Israel’s “partners for peace” name a school after a guy who planned the Munich Massacre.

Dethrone the House of Clinton.

Never Trump is still pretty convinced that Trump will lose and they are eagerly rubbing their hands at the prospect of the purge they’ll conduct. Bit of advice – don’t bother; everyone you don’t like will purge themselves from you and go on to other things. If Conservatism is just a mechanism whereby we mildly dissent from reigning Progressive orthodoxy, then no one will want any part of it…including 90% of Conservatives.

Hillary doesn’t like it when men make crude remarks – unless it’s at one of her rallies.

Trump campaign office vandalized in Denver…I expect liberals to start wringing their hands over Hillary’s harsh, exclusionary rhetoric just about the time pigs fly.

Trump and Pence are heading to Minnesota – probably an extremely long-shot and may be just a head-fake. But this year I do invite Minnesota to repair it’s 1984 shame of being the only State in the nation which didn’t go for Reagan – who fell 3,761 votes shy of a 50-State sweep.

Weekend Pre-Elect-Mageddon Open Thread

They never, ever give up – the British people voted to leave the European Union and, so, naturally this means that those who don’t want to leave file a lawsuit to undo the will of the people. Boiled down, they are trying to force a vote in Parliament over it – most of Parliament being opposed to Brexit because, being politicians, they actually like it when all the rules are made by secretive, un-elected bodies they aren’t responsible for. Trust me on this, if a majority of Parliament ever thinks they can survive voting to stay in the EU, they will…

Gateway Pundit has a bit of compare-and-contrast: 4,100 at a Hillary rally, 17,500 at a Trump rally – rallies only a sort distance apart. They say rallies don’t matter – but, let’s face it, Trump draws huge crowds effortlessly while Team Hillary has to drag them in…and gets far fewer. Whatever happens on Tuesday, Trump people really want something while Hillary people seem rather “meh” about the whole thing.

We must have NATO! Well, NATO now includes a dictatorship which is arresting it’s own citizens in huge batches. Tell me, Americans, you want your sons and daughters going to the defense of Turkey?

Peak Atlantic – they actually have an article wondering why Hillary is so beloved.

Democrats are hoping for a replay of Nixon’s “Saturday night massacre”. This whole Comey thing shows that Democrats are only interested in power.

There’s no such thing as voter fraud – but there is such a thing as 83 mail-in ballots showing up at one address in 83 different names. Registrar says it was just a clerical error – which is as believable as “if you like your plan, you can keep it”.

Don Surber notes that the Washington Post is getting a little nervous.

Gay Patriot lays out what is wrong with the leaders of American Conservatism:

Like the rest of the Republican Establishment, George Will does not think the concerns raised by the “Basket of Deplorables” who are voting for Trump are legitimate. Their concern about the hollowing out of middle America … not legitimate. Their concern about the unchecked flood of immigrants and their effects on low-skilled job wages, schools, and welfare systems…. completely illegitimate. Their concern that Washington DC has become a cozy, cronyist cabal of politicians, lobbyists, donors, and media? Not legitimate at all.

Like most of the GOP, Will thinks that the Trump phenomenon is entirely based on personality and “racist/sexist/xenophobic” rhetoric that excites a certain stupid portion of the electorate who will all go back to eating the excrement sandwiches the GOP will provide once Trump is gone.

Ain’t gonna happen. Win or lose, the old way of doing business if over, for good.

Weekend Open Thread

Lots of information out there saying Hillary has it in the bag, lots of information out there saying that things might not be as they seem. Not least of which is the GOP’s still-solid shot at retaining the Senate; with 24 seats to defend in a Presidential election year, that shouldn’t really be in the realm of possibility. Given that Trump has not caused a complete down-ballot melt-down, I’m suspecting that a lot of rock-solid predictions are mere wish-casting. It could well be a Hillary landslide, but it could also be a Trump landslide. At this point in 1980 there was no solid indication of a Reagan landslide. I think we’re going to have to vote and then just see what happens. But I am planning at least some CNN/MSNBC watching for election night…

It ain’t crazy talk to discuss Trump’s chances of winning.

I said years ago that the Age of Science is ended – we are entering a new Dark Age. The Progressives who read that article didn’t understand it in the least…but that is mostly because Progressives abandoned Reason many years ago. We religious people with our weird beliefs have retained Reason, however. Long article here on how “science” is getting it flat wrong – but that is because it isn’t really science. The scientific method traces itself back to monks in the Middle Ages who, believing in Catholic theology, understood the world to be the deliberate creation of a rational Being, and thus it could be understood by observation and experiment. If you ever wondered why it was Europeans who first developed practical applications for a steam engine (a concept well known to people for a very long time), then look no further than this – Reason being applied to the natural world. But, take away the Reason – start to believe that there is no absolute truth, that is – and you cut the cord which allows you to understand the natural world. And, so, absurdities like assertions that eggs – which human beings have eaten since the dawn of humanity – are bad for you. Lot of other nonsense like that, too.

Everyone realizes that we’re currently engaged in five wars, right? And not really winning any of them. I doubt that 1 in 10 Americans could identify them – and this is precisely because the MSM, in service of Hillary and the Democrats, has decided not to talk about them…because talking about them cuts against Hillary and the Democrats. There never has been unbiased media – but used to be, we had media for all sides of the political spectrum. It was the professionalization of media which killed media variety – once colleges started to churn out people with degrees in journalism, the game was up…because the media would naturally just become what the journalism professors wanted it to be…and, as it turns out, almost all of them were Progressive. This does need to be brought to an end – but it will take billions of dollars and the creation of entirely new, parallel media.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams endorses Trump – mostly because he’s nauseated with Team Clinton. If you don’t mind a Catholic homily, here is what is decisive in my 2016 vote. You might not be Catholic – but give it a listen.

A bunch of redneck, kook ranchers defied the Federal Government, got arrested and taken to trial…and the jury acquitted them all.

Arizona gets a 116% Obamacare premium increase…but, yeah, Trump’s vulgar so let’s give it all to Hillary.