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:

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?

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…

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.