A late-day Happy Memorial Day (as a Canadian, I had to work today, so, late post).
May 30, 2016
May 29, 2016
May 28, 2016
Saturday Learning Series - Geography (Congo 2 of 2)
More Congo this weekend - Congo again, this time the Republic of Congo.
May 27, 2016
Friday Musical Interlude - Nightmares on Wax
2006's You Wish, by Nightmares on Wax is a jazzy 1970's vibe instrumental that is definite earworm material.
Labels:
1970s,
2006,
Friday Musical Interlude,
jazz,
Nightmares on Wax,
You Wish
May 26, 2016
Thursday Hillary Bash - supporters debunked
The only problem I have with this video is that it's too short. Debunking Hillary Clinton supporters is always worthwhile. We need more of this.
May 24, 2016
Hillary Clinton's answer to allegations: 'Never mind, I'm a woman'
Hillary Clinton has some pretty bad debate moments. Lying, changing the conversation to irrelevant points in hopes that voters won't notice. Sadly, many people don't notice these tricks.
Purity? I'll show you purity.
Pure evil. |
Are you a #NeverTrump person? Why? Is it about ideological purity? If so you need to read Dennis Prager's argument about why #NeverTrump is dangerous. There's not much I can add except to say that this election is indeed about purity - Democrats' purity in terms of corruption, in terms of determination to keep America on the wrong track and in terms of weakening America.
Purity. Evil purity, is something the country is facing. Standing aside and letting it happen because the alternative isn't your ideal is morally wrong, period.
As Prager notes,
Shouldn't all Americans vote as if their vote were the deciding vote? Including those whose votes "don't count" because they live in states that are so left-wing they would still vote Democrat if Vladimir Lenin headed the Democratic ticket?The choice this November is tragic. As it often happens in life, this choice is between bad and worse, not bad and good.But America has made that choice before. When forced to choose between bad and worse, we supported Joseph Stalin against Adolf Hitler, and we supported right-wing authoritarians against Communist totalitarians.It seems to me that the #NeverTrump conservatives want to remain morally pure. I understand that temptation. I am tempted, too. But if you wish to vanquish the bad, it is not possible — at least not on this side of the afterlife — to remain pure.
Prager goes on to itemize specific reasons Trump should be supported, if only half-heartedly but fully at the ballot box.
I am a glass half full type optimist. I think there's more to be optimistic about regarding a Trump presidency than pessimistic about. Stopping Hillary is JOB #1. But if Trump does surround himself with "The best people", and he does rescue the economy and reinvigorates the military that bodes well for 2020 for the Republican party - maybe even for 2018. And if you don't think that will happen, then maybe you're more comfortable letting Hillary Clinton give it a shot.
If so, exactly who are you?
Trump's VP nominee
Newt Gingrich is angling for the job, as are many others to be sure. Trump's VP nominee is not an inconsequential consideration, given that recent polls show him surging versus Hillary Clinton. A lot of conservatives would love to have The Donald's ear. But what makes the most sense, given today's identity politics playing field that the Democrats have established?
African American? A woman? An African American woman? How about an Hispanic woman? Trump did say he'd win the Latino vote. And what about a young nominee to attract millennials disaffected by Democrat party nomination rigging? Thank you Debbie Wasserman-Shultz by the way. Clearly Trump is not playing by the same map-driven rules used by other GOP nominees. He wants to shift the electorate across many states, and perhaps with the right nominee, he could do just that.
A young conservative Hispanic woman then? Just speculating, but that's more what I'd expect from Trump than Chris Christie or Newt Gingrich for the VP nod.
Labels:
African Americans,
electoral map,
Hispanics,
identity politics,
woman
May 23, 2016
Goofy Hillary Clinton
I've been providing a number of late night postings this week just to remind insomniacs and/or people on the West Coast, why voting for Hillary Clinton come November (or even in Democratic primaries) is a dumb idea.
May 22, 2016
Hillary's acheivements
I think I've posted this before and it will either make you laugh, or cry (in part because these people have the right to vote and will probably exercise it).
May 21, 2016
Saturday Learning Series - Geography (Congo 1 of 2)
There are 2 Congos (not congas). This week the Democratic Republic of Congo.
May 20, 2016
May 19, 2016
Thursday Hillary Bash - blind supporters
Blind faith in a politician is such a dangerous thing. In the case of Hillary Clinton's cult of lack of personality, it's completely baffling.
Time to ramp up the Thursday Hillary Bash
Later tonight I will provide a Thursday Hillary Bash post. But it's time to ramp it up. I need to bash Hillary on an almost daily basis going forward. Why? She's almost managed to lock up the unDemocratic nomination for president and she could conceivably win the White House in November and ensure at least four more years of terribly destructive policies and judicial appointments.
Look for more Hillary Bash posts going forward, no longer confined to just Thursdays.
Canadian Prime Minister - 2 minutes for elbowing
Canadian Prime Minister, ultra-leftist, political neophyte and son of former socialist Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau is in hot water for walking across the floor of Parliament, and manhandling a Conservative member of Parliament and vocal critic of Trudeau. In the process he also elbowed a female New Democratic Party member of Parliament.
A few months into his majority government and the Prime Minister keeps looking more and more like a not ready for prime time player. Canadian Parliament has started looking like a third world one, or a hockey game. If it's the latter, the Prime Minister should be assessed a 2 minute penalty for elbowing.
Why Trump?
Why Trump? That's a fair question. There is a lot of reason to question what his presidency would be like. But the problem for many of us is that the baseline has been set by the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan. That is what America needs. But it's a very high bar, and it's not the right comparative. Reagan is not available today. What America needs and what is attainable are two different things. What the available choices are, or will soon be, consist of Trump and Clinton. Those are the options available. Not participating is tantamount to surrender to more decay of liberty and the decline of America.
Ronald Reagan had a vision for America. It was specific, it was eloquent and it was visionary. If you missed it, his farewell address (one of so many memorable Reagan oratories) sums it up pretty well:
Donald Trump is far less eloquent, less refined in his views and certainly, less visionary. Nevertheless, there is a vision, and it is at least notionally correct in many respects - specific details aside.
Why Trump? His vision for the country is to make America great again. Should he win, he will accomplish some of his agenda, but not all of it. There is simply too much to be done. More importantly, the alternative is not only as thin on valid substance as this video from March indicates, but any vision Clinton (beyond power for herself) might have, is clearly leftist and would be destructive to the American economy, the rule of law and liberty and justice for all.
Trump is clearly not the ideal candidate, but he is shortly to become the best of the available options, and that merits consideration.
May 17, 2016
Kentucky Woman...Not.
Make no mistake, the Young Turks are socialists. They don't like Hillary because they like the further left Bernie Sanders.
But they are correct on this West Virginia faux pas. And it will carry on into today's Kentucky primaries, which she just might not win.
Warning - some language.
May 15, 2016
May 14, 2016
May 13, 2016
May 12, 2016
Unintended Consequences & the $15/hr Minimum Wage
Wendy's image problem or stealth use of Rule 5? |
Somehow this issue is trending on Facebook. And you must already know that Donald Trump is going to be asked about this tomorrow (so too Hillary Clinton who will say "it's wrong" and then be she'll be left alone).
The real effect of the demand for minimum wage is on clear display at Wendy's. Replace people with self-serve kiosks. The unintended consequences for asking for an unreasonable wage relative to the work effort is - no more minimum wage jobs.
Progressives just don’t understand the fact (not science fiction) that robots are about to take over the majority of jobs (and especially low-paying jobs) in the coming decades.That, and the real minimum wage is actually $0.00....After strikes and the demand that the minimum wage be raised to $15/hour, fast food chains have decided that instead of paying someone $15 to push buttons with pictures of food on them, it would be much more cost effective for companies to just roll out self-service kiosks that they can pay $0.00 an hour without benefits so customers can push buttons with pictures of food themselves.
This will become a campaign issue, guaranteed. But the important thing to understand is this:
1. Consumers benefit from increased efficiency in the forms of lower cost
2. Companies can only attract and keep customers by improving price and/or quality and/or customer service experiences.
3. The natural tendencies for companies that survive is to improve what they do in those areas.
4. Distortions to the capitalist operating system result in distortions to markets for everything - including labor.
Item 4 leads to offshoring of jobs to where labor is cheaper and requirements for companies in terms of taxes and even red tape are less cumbersome. Now it also leads to onshoring of jobs by using robots.
People arguing for a minimum wage do not understand that their actions, their demands, have consequences. Someone, or something, will do the jobs that they refuse to do, at an even lower wage. At some point this becomes too low for anyone. Perhaps the cost of maintaining a robotic cook becomes too expensive for the company. In a situation where the floor is reached, things change. Wages adjust. There becomes a natural equilibrium via the "invisible hand". People stop learning to serve burgers and start learning to program robots because that's where the money really is.
It's all common sense. Unfortunately common sense has become a precious commodity these days.
Labels:
campaign,
Clinton,
Facebook,
minimum wage,
Rule 5,
Trump,
unintended consequences,
Wendy's
May 10, 2016
What's going on at PJTV?
Seriously, I don't know what's going on at PJTV. They're shutting down two of my favorite video weblogs - ZoNation and Bill Whittle. Maybe they have something similar in mind or trying to shake up their 'ratings'. Maybe PJ Media is shutting down PJTV entirely. I don't know. Nevertheless, let's hope both these gentlemen, and possibly others (?) don't disappear.
May 9, 2016
Medium and message fail by conservatives
Marshall says |
Gizmodo is reporting that Facebook routinely screened conservative news stories out of their trending topics. The built in bias of Facebook is part of a bigger trend every conservative blogger and most conservative voters are already aware exists - conservative views are routinely ignored or marginalized by everything from the major news networks to tools like Flipboard.
That's not the headline. The real issue is that conservatives, for all of their view on government as a necessary 'evil', put an inordinate amount of attention on winning elections. And we don't do it nearly often enough. The reason is simple, as the Facebook scandal points out. The real war is cultural. If you win hearts and minds then electoral victories will follow.
As conservatives our attention (mostly; Rush Limbaugh is a notable exception) is in the wrong places. Defeating Obama in 2012 should have come from a populace who understood that winning the culture war is where the real battlefront belongs. But from schools, to MTV to Facebook, the left has a virtual monopoly on the dissemination of ideas because they own just about everything that people use to interact with the world.
The medium is the message. We seemingly still haven't gotten the memo on that. Well many of us. Some of us recognized it early on.
May 8, 2016
The Overton Window explained
A few videos to help explain the Overton Window, which is a real thing and impacts political discourse and political correctness far more than you would think.
And of course there's this.
May 7, 2016
May 6, 2016
Friday Musical Interlude - Lake Street Dive
A very 70's feel in the song Call Off Your Dogs by Lake Street Dive.
May 5, 2016
Why Trump We Be The Next President - An Analysis
Back in January, a gentleman I'd never heard of made this analysis and postulated that Trump would be the next president. Seemingly prescient and impressive for January at least analytically this analysis is hard to refute.
Thursday Hillary Bash - Inauthentic
This documentary reminds us of a lot of things about Hillary Clinton that voters should remember. But it also points out how inauthentic she is.
May 4, 2016
Demographics and De-urbanization
There's a good article by Joel Kotkin at RealClearPolitics regarding demographics and suburbanization versus urbanization. I thought I'd add my two cents in the form of a single, salient point (followed by some reasoning behind it).
Yet if politics are now being dominated by big cities along the coasts, the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data suggests that when it comes to their own lives, Americans are moving increasingly elsewhere, largely to generally Republican-leaning suburbs and Sunbelt states. In other words, politics and power are headed one way, demographics the other.Perhaps no American president has been less sympathetic to suburbs than Barack Obama. Shaun Donovan, Obama’s first secretary of Housing and Urban Development, proclaimed the suburbs’ were “over” as people were “voting with their feet” and moving to dense, transit-oriented urban centers. More recently, Donovan’s successor, Julian Castro, has targeted suburbs by proposing to force them to densify and take more poor people into their communities.
Here's my two cents: The trend towards de-urbanization is inevitable. With the advent of the Internet, the ability to work from home via VPNs is becoming more common. Additionally, companies have come to realize the benefit of open seating offices with shared desk space by leveraging the work from home model. The real estate cost savings are significant for companies.
So too are the savings for commuters. Less fuel. Less time travelling. So, suburban and rural alternatives become more palatable as places to reside. Congestion, crowding are not problems. De-urbanization becomes possible allowing people cheaper residences, more room and and stronger sense of community given the lower density towns.
Not overnight, but the Internet has the potential to replace the automobile as the work-related necessity for employees. Given the ongoing offshoring of skilled labor and the advent of 3D printing technology, perhaps even skilled laborers can benefit from the de-urbanization potential.
Urban centers will remain meccas for entertainment and medicine and social activity. But not forever. Even those things are becoming decentralized. Amazon with drone delivery technology waiting to be realized mean even mass transport of goods will change.
In the social arena people who are concerned with global warming will take heart in the ability to avoid using vehicles as much as possible. The desire to 'eat local' and buy local are truly reinforced with smaller communities.
All of this is not a small thing. And the implications will be global. Consider the impact on the automobile industry and mass transit. Consider the impact on conservative politics versus progressive politics - the opportunity to grow faith in a distant central government exists. But so does the opportunity to localize education as opposed to Internet-izing it. The same is true for mass media and news outlets. The potential to localizing religion exists - for good or bad. The implications are vast, and I've only just begun to consider them. What do you think? Is it even possible let alone inevitable? And if it does happen, what do you see changing?
The future is still wide open.
May 3, 2016
Cruz out
An interesting development in the race for president. Trump wins Indiana and Cruz suspends his campaign. Perhaps he's looking to reconcile with Trump in hopes of winning the VP slot. A few weeks ago Sandy Beach in Western New York interviewed Donald Trump and talked reconciliation between the two and suggested tehe Trump Cruz ticket. Trump did not dismiss the suggestion as impossible.
Looking past Indiana
Trump is poised to win Indiana, and Hillary Clinton likewise. The Republican nomination is looking less and less like it will be a contested one, and Bernie Sanders is not going to upset the Hillary Clinton rotten apple cart.
It's going to be Trump versus Clinton. #NeverTrumpers are going to stamp their feet, hell they might stay home come November, but they are not going to change the primary at all. Trump will get 1237 delegates prior to the convention. Ted Cruz is becoming, not unhinged, but seemingly desperate to shake up the situation and is looking more desperate and less presidential in doing so. Kasich will continue his delusional ways and strip off some delegates. Just not enough.
On the Democrat side, it's not a question of if but rather when Hillary passes the threshold to secure the nomination. Sanders will in fact speak emphatically on her behalf at the Democratic convention, trying to rouse his supporters on her moribund behalf. Simultaneously he'll be angling for a key position on team Hillary - perhaps even a VP nod.
Hillary is facing eroding favorables, thanks to Sanders.
The nosedive Mrs. Clinton’s rating has taken among independents suggests she has a lot of work to do to win those voters over in a general election. Her campaign has already begun fretting about the lasting damage Mr. Sanders’s criticism of her could have in the general election, and has publicly encouraged the senator to rally his supporters behind her for the sake of the Democratic Party.Already, Republican front-runner Donald Trump has begun crediting some of his attacks on Mrs. Clinton to her rival. At a rally in Indiana on Monday, the real-estate developer criticized Mrs. Clinton’s “bad judgment” and thanked Mr. Sanders for similarly targeting her.
Trump of course has his own troubles in a general election. Predominant among them are the self-inflicted-wound #NeverTrumpers whose opposition to the Donald seems so strong, they'd rather see 8 years of Hillary Clinton at the helm than bring themselves to consider voting for him. Independents are not happy with him in probably less numbers than with Hillary, and Democrat voters are as opposed to him as Republicans are to Hillary Clinton. That's probably a wash. A strong GOP turnout would possibly be enough to push Trump over the top. So far it looks like that's not going to happen. You think the primaries are ugly?The general election is going to be a brawl and there are going to be more than just two sides.
UPDATE: It looks like Bernie might upset Hillary Clinton in Indiana. That's what happens when you start looking too far ahead- you make mistakes in the present. My mistake. It's ironic given the post I have scheduled for tomorrow (which I still stand behind, 100%). That said, regardless of an upset in Indiana, Bernie is only delaying the inevitable. Clinton will still win. But he will manage to stay in the race and do more damage to Hillary Clinton and that's a good thing. Unless he actually wins. The potential for America to go full-on socialist is a nightmare beyond belief.
UPDATE: It looks like Bernie might upset Hillary Clinton in Indiana. That's what happens when you start looking too far ahead- you make mistakes in the present. My mistake. It's ironic given the post I have scheduled for tomorrow (which I still stand behind, 100%). That said, regardless of an upset in Indiana, Bernie is only delaying the inevitable. Clinton will still win. But he will manage to stay in the race and do more damage to Hillary Clinton and that's a good thing. Unless he actually wins. The potential for America to go full-on socialist is a nightmare beyond belief.
May 2, 2016
Celebrity Endorsement
Alright, I'm not a celebrity. Nevertheless, if you have a chance, why not check out Left Coast Rebel?
May 1, 2016
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