November 30, 2017

Double standards on the right? I'm okay with it.

Al Franken has to go. Senator Cornyn as well.  Matt Lauer?  Good riddance. Roy Moore, may not be as pure as the wind driven snow, but SO WHAT?  I personally have stopped caring and I'm going full Alinsky on the left. 

Let's get one thing straight, sexual harassment is a bad thing. No one in their right mind will dispute that. But the left has for decades deliberately applied double standards (Alinsky-style) to conservatives and the right has been suckered by it no matter which side of the aisle the issue occurred. Now that the left is awakening to their own duplicitous evilness, we're supposed to stand up alongside them and arm in arm agree with everything they want to do now?

How well has that worked in the past for conservatives? Instead of arranging a circular firing squad we should stand back and let them implode and apply double standards ourselves. 

Dinesh D'Souza explains my thinking more eloquently.  Not that I couldn't do it myself given time to prepare it.



Ben Shaprio, brilliant as he is, fell prey to the old Democrat trick that has had a great track record for them in the past. Dinesh D'Souza isn't falling prey to the double standard. And he might have some solid ground behind him.



To sum up - push back, hard.  And when they don't push back on the left when arguing among themselves, push forward, harder.

Thursday Biden Bash - He's no Hillary. Oh, wait...

Fake accents are a Hillary Clinton thing right?



No, they're also a Joe Biden thing.



It's not his only accent gaffe. We'll circle back at a future date.

Homelessness charity begins and ends with government. OR ELSE.

If this isn't proof that liberals want the solution ONLY to come from government, I don't know what is.  A private citizen does something to help homelessness and the city of L.A. immediately crushes his results, proving that in the eyes of leftists, charity begins and ends with government.

Wait, wait, wait! Remember this?

Matt Lauer, just fired from NBC for sexual harassment, only months ago, was grilling for Bill O'Reilly about being pushed aside from Fox News, for sexual harassment. He practically could have been interviewing himself.



At times it seems in the interview as if Lauer was looking for advice for his own situation.


November 26, 2017

Sunday verse, long form

A little different Sunday verse today, a video of a reading of the entire Proverbs in one hour and 40 minutes.

November 25, 2017

Why Poland matters

Poland for years has been carrying the banner of Western values of freedom of speech, individual liberty, Christian values, and national sovereignty .  Perhaps it's because Poland has not been truly free since World War II, having been subjugated and then by the communists of Soviet Russia.  Having tasted freedom for such a relatively short period of roughly three decades, they are not about to surrender their liberty to globalist and/or dictatorial leadership, or creeping Sharia Law.  The Polish people seem to get what the Germans (and many Americans) are unwilling to recognize.

These two videos illustrate a lot these points that you'll not see in the mainstream media in America or much of Western Europe.





Poland has managed to carry this through an Obama presidency which was antithetical to many of these values AND in the face of Russian aggression in the Ukraine, which truly says something for the backbone of the Polish people.

Saturday Learning Series - The true story of Thanksgiving

Via none other than Rush Limbaugh himself, the details of Thanksgiving you don't normally hear about.

November 23, 2017

Thursday Biden Bash - Hands On

Joe Biden is a handsy kinda guy, in the current political climate, that's very un-PC.

Via Howard Kurtz of Fox News:

Happy Thanksgiving

Have a wonderful, joyful Thanksgiving.


November 21, 2017

Liberals, Democrats Can't Stop Slipping Further Away from Religious Voters

As The Atlantic frets over the Democrats' hold on religious voters, more and more Democrats and establishment liberals continue to be accused of sexual harassment by the day. While liberals used to hold Republicans and conservatives to the highest possible standards, it seems under the surface they themselves have been not quite as pure as the wind-driven snow. The double standard is now openly on display as there are vast swaths of the liberal establishment that are disquietingly quiet about it all.

As a refresher, her's a list which is undoubtedly incomplete (Conyers and Franken already aren't mentioned, for example, nor are the likes of Kevin Spacey):



Granted, there are also a lot of duplicitous liberals who suddenly are aghast at Bill Clinton's sexual foibles decades ago. It's mere opportunism.



If The Atlantic is expecting to somehow for liberals' to continue their hold on religious voters, the timing of the article is either curious or stupid.  Yes there's unproven and denied allegations re: Roy Moore in Alabama and CNN is dutifully trying to remind us all of Trump's comments (not actual inappropriate touching or advances on women) as if that rises to the same level as groping.

But the other 90+% of the allegations are all against liberals.  That's not going to help The Atlantic's recommendation to sway back religious voters. Voters cannot be so easily fooled by the mainstream media any longer.  President Trump's election has proven that.

It will be interesting to see if there is a liberal Democrat implosion or a civil war within the Democratic party as a result of all of these things coming to light. It might. 

The Atlantic frets over Democrats' hold on religious voters

The hypocrisy doesn't help your case.
There's an article in The Atlantic today, explaining why the Democrats need to regain the trust of religious voters.  That's not the real point.  The real point is why they lost that trust in the first place.

The Atlantic, missing the point entirely (and not for the first time):
Democrats ignored broad swaths of religious America in the 2016 election campaign and the nation has suffered because of it. Yet calls for a recommitment to faith outreach—particularly to white and other conservative or moderate religious voters—have been met in some corners of liberal punditry with a response as common as it is unwarranted. Some quarters of the Democratic party would rather maintain rhetorical and ideological purity than win with a more inclusive coalition. For the sake of the country, the party must turn back to people of faith.

We know faith outreach works, because it has worked before. In 2005, after the reelection of a president many Democrats believed was clearly unfit for leadership, a concerted decision was made to close the “God Gap” that the GOP had so effectively exploited. Yes, the Democratic Party was losing among white religious people, but there was also an understanding in the party that its margins among black and Hispanic voters were limited by the perception that the party was antagonistic toward religion. Democrats took back Congress in the 2006 midterms, through a combination of direct engagement, district-based flexibility on policy, and rhetorical adjustments.
That's wrong on so many levels. Firstly the Democratic party is clearly only interested in providing lip service to religious voters. Their actions - from abortion, to prayer in schools, to hard stands on gay marriage  and birth control,  to banning of religious displays, to referring to religious voters in terms of being 'bitter clingers' - speak much louder than anything they might say during election season.  They want the votes of religious voters but they don't want to actually do anything to support their concerns because they are anathema to Democrat dogma. So they entice them with notions of being charitable and supporting the community as being a Christian duty. But not only do they not-so-secretly disdain Christian voters, they are openly hostile to them in political practice.

Even the Atlantic view the connection with those voters as a means to an end - saving the country from conservatives, and in the process, many conservative and often Christian traditional values.  The Atlantic speaks of outreach as having the ability to win back religious voters and they use 2006 as an example.  Even their example is wrong; 2006 was simply an anti-Bush anti-Iraq-war backlash.

The Atlantic article is cynical and hopefully religious voters don't fall for this sort of political sophistry any longer. Then again, the Democratic party seems to be headed towards a hard turning of its's back on religious voters anyway.  The true positions are more and more out in the open thanks to former president Obama.  What likely remains to be seen is if the Democrats can win with a more overtly anti-Christian platform.  Instead they are likely to continue to rely on a combination of identity politics and social safety net handouts hoping that will trump voter religious views when it comes to the ballot box.  The Democrats turned their back on religion decades ago, it's just now that people are finally starting to notice.  Assuming that stark stance remains,  whether it works remains to be seen, but for the sake of having a culture, a national identity and even social norms, let's hope it fails.

November 20, 2017

Anti-Quote of the Week - Morrissey


As soon as I see a good quote from an iconic singer, I immediately notice that Ed Morrissey points out that Morrissey isn't all smiles and sunshine for conservatives.
The British singer Morrissey defended both Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein in an interview this weekend, claiming their alleged victims knew “exactly” what was going on — and chose to “play along.”

“Afterward, they feel embarrassed, or they do not like it,” Morrissey said while speaking to the German news outlet Der Spiegel.

“And then they turn it around and say: I was attacked, I was surprised, I was dragged into the room.” …

“People know exactly what’s going on,” Morrissey reportedly said after being asked about the movie producer. “And they play along…But if everything went well, and if it had given them a great career, they would not talk about it.”
Oof. Sexual harassment  is never good. Apologizing for it is not good either.  That said, if someone is proclaiming their innocence like Roy Moore is in Alabama for example, they deserve the benefit of the doubt; innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.  If guilt is established we are into new territory.  

Morrissey seems to be taking a different tack though  he seems to be defining the incidents as consensual, which is difficult to justify when you are dealing with someone who was 14 at the time.


Quote of the week - Morrissey


The week is still young but this is powerful enough to stand for another 5 days.  Former front man of iconic 80's band The Smiths, as well as solo performer Morrissey had this to say in his calling out German Chancellor Angel Merkel on her immigration policies:
“If you try to make everything multicultural, you will not have any culture in the end.
He goes on to say:
“All European countries have fought for their identity for many, many years.

“And now they just throw it away. I think that’s sad.”
You can read more here.

November 19, 2017

November 18, 2017

Has China's economy jumped the shark?

China is running into some serious economic and demographic challenges, as this FT documentary from last year points out.  China's boom may not yet be over, but it certainly appears there's a very real end in sight.


There are implication for Sino-American relations and even how China deals with North Korea, as these changes develop.

Saturday Learning Series - Understanding Computers and the Internet

Harvard University lecture series: Understanding Computers and the Internet.

November 17, 2017

Friday Musical Interlude - Foreigner live

Foreigner's I Want To Know What Love Is, live, with my daughter's school choir.

November 16, 2017

Franken sense demure

Al Franken, groper.  Al Franken is of course now a senator from Minnesota.  The timing could not be worse for Democrats.  Or maybe it couldn't be any better.

Not fake news
BBC:
US Senator Al Franken has responded to a woman's allegations that he groped her as she slept and "forcibly" kissed her in a rehearsal for a comedy skit.

Leeann Tweeden says the two incidents happened in December 2006 on a tour to entertain US troops overseas, before Mr Franken entered politics.

The radio host wrote that the former comic "aggressively" kissed her while saying they had to rehearse a scene.

Mr Franken, a former Saturday Night Live writer, apologised for the grope.
This is happening at a time when the Democrats hope to pick up Roy Moore's Alabama senate seat. Rush Limbaugh today said the best thing the Democrats could do is to acknowledge it and basically expel Al Fanken from the party and appoint a new senator from the state (who would be a Democrat).  That leaves them the high ground in the suspicious Roy Moore flap. But Rush thinks Democrats will ignore the Franken situation while continuing to go after Moore.

I sort of agree, but with one wrinkle.  Al Franken recently denounced Harvey Weinstein for this very issue. Maybe Al Franken was thinking of leaving the senate anyway.  This could be a back pocket option to allow him to step aside for another Democrat replacement and leave them the moral high ground in pursuing the destruction of Roy Moore.  

The Democrats do not let a crisis go to waste, so why not take the same approach for a scandal.  Take a scandal and turn it to your own advantage. Al Franken taking the high road on his own sins, would certainly fit that bill.  Could this all be a set up?  If Franken bows out, I think it was a back pocket Plan B for Franken and the Democrats all along. Then again if he doesn't bow out, maybe he's just a duplicitous double-standard-holding jerk.

Thursday Biden Bash - plagarism

The Washington Post has a buried section of what it terms the Clinton frenzy, on the 1988 presidential election Democratic primaries on Biden's exploded nomination run:
Democratic presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr., a U.S. senator from Delaware, was driven from the nomination battle after delivering, without attribution, passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock. A barrage of subsidiary revelations by the press also contributed to Biden's withdrawal: a serious plagiarism incident involving Biden during his law school years; the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event; and the discovery of other quotations in Biden's speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians.

The controversy became two frenzies in one when it was disclosed that the campaign of Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis had earlier secretly distributed to several news media outlets an "attack video" juxtaposing the Biden and Kinnock speeches and revealing Biden's word theft. The Dukakis campaign at first stonewalled and denied any part in the tape's distribution, but when the truth emerged Dukakis was forced to fire his campaign manager, John Sasso, and political director, Paul Tully – the two who had orchestrated the maneuver. Dukakis himself insisted he had no prior knowledge of their actions, and though wounded, his candidacy survived the incident.
Two plagiarism incidents in one scandal.  It didn't hurt Obama during his run for the presidency but Biden isn't exactly Obama in terms of political cache. 

November 15, 2017

Sen. Ron Johnson's turn to shoot the GOP in the foot


Let's see - Obamacare repeal, X.  Border wall, X.  Tax reform and tax cuts - heading towards an X.
If the GOP can't avoid shooting itself in the foot on tax cuts, what good is it as a party.

Hey Senator Ron Johnson, shut up, suck it up, and do something for the team.  In the end any tax cut is a step in the right direction.  This isn't a matter of the perfect being the enemy of the good, this is a matter of getting something, anything, done before the midterm elections. ANYTHING.

It's not that I'm saying this is your last chance to do something...oh wait, it is.
WASHINGTON—Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) said he opposes the Senate Republican tax package, saying it unfairly benefits corporations more than other types of businesses.

“If they can pass it without me, let them,” Mr. Johnson said in an interview Wednesday. “I’m not going to vote for this tax package.”

Mr. Johnson’s position could undermine the Senate’s efforts to pass a tax plan by early December or get the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by Christmas. Republicans are counting on near universal support from within the party to pass a bill on party line votes. With 52 seats in the Senate, Republicans can lose no more than two votes unless they can somehow find a way to win votes from Democrats.

Other Senate Republicans have expressed concerns. Jeff Flake of Arizona, for example, has worried about deficits and Susan Collins of Maine has worried about Republican plans to repeal the insurance coverage mandate in the Affordable Care Act as part of a tax overhaul.

Until now, no Senate Republican has come out definitively against the GOP tax plan. The risk for Senate Republican leaders is that other Republicans get behind Mr. Johnson’s opposition.
The one way this turns out to be good is that the GOP are trying to signal to Democrats that they can't get their act together so that the Democrats don't bother to mount a decent opposition and then the Republicans surprise everyone with a consolidated, fully GOP-backed bill that gets to the president's desk without significant obstacles. In other words they make fake obstacles so that real ones don't get put in place. Now that would be sweet. Then again, I'm 99% certain that's giving the senate GOP too much credit.

Clinton-Russia collusion's slow walk revelation continues

Got away with erasing a hard drive, now wants to do the same with the truth
Well, well, well. This is sounding more and more like a conspiracy of voter disinformation.

Via Fox News:
The co-founder of the firm behind the anti-Trump ‘dossier’ told House investigators Tuesday that he personally discussed with members of the media allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, though he did not speak to the sources behind the claims, a source told Fox News.

According to a source familiar with the matter, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson refused to answer key questions during his seven-hour, closed-door appearance before the House Intelligence Committee. The source said he would not answer questions on his relationship with specific journalists or ties to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign, which financed the anti-Trump research via the law firm Perkins Coie.

But the source said Simpson acknowledged he did not personally look into certain aspects of the dossier -- which was authored by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and contained salacious allegations about the Trump team’s ties to Russia.

Simpson told investigators he never spoke to the underlying sources of the document, never traveled to Russia and did not verify the dossier beyond comparing the claims to “open source” media reporting.
There's a cover-up in progress but it seems like it is slowly unraveling.  At least it's unraveling in terms of credibility.  In court the defense of the Clinton campaign may yet prevail - but each new piece of evidence makes that outcome less likely.

November 14, 2017

Roy Moore charges - timing seem really odd.

I'm curious. Why did all of these accusations against Roy Moore not come out until just prior to the Alabama election? They didn't come to light during the primaries. All of these women making the claims, seem to be 'Republicans'. But the suspicion that raises is that if these people were indeed Republicans why didn't these allegations come out during the primaries?

Why wouldn't Moore's primary competitors have a chance to raise it?  They likely had not heard of it, that's why.

And why would they have not been informed during the primaries?  Why would the media have not been informed during the primaries?  Suddenly these accusations come to light right before the election. The accusations didn't matter a month ago? Or back as far as 1977 when some of them were alleged to have happened.  Really odd timing. 

Unless the accusers are actually Democrats.  It would certainly help Democrats in the election if the Republican candidate were badly tarnished.  And even if he wins, Republicans have played right into Democrat hands, by threatening to basically excommunicate him from the party, without any judicial decision on Roy Moore.

November 13, 2017

Matt Drudge strikes back


The Washington Post selectively chose a statistic in an attempt to discredit Matt Drudge's Drudge Report. Matt Drudge tweeted back his link to the Washington Post article about him being, get this, a Russian operative.


The response is brilliant. Just because the Drudge Report links to Russian news sources doesn't mean he's a Russian operative. He links to the Washington Post and he's certainly not their operative. Good news though, the more the left establishment tries to vilify every conservative as a Russian spy or dupe, the more ridiculous they sound, the more their initial Trump claims about Russia sound. They are not winning over any converts to their narrative, only reinforcing the kooks who have full blown Trump-Russia Derangement Syndrome already. Maybe that's the point. Maybe it's a get out the vote plan for the 2018 midterm elections.  Maybe it's an attempt to get far left voters to ever avoid visiting the Drudge Report site.

All I can suggest is that they keep up stupid and transparent tactics because in the end, this will help steel the backbones of those on the right as much as it will those on the far left. Maybe more. That's a status quo result, which helps president Trump because he's not lost any ground, despite the dubious polling (more on that later).  Meanwhile, the Drudge Report will continue to just fine without an endorsement fro the Washington Post.

Whole Cloth Trump-Russia Dossier used to manipulate voter emotions

Mark Twain once made the observation that it is easier to manufacture seven facts out of whole cloth than one emotion.  Seven 'facts' or even fewer, are being used though, to manufacture emotions it seems.   Byron York has a great summary of the history of the phony Trump-Russia dossier in the Washington Examiner.   There's a trail of cause and effect that stems from the events surrounding the phony dossier.  The article is worth a thorough read.  But here are some interesting points.

The dossier (cause) kicked off an FBI investigation (effect).
So the timeline is: The first dossier report was June 20, Steele approached the FBI near the start of July, and the FBI began its investigation in late July.
The work made it's way from Steele to Fusion GPS to the Hillary Clinton campaign which commissioned the ongoing work.
Steele continued to file dossier reports to the Clinton campaign and, apparently, to the FBI during the July-August-September-October time frame -- in other words, the period leading up to the November 8 presidential election. There were reports dated July 30; August 5, 10, and 22; September 14; and October 12, 18, 19, and 20.
This can only be considered dirty politics and not a national security issue, given the purchaser and the on-going nature of the data flow beyond the informing of the FBI. This is especially true in light of what happened next:
As the election approached, the Clinton campaign, through Fusion GPS, directed Steele to give the dossier information to a few journalists. At the "end of September," and again in October, according to British court papers, Steele personally briefed reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, the New Yorker, and Yahoo.

...The Clinton campaign tried to publicize the report, but the dossier news did not really catch on. So in late October, according to those British court papers, with election day fast approaching and the allegations still not out, Fusion, acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign, directed Steele to brief Mother Jones. David Corn's article, which stayed away from the most incendiary parts of the dossier, was published on October 31, 2016.

One day earlier, on October 30, Harry Reid tried again to push the information into public view with a letter to Comey stating that the FBI possessed "explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his advisors, and the Russian government."

Of course, Comey knew what the FBI possessed. The point of Reid's letter was to get it out in public as the election approached.
The cause is purely political no doubt. But until we know if the dossier is fabricated of of whole cloth, or speculation based on some known facts, or partially or wholly true (which is not likely) we cannot know what the ultimate effect will be. Certainly even if the document is exposed to be an entirely politically motivated, fabricated document, the U.S. political landscape may have already become so polarized since 2000 that everyone will probably continue to believe what they already believe, on either side, that the truth won't even matter at that point.

November 12, 2017

November 10, 2017

Lauren Southern discussing/dismantling Libertarianism

There's some really good points in this video about Libertarianisms failings.

I soooo want this to play out.

Again? Really?
Hot Air's Ed Morrissey is reporting that Hillary Clinton is establishing a shadow DNC (Democratic National Committee) to compete against...the DNC:
Old and busted: Buying the DNC. New hotness: Competing against it. NBC News reports that former aides of Hillary Clinton have launched a new super-PAC that looks an awful lot like a campaign. Party Majority, NBC reports, will “act as a parallel structure to Democratic party committees at the national and state levels,” while remaining in the hands of “Clinton world,” as Jonathan Allen characterizes it later...

Eventually, Democrats would have figured this out anyway. The question remaining is why Party Majority and “Clinton world” wants to do this in parallel with the party rather than within the DNC itself, as Priebus did, which would increase its durability. The obvious answer to that would be control, and in the context of Hillary’s former grip on the DNC, it’s also probably the correct answer, too. “Clinton world” wants to act as kingmaker in the 2020 cycle, or perhaps operate as a platform to give Hillary a third shot at the White House by again locking out any competition early by monopolizing GOTV resources and cash.
As Ed notes, it's not like the DNC, which is currently busy shaking off the Clinton stranglehold, is going to stand by and just let this happen. They're bound to push back.

Instead of working together, which is not the Clinton style, this is probably going to turn into a street fight. The DNC vs. Party Majority could last right down to election day 2020, with the Democrats forwarding a candidate and Hillary Clinton running as an independent, both siphoning votes from each other and ensuring a president Trump second term. There's down ballot implications as well.

That's not the only possible outcome. There could be an eventual coming together, provided Hillary re-establishes her stranglehold on the DNC. That would also bode well for president Trump as she has proven to be a stiff, unfriendly, shrill and generally unlikable and unwinnable candidate. Other possibilities will present themselves along the way, but the thought of a knockdown drag out fight between Clinton and Biden bloodying each other prior to the general election is just too rich not to want it to happen.

Friday Musical Interlude - Lousiana Blues

Another two hours of blues music.

November 9, 2017

Why do billionaires support Democrats who supposedly hate business?


According to the liberal British news source The Guardian, the three richest men in America, Gates, Bezos and Buffet - all Democrat supporters, are wealthier than the bottom half of all American's population.
The three richest people in the US – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett – own as much wealth as the bottom half of the US population, or 160 million people.

Analysis of the wealth of America’s richest people found that Gates, Bezos and Buffett were sitting on a combined $248.5bn (£190bn) fortune. The Institute for Policy Studies said the growing gap between rich and poor had created a “moral crisis”.
Of course it goes on to bash Republican tax cut proposals as exacerbating the problem. That view is shortsighted. But here's the real question - why are the three richest men in America supporters of a political party that supposedly espouses wealth redistribution?

The answer?  The Democrat party does support wealth redistribution - from the people to the oligopoly of insider elites.  The wealthy have their tax shelters.  They have their off-shored jobs and their legislation preventing new entrant competitors from garnering any portion of their over-sized share of the wealth pie. So as the Democrats preach fairness and equality, their actions in legislation and regulation do the exact opposite -they consolidate power and wealth around themselves.

Think of it - if Bezos, Gates and Buffet really cared they could divest themselves of 80% of their wealth to the bottom half of the country, or the bottom 10% of the country.  They don't.  They vote for consolidation.  They vote for tax laws that further favor them. They vote for Big government and really big business collusion.  And the Democrats take their donations and pay them back with government contracts and laws that further their goals.

Democrats meanwhile have owned welfare for decades and it just keeps growing worse.  They have owned public education for decades and no one is better off.  It's because Democrats don't really care. Democrats have changed into the party of big business.  They support unfettered 'free trade' in which the playing field is tilted heavily against the American worker.  They support globalization, which only enables the wealthy to be more free to abuse the system. Why?

It's a cabal, it's self serving, and they have duped millions of voters into believing that they are something they are not.  Billionaires know better, and are throwing their support behind candidates accordingly. Too many voters have not caught on.  Too many voters care that the president is crude and unpolished, egotistical and a loudmouth and they can't see beyond it to understand why president Trump won.  He won because he wanted to drain the self-serving swamp an establish a level playing field. Whether he is able to do so is another question but at least he was a billionaire willing to address the rigged system.

Thursday Biden Bash starts now

It appears that Biden 2020 is a go. In a puff piece on the supposed greatness that is Joe Biden *loud cough* ABC leads with two paragraphs that sure sounds like someone who is anxious to run:
Just over two years ago, then-Vice President Joe Biden announced that he would not run to succeed President Barack Obama in the 2016 presidential election. This week, he admitted he regrets that he doesn't currently occupy the Oval Office given the potential he sees in the United States.

"I regret that I am not president because I think there is so much opportunity," Biden told Oprah Winfrey in a clip from an OWN Network interview aired exclusively by "Good Morning America" on Thursday. "I think America is so incredibly well-positioned."
As an aside, don't bother reading the rest of the ABC piece unless you feeling like losing your breakfast. It's so puffy you'll end up feeling bloated. In any case, that sure sounds like someone who is itching to run: (1) expressing regret and (2) doing so on the Oprah Winfrey Network rather than keeping it within your closest relatives. 

So, as a member of the diligent opposition to progressivism it's time to start a weekly Thursday Biden Bash, just as I did prior to 2016 with Hillary Clinton.  I'm starting earlier in the cycle for Joe Biden than I did with the Thursday Hillary Bash for two reasons. (1) There's so much buffoonery with Joe, it's going to take time and (2) Joe has something Hillary didn't - a personality and the ability to connect with human beings rather than being a cold, distant snobbish elitist.  He's a friendly-seeming, pandering elitist snob. The real Biden, the plagiarist pandering stooge, needs to be exposed. Be prepared for a lengthy stroll down Biden memory lane in the coming years.

The Thursday Biden Bash may be premature. After all if Hillary Clinton decides to run again, she might become the Democratic front runner. God knows why, she's clearly unelectable except in ultra liberal New York. But failing a complete Democratic dam-burst on all things Clinton (for example Donna Brazile's new book exposing her tentacle-like grasp on the party and media),  she's got the connections and control for now, she could intimidate her way back into a third run. In that case the Thursday Hillary Bash would need to return. But frankly a Hillary Clinton third run would be a huge win for Republicans because Biden is clearly the stronger candidate for Democrats. At this point a wet rag would probably out-perform Hillary.

November 8, 2017

Clinton-Russia collusion gets amped up

Via Fox News, this earthshaking revelation:
The co-founder of Fusion GPS, the firm behind the unverified Trump dossier, met with a Russian lawyer before and after a key meeting she had last year with Trump’s son, Fox News has learned. The contacts shed new light on how closely tied the firm was to Russian interests, at a time when it was financing research to discredit then-candidate Donald Trump.

The opposition research firm has faced renewed scrutiny after litigation revealed that the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid for that research. Congressional Republicans have since questioned whether that politically financed research contributed to the FBI’s investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign – making Fusion’s 2016 contacts with Russian interests all the more relevant.

The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya occurred during a critical period. At that time, Fox News has learned that bank records show Fusion GPS was paid by a law firm for work on behalf of a Kremlin-linked oligarch while paying a former British spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Trump through his Russian contacts.

But hours before the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, Fusion co-founder and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson was with Veselnitskaya in a Manhattan federal courtroom, a confidential source told Fox News. Court records reviewed by Fox News, email correspondence and published reports corroborate the pair’s presence together. The source told Fox News they also were together after the Trump Tower meeting.
Don't expect to hear it in the mainstream media, but this is something that should come up in congressional hearings, where it cannot be ignored by the mainstream media.

One year after the Trump election

A look back at the pundits who said Trump could not win.



What to make of yesterday's elections

Republican Ed Gillespie lost the Virginia gubernatorial election last night.  Democrats also won the governorship of New Jersey.  Denying there are danger signs is a head-in-the-sand approach. It's wrong-minded.  But so is the Chicken-Little, the-sky-is-falling panic.

Virginia is no longer a red state.  It may not even be a purple state.  President Trump did not win the state so having a losing governor run in a Trump presidential year, is not exceptionally surprising.  The other side of the coin is the congressional wins in Trump districts over the past 9 months or so.  The partisan divide, is holding.  

Not exactly. Maybe a little.
New Jersey was not going to elect a Republican governor.  There was a reaction to Chris Christie just as he was a reaction to his predecessor. New Jersey is a very blue state.  The New York mayor, who shall remain nameless, was re-elected as well.  Republican mayors of the ultra-liberal city are the anomaly.  So this is not a terrible time for Republicans.

Where there should be some concern among conservatives, is the enthusiasm among Democrats and the potential for an enthusiasm momentum.  The left has traded on impeach Trump vitriol for a year.  That level of anger is just not sustainable.  Real momentum requires victories and it requires something to be hopeful about.  That's what not what birthed, but rather carried the Tea Party movement through  the Obama years.

Countering the liberal momentum what do the Republicans have?  No major legislative victories.  No Obamacare repeal. No tax reform.  They have to counter it and legislatively waited too long.  That is not to say that the Republicans are not on the timeline they originally proclaimed for tax reform (late 2017).  The impact in voter pocketbooks needs to be felt.  The impact on the economy needs to be felt, the momentum of it needs to be felt prior to November 2018.

So what to make of the elections? The Republicans have some issues to address.  Predominantly the issues is lethargy.  They need to move faster.  They need to deliver.  It's something pundits on the right side of the blogosphere, myself included, have been harping on since about March. The GOP may have had their heads in the sand on president Trump for the last 10 months, but many are starting to figure it out. They need tax reform, they need it now, and they need it to not be the last thing they do before the midterm elections.

November 7, 2017

Ed Gillespie for Virginia

If you haven't voted in Virginia, consider Ed Gillespie.



November 6, 2017

Paradise Papers and the Democrats' Hail Mary claims

The Paradise Papers recently released to the public reveal tax avoidance among the elite and will be poured over for a while revealing new salacious details about who is doing what.  Here's why you should not trust the media to do that for you.

The Paradise Papers had some link between Wilbur Ross, president Trump's Commerce Secretary and Russia.  The media will be quick to yell collusion.  But it isn't really;
Ross is reportedly a major shareholder in an ocean freight company called Navigator, which has contracted more than $68 million through transactions with Russian energy group Sibur since 2014.

In turn, Sibur's biggest shareholders include Putin-ally Leonid Mikhelson, who controls another energy company sanctioned by the US Treasury for its close ties to the Russian president.

Sibur's two other owners include Gennady Timchenko, who is also sanctioned by the US government for his ties to Putin, and Kirill Shamalov, who is married to Putin's youngest daughter.

In addition to Ross, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that over a dozen Trump advisers, cabinet members and campaign donors appear in the leaked data.
So Ross is a shareholder in a freight company that deals with a Russian energy company  who has as a major shareholder an ally of Putin and two other owners who are also closely tied to Putin. That's a far cry from collusion.  The two companies have worked together.  Big deal. Companies do business with other companies and I bet far more often than not, they do not do extensive background checks of each others' major shareholders.  Why? Because when an energy company needs something transported, the transport companies are probably only interested in how much money they can make transporting stuff for their potential customer.

Is it a failure of due diligence by Navigator of a possibly sanctioned company?  Possibly. Is that Wilbur Ross' fault? Likely not. He probably didn't know any of the details at all.  

Furthermore, if he is the worst example in the lot being put forward, that doesn't say much for any other Trump team members being worthy of further investigation. 

Democrats nevertheless are arguing that the GOP tax bill should be halted.  That's political opportunism and a straw man argument against the tax reform / tax cuts bill. It's pretty much a Hail Mary argument against tax cuts designed to bringing billions of dollars back into the American economy.  It won't work.

November 5, 2017

Sunday verse


Quote of the week

Honors go to James Heilman (@jkheilman) retweeted by Allahpundit at Hot Air for this buried treasure:


That is bang on. Over-the-topism comes with it's own set of pitfalls. Choke on it progressives. Or should I say, continue to choke on it.

November 4, 2017

For Bush, family>country>politics

No political capital left, so buh-bye.
Via Hot Air, former president Bush finding his voice to criticize Trump is now real;
In 2009, less than two months after Obama was sworn in, Dubya had this to say about criticizing the new president:
“I’m not going to spend my time criticizing him. There are plenty of critics in the arena,” Bush said. “He deserves my silence.”…

“I love my country a lot more than I love politics,” Bush said. “I think it is essential that he be helped in office.”
Four years later he was still true to his word. Now he’s crapping on Trump. As a certain losing presidential nominee might say, what happened? It can’t be tactical.
Allahpundit goes on to speculate that it's personal.  It is. Bush cannot apply one standard to Obama and another to Trump without his motivation being questioned.  If what he says about country being greater than politics is true, then by extension, he should not criticize president Trump either.  But he has.  That means there has to be something greater than country.  That would be family.  Then-candidate Trump was pretty harsh on Jeb Bush, and he's family.

The Bushes seem as incapable of any level of self-reflection; Jeb Bush regardless of Trump, was not going to win the Republican nomination for president.  Even if he did he would have lost to Hillary Clinton.  Putting Clinton ahead of Trump from the perspective of most Republicans is not putting country first.  A Clinton presidency would have been the final nail in the coffin of America's future.  Either they're ignorant of that fact or clearly the Bush's took Jeb Bush's loss personally. 

For a family that prides itself on putting service to country first, this is a bad reflection on that image.

MUST SEE: The Rebel explains the Russia Collusion in simple terms

The Rebel has some great content as well as op-ed pieces.  They're under attack from their social media platforms.  That's a big part of the reason I'm sharing this video. They deserve your support, based on the concept of free speech alone.

The other big part of the reason - this video offers a quality explanation of how the Hillary Clinton campaign colluded with a British spy, years after colluding with Russia.

Are these the death throes of the Democrat elite?

Donna Brazile, who previously denied any wrong-doing in the Hillary Clinton rigging of the DNC primaries and control of the party, is now abandoning the sinking ship.  As Hillary Clinton continues to assign blame everywhere else but herself, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Clintons infected the Democratic Party from within and it can be said that they were trying to do the same with democracy, as Breitbart points out.

Just as Hollywood seems to be imploding with scandal, now that the first domino has fallen on the Democratic elite, expect more to begin to come out.



Even CNN is talking about it:

Saturday Learning Series - China running into economic headwinds?

Is China finally hitting the headwinds that many have predicted?  Possibly, just as an Al Jazeera documentary postulated last year.

Saturday Learning Series - Postmodernism (Part 2)

Professor Stephen Hicks deconstructs the progressivism that is postmodernism (Continued from Part 1).

November 3, 2017

Obama hurricanes hurt economy, Trump hurricanes help it?

Despite the fact that unemployment is at the lowest it has been in nearly two decades, beating levels not seen in either the Bush or Obama presidencies, the media and the left refuse to acknowledge that optimism surrounding the Trump presidency and the changes being made are having a positive impact. 
...the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%, its lowest level since December 2000. The jobless rate, which changed little over the course of 2016, has dropped from 4.8% to 4.1% since the start of this year, a sign the labor market is heating up.
How do we know that the inaccurate assignment of blame or credit is the case? It's because the same people who blamed economic downturns during the Obama administration on hurricanes, are now blaming the success of the economy...on hurricanes. Perhaps some comparative examples would help illustrate it.

This is what the New York Times had to share during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.


And here's an excerpt from the Washington Post on the impact of the latest hurricanes: it's what's helping the economy boom, not president Trump.
The U.S. economy added 261,000 jobs in October, meeting expectations that the country had rebounded from damage wrought by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and the jobless rate ticked down to 4.1 percent — the lowest level since 2000.
Imagine how well the economy would be doing today if it didn't have to face those hurricanes. The contrast in the coverage is striking. When Obama was president the media portrayed it as a problem he had to overcome. For president Trump, suddenly hurricanes represent a tailwind for the president's economy.

Just, wow.

Friday Musical Interlude - Boogie Woogie Piano

Friday enjoyment - two hours of boogie woogie piano.

November 2, 2017

Yellen out in Feb at the Fed

President Trump has made a choice for a Chairman of the Federal Reserve.  I don't know much about him but it's a replacement for an Obama appointment so it can't be any worse most likely.


President Trump announces Jerome Powell as next Fed chair nominee from CNBC.

November 1, 2017

President Trump not opposed to sending latest terrorist to Gitmo.

The Hill reports:
President Trump said Wednesday he would "certainly consider" sending the suspect in Tuesday's attack in New York City to the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“I would certainly consider that, yes," Trump said when asked by a reporter at the White House. "Send him to Gitmo.”

The alleged attacker, Sayfullo Saipov, killed eight people and injured nearly a dozen others when he drove a truck through a bike path in Lower Manhattan.

The 29-year-old Uzbek national entered the U.S. in 2010.
Beyond that he's justifiably lashed out at the Visa Lottery Program and one of it's architects, Chuck Schumer:

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