Is MTV even relevant anymore
Was it ever? Just asking. Have you seen MTV’s racist, condescending, racial stereotyping video presented by a bunch of kids who obviously have no idea of what real oppression or racism is? I mean it is ignorance on parade.
As Rob Port says, “Because racial stereotypes are bad unless they’re the right kind of racial stereotypes.” And these stereotypes are snowflake-racist approved. Go take a look if you haven’t seen it. It is now socially acceptable among the racist left to attack certain people because of their skin color. Unless there’s pushback. You can count on that here.
Oh, and a note to the left: This. Is. Why. You. Lost. Please. Keep it up.
The electoral vote is in. Hillary had more “faithless electors” than did Trump, which I found greatly amusing. We also had the usual tantrums by leftists in the usual places. Again – This. Is. Why. You. Lost. And everyone who voted for Trump is constantly reminded why they cast their vote for him by your antics.
As good a summary of the “Russian” fiasco as any. And “fiasco” is being kind:
The Democrats want to play the victim, blame Donald Trump and declare Trump the beneficiary of the Russians’ interference in the 2016 campaign, but in fact, it was their own leadership that dropped the ball and gave the Russians the opening they needed. And, Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s silence on this was deafening. Where was she when her agents were trying to get the DNC’s attention? Probably somewhere carrying out her audition for a job in a Clinton administration.
Anyway, the tale of incompetence doesn’t stop there. In a Keystone Cops-worthy episode revealed in no less than the New York Times, it turns out the FBI repeatedly called the DNC beginning in September 2015 to warn them about hacking attempts, but the Democratic staffer the FBI agent reached wouldn’t return the agent’s calls because “he wasn’t certain the caller was a real FBI agent and not an imposter” and because the DNC had “nothing to report.” Not to mention, another Democratic staffer made the world’s most inexplicable “typo” and called a phishing email a “legitimate email” instead of an “illegitimate” one, opening the path for a hacker to gain access to all of John Podesta’s emails. Oops.
It’s unbelievable. And as troubling as it is that Obama and the Democrats allowed the Russians to interfere in the election and engage in cyberwarfare without any ramifications, we shouldn’t be surprised.
And these people wanted to run the country? Good lord. What was it Obama is reported to have told Putin when he met with him in China about the cyber attacks? “Cut it out“? Wonder if he was in his mommy jeans when he did it? I wonder if Putin had a difficult time stifling a laugh?
Whatever you may think of Trump’s election, it seems to be restoring the American people’s confidence in the economy. That certainly hasn’t been the case under Obama, despite all the “fake news” about how well the economy was doing:
Americans’ confidence in the economy continues to gradually strengthen after last month’s post-election surge. Gallup’s U.S. Economic Confidence Index averaged +10 for the week ending Dec. 18, marking another new high in its nine-year trend.
Paul Krugman must be in the fetal position right now. How many “recovery summers” did we have? So many it became a pretty dark joke. Whether this confidence actually sees real improvement is, of course, something we’ll have to see about in the future. But at least half of what is necessary to turn an economy around is confidence. It’s the spur for the entrepreneur. It’s how investments happen, business expand and salaries grow. Here’s hoping.
On the “global warming” side of things? Surprise!
Snow in the SAHARA: Desert sees snow for the FIRST time in 37 years.
Ah, we all know that they’ll come up with some way to wave that off and blame it on warming … somehow. Scientific? Oh, no. More like “consensus” or some weird almost religious faith instead.
Poor Venezuela is in the final throes of death by socialism. And what usually happens during that time, is involving the military in trying to keep some semblance of order. This all happened after the Maduro government eliminated half the country’s currency:
President Nicolás Maduro’s government deployed 3,000 troops to the southeastern state of Bolivar on Monday after people desperate over the government’s elimination of much of the country’s currency looted stores and homes over the weekend.
The unrest took an especially heavy toll on Chinese immigrants, who own many of the grocery stores in the capital, Ciudad Bolívar, and nearby towns.
“Everything was left in ruin,” said Juan Carlos Ho, standing next to the China Cham supermarket in the town of Sifontes, which had been left gutted. “They took the stands, the carts, all of the merchandise, which was a lot, and the air conditioners.”
Wow. This is my surprised look. What in the hell did the government think would happen when you unilaterally strip people of their means to survive? Hmm? Sean Penn … call your office.
~McQ
Ah, those niggling little things call “facts”
They’re SOOOO inconvenient. Global warming watch – yeah, not so much warming:
In the Southern Hemisphere, sea-ice levels just smashed through the previous record highs across Antarctica, where there is now more ice than at any point since records began. In the Arctic, where global-warming theorists preferred to keep the public focused due to some decreases in ice levels over recent years, scientists said sea-ice melt in 2014 fell below the long-term mean. Global temperatures, meanwhile, have remained steady for some 18 years and counting, contrary to United Nations models predicting more warming as carbon dioxide levels increased.
For those who still don’t understand, all of the global warming scare has been based on badly flawed computer models in which fudged numbers have been fed. That’s not science. Part of science is observation and then drawing conclusions from the observations. Take a look at the paragraph above and draw your own conclusions. If you’re a global warming skeptic, you’re on the side of science. If not, you’re on the side of backing a UN scam designed to get your money through a “carbon-offset” program naturally run by … the UN.
If you want a comedy of mixed signals, you simply need to watch what is coming out of DC concerning the “Russian hacking” nonsense. If you believe her, AG Lynch says even if they did hack they didn’t hack the voting system itself:
Attorney General Loretta Lynch says there is no evidence of “technical interference” by Russia — or any other foreign entity — in America’s presidential election.
Or at least that’s how I interpret the use of “technical interference”. No telling what she really means by it. So whatever else is going on other there is based in conjecture and opinion – the opinion of a bunch of crybaby losers. Not one scintilla of evidence hs yet to be offered backing the claims being made. And that’s all they are … claims.
It’s all about who is the “most oppressed” in a country in which few if any groups know what real oppression is or feels like:
This year’s University of California Students of Color Conference unproductively devolved into something of an “oppression Olympics” between different minority groups, prompting arguments between participants and ultimately leading to some canceled sessions at the annual event.
Our church just had a medical mission group return from Cambodia. They’ll never again look at poverty the same way they have before. They’ve seen real poverty now. That’s what these special snowflakes need to do – travel to an oppressed country. Live there. See how you like it. Then come back and tell us how “oppressed” you are as a college student at an elite university.
Speaking of facts, here are a few to literally take to the bank. And it is due to that horrific evil identified by the left – fracking:
Hydraulic fracturing generated $3.5 trillion in new wealth between 2012 and 2014 in spite of falling oil prices, according to a new study, but today’s rising prices could be even better for the U.S. economy.
From 2012 to 2014, the shale oil industry generated 4.6 million new jobs due to an energy boom and the resulting low gas prices, according to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Expensive energy could be a huge net positive for the U.S. fracking economy because rising oil prices mean more drilling.
And for those who think this fracking thing is new, we’ve been fracking wells since 1948. So it isn’t new and if all the horrific stuff they claim about it now were true, you’d think we’d have discovered that in the million or so wells that were fracked well before the current batch. But those sorts of facts remain hidden when the left trots out their talking points about the evils of fracking.
One of the major reasons the economy is showing any life has much to do with the results of … fracking. Fact.
~McQ
The current Leftist political theater will likely yield nothing but more whining
In case you missed it, this “the Russians did it” isn’t new. Back in July, Salon, of all publications, was excoriating the Clinton campaign on the issue:
Now wait a minute, all you upper-case “D” Democrats. A flood light suddenly shines on your party apparatus, revealing its grossly corrupt machinations to fix the primary process and sink the Sanders campaign, and within a day you are on about the evil Russians having hacked into your computers to sabotage our elections — on behalf of Donald Trump, no less?
Is this a joke? Are you kidding? Is nothing beneath your dignity? Is this how lowly you rate the intelligence of American voters? My answers to these, in order: yes, but the kind one cannot laugh at; no, we’re not kidding; no, we will do anything, and yes, we have no regard whatsoever for Americans so long as we can connive them out of their votes every four years.
Clowns. Subversives. Do you know who you remind me of? I will tell you: Nixon, in his famously red-baiting campaign — a disgusting episode — against the right-thinking Helen Gahagan Douglas during his first run for the Senate, in 1950. Your political tricks are as transparent and anti-democratic as his, it is perfectly fair to say.
And now it has taken on a life of its own because? Because a “sure bet” ran a completely fouled up campaign, assumed support in states that were shaky (and thus made no effort to shore up support – like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where local Democrats warnings were ignored) and simply succumb to their own smugness. Yeah, now “the Russians did it.” Read the whole article.
Even HuffPo is tired of this political theater with an article entitled “Hillary Clinton Lost. Get Over It And Stop Blaming Russia, WikiLeaks And ‘Fake’ News“. Pretty strong and too the point, wouldn’t you say. To counterbalance that sort of “reasonable” lefty, there’s Keith Olberman who is, to be kind, stark, raving mad.
I’ve found a professor I like. He’s not afraid, to be controversial in an atmosphere that doesn’t tolerate it well if you have a divergent opinion. Here’s the tagline on his emails:
Notice: It’s OK to print this email free of any “eco-guilt.” Paper is a biodegradable, renewable, sustainable product made from trees. Growing and harvesting trees provides jobs for millions of Americans. Working forests are good for the environment and provide clean air and water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. Thanks to improved forest management, we have more trees in America today than we had 100 years ago.
Facts. He has to know that on college campuses facts and logic always take a backseat to emotions and myths. But hey, I applaud his courage.
A “how to violently” keep Trump from taking power by a guy who claims he has no desire to do so but then outlines one of the most absurd and militarily stupid plans to do so one might ever imagine. But hey, he’s never served in the military so how would he know. Too much X-Box.
I’d assemble armed resistance brigades in and around states that voted for Trump. I’d make sure the participants are well-trained in urban combat. I’d do drills. I’d ensure that secure communications have been established to enable inter-state coordination. I’d impart to participants that they should be prepared to face severe state punishment for their rebellious acts— perhaps even death.
So, let’s see, we have what, a little over a month until Trump is inagurated? More than enough time to recruit “brigades” in all of the states that voted for Trump (yeah, that would be the motherlode of volunteers) and make sure they’re “well-trained in urban combat”. And among gun hating lefties at that.
In a little over 30 days this would be done by … magic! Kinda like the underwear gnomes. Whatta maroon.
Oh, can anyone guess who has big ties to the PR firm pushing the “faithless electors” movement? Give you three and the first two don’t count.
And then here are some college professors I don’t like. At all. You see, they deem freedom of speech and freedom of expression to be harmful if it isn’t in accord with their beliefs:
It is not enough [to] encourage “open-mindedness” and “sensitivity” especially when these passive efforts and rhetoric invariably lead to a culture that accepts and tolerates bigotry and harassment; a campus culture that hides behind “tolerance” and discourses of free speech undeviatingly creates a campus that is especially disempowering to marginalized students.
We must create a campus that asserts that we are anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-xenophobia, antihomophobic, anti-Islamophobic, anti-ableism, and anti-bigotry. We must work to create mechanisms and structures that combat hate, which empower all constituencies to be active in our collective efforts to rid the campus of bigotry and systemic inequality.
And a campus culture that doesn’t tolerate these things “undeviatingly creates” a class of marginalized and disempowered students who don’t share the same beliefs as the lefty “in crowd.” But honestly, irony has never been the left’s strong suit, so don’t expect them to suddenly realize it here.
~McQ
The truth is not important when it doesn’t support the political narrative
If you’ve been keeping up with the alleged Russian hacking scandal, you’ve got to be unimpressed by the “evidence”. Let’s see, some anonymous CIA source with no proof offered says it was Russia. Motive? Well, let’s see, the Democrats just lost an election because … hacking. Really? That’s why? Keep believing that. Meanwhile, let’s look at what is out there in terms of real evidence.
What should really distress Americans is that the losers are trying to overturn the election results based on little more than anonymous leaks and innuendo. Whatever Russia’s hacking motives, there is no evidence that the emails it turned up were decisive to the election result. Mr. Podesta is citing a CIA judgment that Americans have never seen and whose findings are vaguely public only because one or more unidentified officials chose to relate them to a few reporters last week.
Much of the press is reporting these as the gospel truth, though it isn’t clear that the CIA’s judgment is even shared across the intelligence community. The FBI doesn’t share the CIA’s confidence about Russia’s hacking motive, and our sources say the evidence is thin for the CIA’s conclusion.
Much of the press sees this as fitting the narrative they’re going to push for the next 4 years – the illegitimacy of the Trump presidency. So they’re willing to treat it as gospel even if, in the future, it is proven to be false. This is simply the start of a different version of “selected, not elected”. A blatant and obvious effort to undermine the President-elect even before he takes office.
Other than John Podesta trying a soft coup with his demand that the electors be given an intel brief (focusing on the alleged Russian hacking) before they vote next week for the electoral college (hey, John, have they been vetted and do they have security clearances?), there’s not much “there” there. What is there – Podesta – has a pretty obvious agenda and narrative.
As the WSJ points out, the FBI doesn’t share the supposed CIA judgement that the hacking motive was to disrupt the elections or turn them to the favor of Trump. In fact:
The nation’s top intelligence office is not on the same page as the CIA regarding its assessment that Russia interfered in the U.S. elections in a bid to help Donald Trump, a U.S. government source confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the U.S. intelligence community, has not fully embraced the CIA finding by any stretch:
Fox News is told that several U.S. election-related hacking incidents are being wrongly lumped together, when they should be treated as separate events — these cover breaches at the Democratic National Committee and another campaign arm; in a top Hillary Clinton campaign official’s email account; and at state election boards.
Reuters reports that while the ODNI does not dispute the CIA’s general analysis on Russia hacking, the office is not convinced of the evidence that Moscow sought specifically to help Trump defeat Democratic opponent Clinton.
So here we have, conveniently, only an anonymous CIA ‘source’ which supposedly has the goods on Russia and it’s hacking intent and two other agencies, rarely mentioned, who are pretty sure that the CIA’s assessment isn’t correct and may actually be wrong.
But hey, does that stop the MSM?
Again the WSJ:
This political farce is compounded by a press corps that spent Monday demanding that GOP leaders in Congress say if they too support investigations into the Russian hacking. Never mind that the Senate and House intelligence committees, both led by Republicans, have been looking into the election-related hacking for months, often with far too little cooperation from the Obama Administration.
Then the press reports as major news the non-story that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has endorsed an intelligence probe that has long been underway. Talk about fake news.
It may be fake news, but it supports the building narrative. It also supports the idea that one should never, ever take anything printed or televised as news by the MSM at face value until there is real evidence of wrong-doing or whatever it is they’re claiming. They’re simply not to be trusted with the truth.
What’s this really all about? Sour grapes. The refusal of the Democrats and the left to accept the election results (something they lectured Republicans and the right about prior to the “unthinkable” happening, i.e. “revenge of the deplorables.”
Conclusion?
The entire spectacle looks more like a Democratic attempt to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election than it does serious concern about cyber-spying. Democrats must figure they can’t lose. They know the Electoral College isn’t likely to throw the election to Hillary Clinton, but the headlines can help undermine public support for Mr. Trump’s Presidency even before he takes office. And these folks blame Donald Trump for violating democratic “norms.”
Seems much more plausible given the behavior of “progressives” since November 8th, doesn’t it?
UPDATE: Oh, and there’s this:
U.S. officials said that both parties were repeatedly targeted as part of a months-long cyber-operation linked to Moscow, but that Democratic institutions and operatives came under a more sustained and determined online assault.
U.S. officials said the Republican National Committee’s computer systems were also probed and possibly penetrated by hackers tied to Russian intelligence services, but that it remains unclear how much material — if any — was taken from the RNC.
The lack of a corresponding Republican trove has contributed to the CIA assessment, reported by The Washington Post, that Russia was seeking to elect Trump and not merely to disrupt last month’s presidential election.
Or it could be that the RNC’s systems were more secure than those of the Democrats. Or it could be that we’re mixing up Wikileaks with Russian hackers and the bulk of the Wikileak’s revelations came from a disgruntled Democratic operative as Julian Assange claims. Or both.
~McQ
Media: Cheerleading out, “hard questions” in
So the Democrats are looking at their nomination and primary system as well as superdelegates and they think … well, you tell me:
New York Assemblyman Michael Blake, also at the forum and running for DNC vice chair, said he agreed with Harrison and Ellison but cautioned about a system that did not include superdelegates at all. He said that if Republicans had had superdelegates, President-elect Donald Trump probably wouldn’t have won the Republican primary.
“There needs to be changes, no doubt about it. Think about on the other side, that if there would have been a superdelegate process, probably less a likelihood of Trump getting the nomination,” Blake said. “Sometimes we just have to figure out how to make the system better and what I want to make sure is regardless of what’s happening here, we’ll take the recommendations of the unity commission. Well let’s make sure, let’s figure out how to improve the process first rather than dramatically change it. Because what we don’t want to do as Democrats is dramatically change things and hurt ourselves in the long run.”
Or said another way, the reason that Hillary was our selection is because we did have a rigged system with superdelegates. The reason we were able to sideline Bernie Sanders and subvert democracy was … superdelegates. Screw the people’s will, we need a way to make sure the party’s “will” is carried out.
Don’t look for changes anytime soon in the Democratic fiasco of superdelegates.
Lessons learned by them? Zip, nada, nothing. Hopefully, it’s a trend.
Meanwhile the drumbeat of “fake news” continues unabated in the “mainstream media”. For instance this WaPo “news” piece in the “Energy and Environment” section by Juliet Eilperin attacking Trumps position that “nobody really knows” if climate change is real. Her comeback?
There is a broad scientific consensus that human activity — including the burning of fossil fuels for transportation, heating and industrial manufacturing — is driving recent climate change.
No ma’am, there is not. By the way, “consensus” means nothing in science. Proof does. And in a recent peer reviewed survey the “consensus” of scientists were skeptical of the claims of man-made global warming and, in fact, a strong majority of them were of the opinion that it is nature driving the change.
But hey, that doesn’t fit the narrative does it? One assumes that “Energy and Environment” is your beat, Ms. Eilperin, yet somehow you are apparently unaware of this survey. Or are you?
And, of course, the NYT manages to be both hypocritical and irony impaired in the same article as it lectures the TV media on the necessity of ensuring “in the Trump era”, news must be “uncompromising”. Or, as the article states, “ask hard questions and demand answers”.
Television news is going to have to do its part should Mr. Trump and his administration try to make policy based on false assertions, the same way he used them on the campaign trail. (And, yes, television will have to be just as vigilant should Mr. Trump’s opponents use falsehoods to fight him, too.)
The same holds for all of the news media, of course. But live television can be a safe harbor for falsehood and deflection.
And print media, which was a lead cheerleader for so many Obama falsehoods (“if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”) and provided deflection on issues of importance for 8 years, suddenly has found a new direction since the dawning of the “Trump era”? “Where was this new standard for the past 8 years” is a hard question … I demand an answer New York Times!
Keith Ellison, up for the DNC Chairman’s position, has been busily trying to hide his extremist roots and wave away or pretend his past didn’t happen. He has now had his bluff called by an unlikely source: The Nation Of Islam.
And on Wednesday, an editorial published in the Nation of Islam’s house organ, The Final Call quotes at length from articles Ellison wrote in the 1990s in which he praised Farrakhan as “a sincere, tireless and uncompromising advocate of the Black community and other oppressed peoples in America and around the world” and wrote that Farrakhan “is not an anti-Semite.”
Illustrated with a photo of what the Final Call says is Ellison hawking copies of the Nation’s paper while at the University of Minnesota, the editorial by editor Richard B. Muhammad noted that Ellison went by the last name Ellison-Muhammad at the time and had helped organize a Minnesota delegation to Farrakhan’s Million Man March.
“If Mr. Ellison once believed those things about the Minister and changed his mind, that’s his business,” Muhammad wrote. “We will leave Allah (God) to judge and handle the hypocrites.”
You have to chuckle about people like Ellison trying to deny his past when he was quite interested and successful is seeking out media attention for himself when he was doing those things.
Democrats continue do the post-mortem on the presidential election. They’ve discovered a couple of things on the way. One, it wasn’t just Hillary Clinton. Two – it’s the economy, stupid!
The party, these senators said, had grown overly fixated on cultural issues with limited appeal to the heartland. They criticized Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan, “Stronger Together,” as flat and opaque, according to multiple people present at the dinner, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Most of all, they lamented, Democrats had simply failed to offer a clarion message about the economy with appeal to all 50 states.
Well, that and they believed their own “fake news” that the economy was doing well, unemployment was under 5%, and everyone in the heartland really didn’t matter as much as their pushing identity politics and catering to more and smaller minorities. I’m going to be interested in watching how they push for economic reform when most of the blue states which have been under Democratic control for any length of time are not in great economic shape.
~McQ
Observations: The QandO Podcast for 09 Dec 16
The Trump cabinet shapes up, consisting mainly of cabinet officers that dislike the departments they’ll be heading. Except for Jim Mattis, of course. CHY-nah seems to be in the Trump Administration’s crosshairs. Nazis are no longer allowed to sell pistachios. Vladimir Putin keeps playing hacking games with the elections in Western democracies. Also, Russians are racist and misogynist, but at least we get hot, mail-order brides out of it. We go into holiday hiatus, but will be back with the podcast in January. Also, Dale celebrate 8 days of being smoke-free.
This week’s podcast is up on the Podcast page.
The sky ISN’T falling? What the hell, Chicken Little?!
I know this is going to come as a shock … shock, I tell you … to many old time readers of Q and O, but the apparent feelings about global warming among most scientists is … wait for it … skepticism. Oh, my:
It is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.
Gasp. And it is a peer reviewed no less:
Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.
Well, to one group, it’s science. To another it’s a religion. I’ll go with the scientists.
Meanwhile in Topsy-Turvy world, it’s now the attempted murderer who is the “victim” because … race:
An Ohio State University (OSU) student who attempted to go on a stabbing spree last month before being gunned down by a nearby officer has been added to a protest list of non-whites “wrongly” shot and killed by a police.
The OSU Coalition for Black Liberation is a campus protest group on OSU’s main campus in Columbus. The group held a rally Wednesday to protest the death of young black men at the hands of police, and read off a list of non-white men who had been killed by police in the last two months. Among the names read off was that of Abdul Razak Ali Artan.
Hey, had it been a white guy, why he’d be excoriated for being a racist murderer and this would be just another example of the violence of the “white devil” (exercising his privilege no doubt). When racist ideology is involved, it is the skin color that matters, not the deed, so this is just “another young black man” killed at the hands of an obviously racist white police officer. Or that’s how they’d prefer he served their purpose.
We’re not the only country with freedom of speech issues. Consider the Netherlands:
A Dutch court has convicted populist anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders of hate speech charges at the end of a trial he branded a politically motivated “charade” that endangered freedom of speech.
Presiding Judge Hendrik Steenhuis said the court would not impose a sentence on Wilders, saying that the conviction was punishment enough for a democratically elected politician.
The charges stem from a 2014 incident in which Wilders led supporters to chant that they wanted “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!” Moroccans in the Netherlands.
If I had to guess, the Judge was slightly ashamed of having to preside on such a matter, thus the “no sentence” decision. Freedom is in jeopardy everywhere. Like what he says or not, freedom of speech isn’t about saying stuff you agree with, but the ability to say things others don’t agree with. “Hate speech” is another of those devices government and other groups attempts to impose to shut down speech it doesn’t agree with. So they criminalize speech and they get to decide what is or isn’t “hate speech”. Convenient, no?
Some bottom line stuff in regard to “legacy” and a “failed presidency”. This pretty much says it all in three sentences:
If Obama’s policies had improved the economy, people would feel confident about their ability to find new and better jobs, buy houses, pay for their children’s educations, afford retirement, and live with a financial cushion. If the Affordable Care Act had lived up to its name, people would feel more reassured about their ability to get the medical help they need at a price they can afford. If Obama’s counterterrorism policies worked, Americans wouldn’t have been left shuddering at attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando and Boston and Chelsea.
Glenn Reynolds takes a much deeper look and concludes:
Up to now, comparisons with Carter were a tool of Obama’s critics. From now on, they’re likely to be a tool of his defenders. Because as bad as Carter was, Obama is shaping up to be worse. Much worse.
Indeed.
~McQ
“Remember the Maine!”
Before we let it slip notice, today is Pearl Harbor day. Someone recently suggested we need to “get over” Pearl Harbor. Really? I’ll get over it about as soon as I get over 9/11. Never forget.
Don’t know if you’ve been watching this North Dakota pipeline nonsense, but this isn’t about “native rights” (it’s on private and federal land) or “water protection” for the Standing Rock tribe (a new water intake goes into service 70 miles downriver this month). It’s about lawlessness of a type we’ve seen quite often during this presidency:
So what is the pipeline dispute really about? Political expediency in a White House that does not see itself as being bound by the rule of law. The Obama administration has decided to build a political legacy rather than lead the country. It is facilitating an illegal occupation that has grown wildly out of control. That the economy depends on a consistent and predictable permitting regime seems never to have crossed the president’s mind.
Hopefully we’ll see the rule of law reestablished relatively soon and fewer of these tantrums. But then, we’re going into to a Donald Trump administration so we all know better than that. They’re going to protest and pitch fits about what he had for breakfast for 4 years.
Speaking of “fake news” the usual suspects have been spreading it for decades according to a new economic analysis recently published:
“Conventional wisdom — as reported in many major newspapers and media — tells us the U.S. economy is ‘recovering.’ Well-meaning economists, academics and government officials use the term ‘recovery’ when discussing the economy, implying that growth is getting stronger. The study finds there is no recovery. Since 2007, U.S. GDP per capita growth has been 1,” according to Gallup Chairman Jim Clifton.
“As this report makes clear,” added Council President Deborah Wince-Smith, “productivity growth is in a serious multi-decade-long slump that is dangerously close to stalling completely.”
If the media wants to regain its credibility it needs to begin reporting the hard facts of what Americans are really facing economically instead of collaborating with government to continue to spread what I consider to be falsehoods. Start reporting the facts. Start doing the hard work of journalism. Quit being a publishing tool for government propaganda. Then, maybe, people will again invest some faith in what you have to say.
Meanwhile in the land of the fragile snowflakes, college courses for which someone is paying good money. Such as “Racial Capitalism” at Williams College. Course description:
“This class will interrogate the ways in which capitalist economies have ‘always and everywhere’ relied upon forms of racist domination and exclusion.”
Because, you know, capitalism couldn’t be race neutral, could it? Other courses of note – “Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology” at Swarthmore which, I’m sure, will be extraordinarily useful in the post-college world. The University of South Carolina’s “Ecofeminism”, because, well, feminism needs to be relevant everywhere. Middlebury’s wonderfully tolerant class entitled “White People” where, one assumes you will study white people and learn how to shame them. And finally, at the home of the Florida Gators – “Black Hair Politics”. No. Really. That’s the course mom and dad are paying big bucks for Jr. to study. I imagine somewhere in there is a day or two on “cultural appropriation”.
The world gone mad.
~McQ
The joys of swamp draining
In case you’ve wondered why “drain the swamp” resonated with Trump crowds, this paragraph describes it succinctly and well:
For most Americans, in other words, a glitzy Washington, D.C., is not a healthy Washington, D.C. A gleaming, prosperous industry town usually makes for a cheerful sight, but not when that “industry” revolves around taking other people’s money — truly mind-boggling amounts of money! — and transforming it into subsidized incompetence, black-hole accounting, and a leading export of sanctimony.
There are those who claim you can’t look at a government budget the same way you do a business or household budget. Well, yes, yes you can. Rule number one – you don’t spend more than you have. Period. Full stop. Otherwise you finally end up with unrecoverable debt and like it or not, someone will have to pay for that. Our enlightened leadership has tried to kick that payback can as far down the road as they can, well, far enough that it won’t effect them or their reelection chances in they lifetime. Their, yours and my grandkids? Aw, screw em.
The point, of course, is scads and scads of our money goes into this swamp called DC. And not much of any use comes out – certainly not when compared to the money that goes in. Oh sure, we get plenty of intrusion, lots of poorly thought out regulation and a smug group of elected officials and hangers on who are sure they know what is best for the rest of us. A swamp. Drain it.
I’m definitely with Billy now that Nancy Pelosi has been reelected the minority leader in the House. She is indeed the gift that keeps on giving. Her latest was to say she didn’t think the people of the US wanted a new direction in politics. Apparently she was asleep when all the voting for president took place and missed the resounding message the American people sent via the election of Donald Trump. No, Nancy … don’t listen to the naysayers on your side. Keep doing what you’ve been doing. Please.
A very interesting look at China’s economy and why it isn’t at all as robust as China would like you to believe. Hint: it has to do with where the wealth is concentrated and it isn’t in the hands of the people (which is, by the way, the most efficient means of fueling an economy and building real wealth).
Meanwhile, in another socialist paradise, we have the latest indicator of how well it is going there. The scene is on the Columbian border:
Women from crisis-hit Venezuela are crossing the border in droves and selling their hair in a Colombian border town in order to afford scarce basic necessities such as food, diapers or medicines.
The trend, which has taken off in recent weeks, is another sign of the oil-rich country’s deepening crisis amid shortages and spiraling inflation that have millions skipping meals and forgoing costly medical treatment.
This is both pitiful and pathetic and driven by that one word that no one wants to seem to pin to the problem: socialism. Unfortunately, it’s a reoccurring disease in Central and South America.
The usual end for a poorly thought out (and poorly researched, apparently) decision. All with your money. Because … global warming:
Three windmill-like turbines loom motionless over the city of Port Angeles’ new Waterfront Park.
The $107,516 spires stand immobile more than two months after they were erected and more than a year after the city council approved them.
Once they are working to generate electricity, they will produce so little power — $1.50 worth of electricity a month in savings — that at least one council member is regretting her decision to purchase them.
Ah, isn’t that nice? Of course, there’ll be few consequences and precious little accountability when all is said and done.
And finally, banning books … because “racism”. No, really. And I’m not talking about 1938 Germany.
Context? History? Yeah, what an outdated concepts.
To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have been suspended from the curriculum in some Virginia schools, after a parent complained about the use of racial slurs.
Note the term “a parent”. That’s right, apparently one, single parent found the books offensive without appreciating the history of the era or the huge point each of the works makes about race. Nope, we must go back in time and expunge offensive words because apparently we have a new right that trumps all – the right to not be offended. Oh, and we get to use that right to deny everyone else the pleasure of these books.
And you wonder where these delicate snowflake SJWs come from …
~McQ
Observations: The QandO Podcast for 02 Dec 16
Dale announces that he has been smoke-free for 24 hours, but declines to say whether he can actually quit smoking. We’ll see. Trump picks some cabinet members, then sticks his finger in China’s eye. Good thing Jim Mattis is gonna be SecDef. SJWs are ridiculous. A fantastically interesting conversation about the Gold Standard occurs. We bemoan the regulatory state. Then we notice the Democrats seem to have learned no lessons from the recent election; Nancy Pelosi retains her leadership of House Democrats, who apparently think 60 seats lost under her leadership isn’t enough. The ACA is collapsing.
This week’s podcast is up on the Podcast page.