Trump strikes back on L.L. Bean

This is a warning to Leftist haters.  Trump has got a bigger megaphone so can cancel out or even reverse Leftist boycotts.  Everything Trump tweets is big news in all the papers the next day and no Leftist group can compete with that.  Bean will probably now sell more stuff than ever before -- even to people who have simply had their curiosity aroused and want to find out what all the fuss is about

Donald Trump on Thursday tweeted his support of Maine catalog retailer L.L. Bean after an activist group opposed to the U.S. president-elect called for a boycott of the company.

The boycott call began online last week after reports that a member of the Bean family that owns the company, best known for its rubber-bottomed hunting boots, had donated money to Trump's candidacy.

"Thank you to Linda Bean of L.L. Bean for your great support and courage," Trump said in a tweet early on Thursday. "People will support you even more now. Buy L.L. Bean."

The "Grab Your Wallet" website added L.L. Bean, based in Freeport, Maine, to a lengthy list of retailers it is urging Trump opponents to boycott because of their ties Trump, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20.

L.L. Bean scrambled to distance itself from Linda Bean's donations, noting that she was one of more than 50 members of the founding family associated with the 105-year-old company, which described itself as politically neutral.

SOURCE

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Ted Cruz on the lawless Obama administration



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The Amusement Elite and Their Lesson for You

Yaacov Ben Moshe nails it

Meryl Streep, Charlie Sheen, Rosie O’Donnell and a legion of their fellow Hollywood illusionists, Popinjays and freaks have taken their stand against Donald Trump. Standing on their credentials as Artists, they want to tell us what is good for us politically. As in all artistic endeavors they are approaching a truth. The irony is, the truth they are exposing is their own moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

How fitting, really! This self-important clown troupe of make-believe professionals, practitioners of exaggeration and village idiot jesters who pretend to be someone other than themselves for a living take themselves seriously, and have arrayed themselves alongside the purveyors of fake news in the mass media as a pathetic Maginot Line against the guy who couldn't pretend to be someone else if he wanted to (and he assuredly does not!) who only wants to deal head-on with the real problems we face without the shackles of political correctness.

Here is the core lesson I take from this: These moonbeams, as do all liberals, start from a false premise at the most basic level. The left is predicated on the assumption that human nature is basically good and that “people” can be “changed”. All leftist systems posit (at least implicitly) that the evil that people do and the flaws in human character are due to “outside" influences such as, bad economic systems or established religions or faulty laws and that all that is needed is a progressive approach and a new system and the innate good can be realized or the human material will become entrained and the world will be healed - or at least much improved. This has proven out in every case history. Nazism (National Socialism!), Chinese Communism, Russian Communism and Chavez in Venezuela were all collectivist systems that not only claimed to aim at a more egalitarian society but also promised some form of “new man” who would be of a higher and more selfless character.

They particularly resent The Constitution of the United States because, explicit in its conception and structure, is the assumption that human beings are not necessarily good or bad but are creatures with both potentialities. With that as a founding principal, the constitution has exquisitely balanced safeguards that enable the enterprise and ambition of all while, at the same time, keeping balance, opportunity and order through competing branches with equal but countervailing powers. Its less pure and noble sounding that the leftist view, but it is reality.

Just as they can imagine that human nature is exclusively good, they “reason” that, left to their own devices, people will be happy and content in a “natural” state. They ascribe all that is painful and even evil in life to flaws in “society”, “organized religion”, “morality”, “the culture” or any other target that exerts control over human behavior. This blameless image of the individual seems soothing and comfortable but the result is, anything but comfort.

It leads to the idea that “freeing” the sweet angel of the human spirit from those controlling institutions and forces is the way to achieve peace, health, enlightenment and happiness. Wishing only to make life better and more equal for all, they set about dismantling (or, at least, arbitrarily refashioning) all the structures and values that have evolved to maintain health, peace and equilibrium- effectively freeing the dark jinn of evil which also resides in the human heart.

That is why they despise you, working people in America. That is why they feel it their duty to “educate” and “uplift” you. You know that you need to work at being good. You know that your church or synagogue has played a role in making you honorable and open. You thank god and the founders of America for the liberty and opportunity to work, live and thrive here. You are aware that the responsibility for protecting your self can never be fully entrusted to anyone else (when seconds count, the police are only minutes away!). You know that life is not balloon parties, unicorn festivals and trophies for showing up- and you know a bullshit fantasy when you see it.

But that is not “liberal” to them; they want to tear away the proven culture and safeguards and replace them with a socialism that supplants equality of opportunity with equality of outcome- otherwise known as universal misery. In the name of equality, and protecting the planet they want to bring all economic development to a standstill, redistributing wealth so that industrious and clever people earn no more than the most indolent and incapable. They call it Progress but it is really a corrupt ideology called Progressivism.

The zeal of “Progressives” springs from their “feeling” they know what is correct and needed. So sure are they that they are willing to force people to agree to their view of things- whether they like it or not. When reality becomes impossible to ignore and their “progress” leads to conflict, chaos and inequality (as it inevitably  does in the real world), it is never blamed on Progressivism, it is blamed on whatever system was formerly of is still in place. Revolution, suppression and barbarity often ensue.

Any idea that contradicts the romantic egalitarian principles is punishable. In Nazi Germany they were known as crimes against The Reich in Soviet Russia, Red China and Castro’s Cuba they were called counter-revolutionary. If you were imprisoned or exiled for those things, you were getting off lucky! And now, led by the brilliant pretenders and charlatans of the amusement and infotainment aristocracy, we are being urged to euthanize the constitutional system of government that created the finest, richest and most just nation in the history of the human race.

And for what- collectivist government led by people who are so sure that they are correct in everything that lawlessness, fiat and intentional ignorance are acceptable tools for wielding political power?

So, lets have a big round of applause for the puffy faced, pretentious aristocrats who have made it so plain what we really should fear. They lay bare the arrogance and febrile imagination of Progressivism and what it is trying to do to our culture and constitutional politics. When one side proclaims itself inviolably correct and there are no safeguards for those who disagree, you have totalitarianism.

Only imagine, if you dare, the murderous, totalitarian and nihilistic rage that would prevail if the amusement elite had their way. Ruthless totalitarianism always ends up requiring re-education camps, the punishment of retrograde (counter-revolutionary) ideas and assassination and those dangers lurk just behind their smug, superior smiles.  They are, after all, so convinced of their righteousness.

So, thanks, Meryl et al for the reminder of who you are and, more important, who Donald (Make America Great Again)  Trump is. To repurpose the defunct Hillary slogan, I’m with Him!

SOURCE

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Nicole Kidman: Americans need to support Trump

I take zero notice of celebrities usually but this is exceptional

US-based Australian actor Nicole Kidman has called for Americans to throw their support behind President-elect Donald Trump.

In a red carpet interview at the UK premiere of her latest film Lion, Kidman told TV reporter Victoria Derbyshire that “[Trump is] now elected and we, as a country, need to support whoever is the president.”

“That is what the country is based on. And however that happened, it happened, and let’s go.”

While she grew up in Australia, the 49-year-old actor was born in Hawaii and now resides in Nashville with husband Keith Urban and their two children. She holds dual US / Australian citizenship

SOURCE

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Russian Hacking and Glass Houses

Many top U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed a secret intelligence operation for the purpose of discrediting Hillary Clinton, thereby helping Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election.

While Democrats and some Republicans are blasting Russia, they should recall dubious actions by the United States. Presidents from both parties have a long history of lying and attempting to dictate who should rule other nations.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website reminds: “…on November 1, 1963, the South Vietnamese government was overthrown. The coup had the tacit approval of the Kennedy administration. President Diem was assassinated, after refusing an American offer of safety if he agreed to resign.”

President Obama undermined the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, which led to the election of President Mohamed Morsi, a leader in the radical Muslim Brotherhood. He was replaced by the current government, installed by Egyptians displeased with the radicals, despite opposition from the Obama administration.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton advocated for the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, which created a vacuum filled by terrorists who murdered the U.S. ambassador and two other Americans in Benghazi.

The flipside of wrong-headed action is wrong-headed inaction. In Iran, during the 2009 peaceful protests by those who claimed that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had stolen the presidential election from Mir Hussein Moussavi, the top challenger, the Obama administration offered condemnation, but little else, when action might have had a positive influence. Peaceful protestors were shot in the streets, arrested, tortured and imprisoned without trial (not that any trial in Iran would have been fair) and the Ayatollahs tightened their grip. Iran is now on a course that will likely end with the development of nuclear weapons.

President Obama also urged Britons to vote against Brexit and remain with the European Union.

Is any of this morally different from what Putin allegedly orchestrated to influence the American election?

“Officials from the United States Central Command altered intelligence reports to portray a more optimistic picture of the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,” writes The New York Times. And as The New York Post reported in September 2015, “An open revolt is underway within the U.S. intelligence establishment, with more than 50 veteran analysts charging their reports on ISIS were systematically changed to reflect the White House line.”

Any Russian involvement in the November election appears to have uncovered information that Democrats were trying to hide and that reporters missed or ignored. What’s worse, the deeds or the way the deeds were discovered?

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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