The Year Reheated

David Thompson

In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.

The year began with searing insights from the world of academia. Specifically, London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, where black student activists denounced objectivity as an “alienating” concept, and issued numerous demands, allegedly to challenge stereotypes of student laziness and inadequacy. It turns out that the way to avoid any appearance of such things is to complain about the “stress and anxiety” of being corrected, or disagreed with, especially by people who are insufficiently brown and deferential.

Elsewhere, the psychological reverberations of Donald Trump’s election victory continued to be felt, as when a charmingly progressive lady sensed a fellow plane passenger’s failure to vote as she did and promptly threatened to vomit on him.

Other pious lefties signalled their moral superiority by planning to sabotage transport infrastructure, stranding and distressing countless random people, and thereby reminding us that “social justice” posturing is often difficult to distinguish from petty malice or outright sociopathy.

Meanwhile, Laurie Penny preferred to advocate “spite” as a guiding progressive principal, as if this were a new and novel development.

February provided further illustrations of this fashionable malice, as when educators at the University of Cincinnati bemoaned the fact that their attempts to inculcate unrealism, dishonesty and pretentious racial guilt were still being met with pockets of resistance. Objecting to slander and brow-beating by bigoted mediocrities is, we learned, merely “white fragility” and therefore, somehow, damning proof of racism.

Racial fixations were also in play at the Writing Centre at the University of Washington, Tacoma, the stated goal of which is to “help writers succeed in a racist society,” a goal to be achieved by denouncing grammar as “an unjust language structure,” and the correction of punctuation as “an oppressive practice.” Because those ungrammatical job applications, the ones enlivened with incomprehensible sentences and lots of inventive spelling, will do just fine.

We also learned of the steep price to be paid for small acts of courtesy – namely, holding open a door for a Guardian contributor with weight issues and a gift for hysterical screaming.

Accessorising was an unexpected topic of discussion in March, when the crushingly put-upon students at Pitzer College, Claremont, California, informed the world that “winged eyeliner and big hoop earrings” are “an everyday act of resistance,” and should therefore be the exclusive ornamentation of the slightly brown and radical.

Elsewhere, at Middlebury College, Dr Charles Murray attempted to give a lecture on, among other things, the dangers of tribalism and social fragmentation, only to be met with tribal hysteria and an actual riot, complete with slanderous chants, hospitalised staff and students wearing ski masks.

In April, the immense, frustrated love machine Caleb Luna wondered why his Grindr profile attracts so little interest. Carefully sidestepping the possibility of weight loss, Mr Luna decided that the rest of us must “interrogate” our “phobias,” which is to say our preferences, and consequently start lusting after “alternative bodies.” Specifically, bodies like Mr Luna’s.

Avoiding the obvious was also a theme in the world of performance art, where Shannon Cochrane and Márcio Carvalho unwittingly entertained us with their deep thoughts, shifting paradigms and heads wrapped in meat.

Another highlight of the month came via Everyday Feminism’s Emily Zak, who wanted us to know that the allure of fresh air is, like everything else, terribly oppressive, due to the “painfully heteronormative” nature of wildland firefighting, and a shortage of adverts featuring gay people kayaking in a suitably gay-affirming manner.

Artistic innovations were at the forefront of May, when performance artist Sarah Hill shook our tiny mental worlds with a “temporal historical rupture” that is “cathartically dialogical,” and achieved by falling over repeatedly while dressed as Wonder Woman.

No less impressive were the attempts to “transform” middle-school children by making maths lessons “intersectional,” thereby furthering the cause of “social justice.” A process that entailed reducing the time available for humdrum things like trigonometry and using it instead to teach children to “subvert power,” while scorning maths itself as a “dehumanising tool.”

June brought us a “guerrilla performance” by “artist, healer and dancer” Shizu Homma, who “interrogates the human condition” with her creative tremendousness.

The month also brought us not one, but two illustrations of what happens when leftwing student psychodrama is allowed to run its course. And not entirely unrelated, we also pondered news that expired pet owners are sometimes eaten by their own dogs, cats and hamsters.

In July, we once again witnessed the educational benefits of “an academic background in gender studies,” and self-declared activist and single mother Jody Allard impressed us with her exemplary feminist parenting, and a determination to humiliate her own teenage sons, publicly and in print, for the sins of being white and male, and therefore, obviously, potential rapists.

Google software developer James Damore rose to notoriety in August by politely questioning the gospel of identity politics, promptly getting fired for it, and triggering a truly boggling display of near-total media dishonesty.

Elsewhere, at the University of Florida, identity politics devotees complained about the “violence” of not being taken seriously, while demanding the construction of two entirely separate buildings to house the university’s black and Latino student groups, because sharing a building, or at least an entrance lobby, would “erase and marginalise their black and brown bodies.”

August also provided several vivid insights into the psychology of “social justice,” as when a mob of severely educated student Mao-lings demanded “empathy” while laughing at accounts of random beatings and then assaulting people themselves, in the name of tolerance.

In the pages of The Atlantic, educator Alice Ristroph watched a total eclipse and somehow saw nothing but racism; while fellow educator Dr A.W. Strouse, whose works include Literary Theories of the Foreskin and deep ruminations on the preputial connotations of aluminium cans, signalled his radicalism by advising students to say “fuck you” to potential employers during job interviews.

Our sexual horizons were broadened in September when we learned of the phenomenon of “ecosexuality” and the orgasmic delights of rock rubbing, tree licking and frottage al fresco.

Meanwhile, academia’s Clown Quarter continued to bewilder. Dr Michael Isaacson, an adjunct professor specialising in “anti-capitalist economic theories” at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, repeatedly tweeted his enthusiasm for the murder of random police officers, and of future officers, including his own students.

And Harvard-educated sociology professor Crystal Fleming championed the looting of trainers while the law-abiding were distracted by an oncoming hurricane.

October brought us more unhinged educators, among them, University of Pennsylvania teaching assistant Stephanie McKellopp, whose areas of expertise include “self-marriage” and “racial blame,” and who signalled her wokeness by announcing her classroom policy of ignoring white male students.

We were also told, by Charles Davis, a professor of education at the University of Southern California, that any hint of consequences for acts of thuggery on campus is “racist” and “unfair,” as it creates “an unsafe and threatening environment” for students who like to indulge in coercive and threatening behaviour.

At the University of California, Irvine, the identity-politics contingent displayed its mental brilliance again in November, and also at Ballou High School, Washington, DC, where, thanks to “social justice,” students who are barely literate and rarely seen in class all somehow graduated and were promptly waved through the gates of a college or university.

And at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, the sadistic, fever-dream world of leftist educators was caught on tape quite shockingly, when teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd found herself being accused of “targeted violence” and of being “threatening,” for remaining politically neutral and politely presenting both sides of an argument.

As the year drew to a close, we witnessed the mental disarray wrought by competitive virtue signalling, wherein racial wokeness veered towards Gorillas in the Mist territory. And we learned that standards of diligence and proficiency are racist and oppressive, according to Purdue University’s Dr Donna Riley, who congratulates herself for her own “alternative ways of thinking,” and who scorns expectations of rigour and competence as “exclusionary,” mere tools of “privilege,” and therefore unfair to women and minorities, for whom rigour and competence are presumably impossible.

So. Quite a year.

SOURCE

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Expensive bureaucracy

The U.S. government pays employees a total of about $1 million per minute, according to a watchdog group’s report on the sprawling federal bureaucracy.

Looking at 78 large agencies, the nonprofit organization OpenTheBooks.com found that the average salary of a federal employee exceeds $100,000 and that roughly 1 in 5 of those on the government payroll has a six-figure salary.

Almost 30,000 rank-and-file government employees make over $190,823, more than any governor of the 50 states.

“Our oversight report shows the size, scope, and power of the administrative state,” Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books’ CEO and founder, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Two million federal bureaucrats have salaries, extraordinary perquisites, and lifetime pension benefits. This compensation package has never been seen in the private sector.”

The median wage for all American workers was $44,148 a year for a 40-hour work week in the final quarter of 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Andrzejewski said the Open the Books report, released Tuesday and including an interactive map of the 2 million federal bureaucrats by ZIP code, is meant to educate taxpayers on where their dollars are going.

So what about those perks?

When federal employees reach the third anniversary of their employment, he said, “they get eight and a half weeks’ paid time off,” including “10 holidays, 13 sick days, and 20 vacation days.” [Correction: The word “plus” has been replaced with “including” to convey his meaning accurately.]

“We estimate those perks alone cost the American taxpayer $22.6 billion a year,” Andrzejewski said.

With the government paying the disclosed workforce $1 million per minute, according to the report, every eight-hour workday costs taxpayers more than $500 million.

A total of 406,960 employees make a six-figure income, amounting to roughly 1 in 5 employees. From 2010 through 2016, the number of federal employees making more than $200,000 increased by 165 percent.

SOURCE

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Trump's tax returns

During a recent press conference, a reporter with MSNBC hollered from the press corps,"Where is President Trump hiding his tax returns?"

Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, astutely responded, "We've found a very secure place and I'm certain they won't be found."

"And just where is that?", said the reporter, sarcastically.

Mrs. Sanders grinned sardonically and said, "They are underneath Obama's college records, his passport application, his immigration status as a student, his funding sources to pay for college, his college records, and his Selective Service registration.

"Next question?"

The above appears to be a myth but it makes a good point nonetheless.  Obama's university records are "sealed" and the original of his birth certificate has never been produced, only printed "copies"

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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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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Donald Trump's Sechel — Yes, Sechel!
   
“It’s the economy, stupid,” as we used to say back in the good old days — the good old days being the 1990s, when the president of the United States could have molested women in the White House during business hours with impunity. In fact, if memory serves, that president, William J. Clinton, saw his popularity soar after accusations of his molestations were made public, or at least after some of them were made public. If all of them were made public, according to wisdom of the time, he might have been elected president for life. Those were the days when then-Senators Edward Kennedy and Christopher Dodd ranged freely on Capitol Hill and, back in New York City, young Anthony Weiner was getting amorous thoughts and restless stirrings in his lower parts about the life led by the likes of Kennedy.

Yet even in those heady times, “it” was “the economy stupid,” a phrase made famous by the poet James Carville. The vibrant economy saved President Bill Clinton, and I assume it will save President Donald Trump from his shocking tweets and other inexcusable acts that are so hurtful to the bien pensants of Washington, DC, and New York. At present, the stock market is setting record after record. That is truly significant to the lives of an increasing number of people who have money in the market or look to the market for direction. According to a CNBC All-America Economic Survey, for the first time in at least 11 years more than half those surveyed thought the prospects for the economy either good or excellent.

Unemployment is down; the Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that 1.9 million jobs have been added to the economy since President Trump’s inauguration. The growth in gross domestic product has been vibrant — over 3 percent in the last two quarters — and now the New York Fed is talking about 4 percent for this last quarter. If Carville’s observation is correct — and in the 1990s it was held to be sacred by tout le monde — Trump and the Republicans do not have much to worry about in the off-year elections of 2018, to say nothing of the presidential election two years later.

Yet there is more. The Islamic State group, or ISIL, as it has been called, was held to be formidable back in President Barack Obama’s day but has been decimated. At one time it was spreading its tentacles throughout Syria and Iraq, and one got the impression from the Obama administration that it was invincible. Doubtless there were people in his national security apparatus who considered giving ISIL a seat at the United Nations, or possibly one on the UN Security Council.

Now the so-called Islamic caliphate is in terminal decline, and that is thanks to President Trump and his national security team. By the way, Trump’s whole Middle Eastern policy is looking better all the time. Upon second glance, his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was greeted with relative calm throughout the region, where things have quieted down from a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, the Arabs have graver concerns today, for instance Iran and missiles launched from Yemen.

Actually, on a whole range of issues, the president is looking not like a billionaire real estate developer, or even a television celebrity, but like a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School. There are his many superb court appointments. There is his successful deregulation program that is encouraging growth. He took the United States out of the Paris climate accord. He is shoring up our borders and attending to our out-of-control immigration laws, and now he has his tax reform. It cuts corporate and individual taxes and repeals the Obamacare individual mandates once thought immutable. The blooming economy will bloom some more, and my guess is that it will not contribute to the national debt as President Obama’s slow growth did.

How has Donald Trump been such a wizard without conferring with Official Washington or any of the usual sages? I have researched the matter. He is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He never attended class at the Kennedy School, and if he visited a Washington think tank, it was The Heritage Foundation. Where has he gotten his ideas, and how did he learn to implement them with all the Washington wisenheimers against him? Well, here is a tip from one of Trump’s earliest supporters: He got his ideas from the American experience. He is a patriot. As for how he implemented them, he did it the same way he amassed a fortune. He used his sechel — the Yiddish word for a combination of intelligence, street smarts and wisdom. Some call it statecraft.

SOURCE

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Democrats Aim to Make Tax Cuts Unpopular

Their Leftmedia propaganda machine is happy to oblige, pushing the BIG Lie on Americans. 

It was a sight conservatives have waited decades to see. This week on the White House lawn, President Donald Trump was flanked by House Republicans in a ceremony marking a historic legislative achievement: the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The act is being heralded in many circles as the most conservative, pro-growth policy to emerge from Congress since President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax reform.

One might think the name of the act alone would clearly resonate with the American people. (Then again, when you have legislative catastrophes named the “Affordable Care Act,” folks can be forgive for some cynicism.) What could be better than keeping more of our hard-earned money and giving businesses the ability to invest in our nation’s economy, hire more workers and raise wages?

Apparently, not everyone is on board. In fact, most people don’t believe it.

How did this happen? How could the House Republican leadership and even the president allow such a momentous occasion to be summarily dismissed by the very people who will benefit?

Republicans have historically lost the public relations battle to Democrats and their mainstream media accessories, and while yesterday’s ceremony is a step in the right direction, one senses that average, hard-working Americans still want a common-sense explanation for how this tax bill will put more money in their pockets. This should have been done in the weeks leading up to the vote, but once again Republicans failed to control the debate.

Investor’s Business Daily reports that the tax plan is “widely unpopular” or “wildly unpopular” or “horribly unpopular,” depending on which news outlet one reads. The polling analysts at FiveThirtyEight say the tax plan is “historically unpopular,” noting that it gets an average of just 33% support in nine surveys taken in December, with 52% saying they oppose it.“ Yes, that’s the same FiveThirtyEight that had Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump late into the evening on election night. Nonetheless, someone is shaping the public’s perception about this bill, and it’s not Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Most of the surveys asked very broad questions about whether Americans support the plan or whether they think they’ll receive any benefits. It’s no wonder that many respondents are suspicious about the legislation. After all, Democrats demonized the act as soon as they got a whiff of it. While Republicans in the House and Senate were squabbling over the details, Democrats had effectively characterized the plan as another scheme to take from the poor and give to the rich. It’s a BIG Lie, but an effective one.

National Review’s Jibran Khan states, "The predictable result is that a false claim — Republicans are raising taxes on all but the very rich, full stop — has spread like wildfire across Twitter, and has been given added momentum by think tanks, verified accounts, and trending hashtags. This effort has certainly paid off. According to a recent New York Times poll, only a third of Americans believe that they will see their taxes go down in 2018. It should come as no surprise, then, that the bill’s extreme unpopularity is in line with historic tax rises, rather than tax cuts: The majority of people think it’s a hike.”

But it’s hard to run from the facts, and even The Washington Post had to admit that “8 in 10 Americans will pay lower taxes next year, according to the nonpartisan [insert hysterical laughter at that characterization] Tax Policy Center’s analysis of the final bill. Only 5 percent of people will pay more next year. Mostly, those are folks who earn six figures and own expensive houses in places with high local taxes, such as New York and California.” Yet the Post led the Leftmedia assault on the bill, and none of those outlets are backing down in their effort to mislead the American people.

Alexandra DeSanctis writes in National Review, “A couple of weeks ago, the NYT editorial board co-opted the Twitter account of its opinion page and spent an entire afternoon issuing tweets, urging readers to call their senators to protest the tax-reform bill. They even went so far as to include the office numbers for each senator, so readers could more easily petition their representatives. It was outright political lobbying, from an editorial board that has routinely denounced Citizens United and decried the supposed involvement of ‘dark money’ in U.S. politics.”

Clearly, Democrats and their media propaganda machine will go to any lengths to stop the Trump/Republican agenda.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that the legislation “will be an anchor to the ankles of every Republican running in 2018.” Really? If Democrats truly believed that the tax plan will backfire on Republicans, then why did they fight so hard to stop it? Sounds more like Democrats are fearful that Americans will forget all of the rhetoric when they see more money in their 2018 paychecks.

Even so, Republicans aren’t helping matters. They need to do more than sit around and wait for the truth to take hold.

The fact that a significant number of Americans think that one of the largest tax cuts in American history is actually a tax hike should put Republicans at all levels on notice that they need to do a better job of communicating their ideas. This is the only way to overcome the coordinated assault on a measure that will fatten nearly everyone’s wallet.

But this is the problem. Democrats have always circled the wagons and come up with catch phrases and slogans to drive their points home. They never shy away from making their case, even when their case is baseless. Many Americans still believe that Democrats are the party of the working class, and Republicans are fat cats. That’s because the Left has been in lockstep on message for decades.

It’s time for Republicans to defend their ideas without apology. For the first time since Reagan, we have a president willing to embrace a bold, conservative agenda — if only members of his own party would join him.

President Trump has never been afraid of winning, but it’s taken Republican leaders in Congress a full year to catch on.

SOURCE

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New Trump EO Targets corruptocrats

President Trump quietly signed an Executive Order on December 21st targeting lobbyists and Clinton Foundation-linked individuals involved in human rights abuses and corruption.

This EO allows for the freezing of any U.S. housed assets belonging to foreign people or entities considered “serious human rights abusers”.

Furthermore, anyone in the United States who aids or participates in said corruption or human rights abuses by foreign parties is subject to frozen assets – along with any U.S. corporation who employs foreigners deemed to have engaged in corruption on behalf of the company, reports Zero Hedge.

The Order could have serious implications for D.C. lobbyists who provide “goods and services” (e.g. lobbying services) to despots, corrupt foreign politicians or foreign organizations engaging in the crimes described in the EO. “Virtually every lobbyist in DC has got to be in a cold sweat over the scope of this EO,” said an attorney consulted in the matter who wishes to remain anonymous.

Many of the individuals listed are friends of the Obamas and Clintons and donors to the Clinton Foundation.

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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No, Melania’s Christmas Selfie Was Not ‘Offensive,’ and She Did Not Deserve the Attacks on her

Being good-looking has its perils -- particularly with envious people



Melania Trump did a lot this Christmas. But perhaps nothing captured people’s attention on social media more than a cheeky tweet she made using a Snapchat filter with golden flying reindeer and wishing everyone a #MerryChristmas.

It got 80,000 likes as of this writing and was retweeted 14,000 times. People seemed to enjoy the fun of it.

But then those on the Left made it their duty to smear Melania as a horrible First Lady for posting the innocent image.

They mocked and bullied her until the cows came home, attempting to use the innocent gesture as proof that Melania was a horrible First Lady and role model for our nation’s youth.

"Disgraceful for a First Lady, Christmas or not. You look like a model on a photo shoot for the front page of Hustler. I'm sure the elderly and poor will appreciate this photo given how you and hubby don't care about them, only your millionaire friends at Mar-a-Largo"

From Ib Times:

“Seriously Melania??? That photo is excessively TACKY!!! Zero class in this,” a critic shared, calling out the First Lady over the Christmas selfie that was shared on the official Flotus twitter and Instagram account.

“Incredibly tacky and an insult to the position of First Lady. #embarrassing #trumpban,” a second user tweeted, as someone else chimed in, “Are you the FLOTUS or a Kardashian? Good Lord.”

More:

A critic sarcastically added, “wow! Extremely First Lady-ish! How I miss Michelle Obama!” Speaking of sarcasm, some social media users didn’t even hesitate to use harsh words to criticise the First Lady’s latest selfie.

“Why do I immediately think that this is a cover of a “Playboy” magazines?” One follower of the Flotus shared in the comments section, to which another responded, “Because it looks exactly like the cover of a Playboy Magazine. Just a guess.”

But the last laugh may be on the critics. A recent Gallup poll put Melania’s favorability rating at 54 percent so it’s not hard to see that she gets a lot of attention.

Melania and her husband, President Donald Trump are celebrating the holiday at Mar-a-Lago.

They went to a Christmas Eve service at The Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea, the church where they had been married in 2005. They were greeted with open arms and received a standing ovation.

SOURCE

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions praised for opening Uranium One probe

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising Attorney General Jeff Sessions for reopening the Uranium One matter:

“Various reports that the Attorney General has ordered a review of the facts surrounding the sale of Uranium One to Russian interests demonstrates that not only will internal determinations about legality of the sale be examined, but potential conflicts of interests of those involved. Also, whether information was deliberately withheld from the Committee on Foreign Investment by the Justice Department. And if Hillary Clinton had any culpability in the process of the sale.

Given that many of the same Department of Justice officials now overseeing major investigations at the department were a major part of the Rosatom subsidiary Tenex (the Russian atomic energy agency) corruption case, it is important to determine what, if any, Russian ties and conflicts they might have had.

“The Uranium One case has achieved notoriety in recent months as an FBI whistleblower has come forward with serious allegations of malfeasance in the handling of the case as persons affiliated with the deal gave approximately $145 million to the Clinton Foundation, while former President Bill Clinton received $500,000 for a speech to a Russian investment firm involved in the sale.

“Attorney General Sessions is right to look into these matters to ensure that the public interest and law were followed throughout the process in light of very credible whistleblower allegations.” 

SOURCE

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The New York Times Left Socialism’s Role Out of Its Report on Venezuela’s Devastation

Kudos to The New York Times—yes, The New York Times—for running an excellent, detailed story on the mass starvation and economic catastrophe taking place in Venezuela.

As the Times notes, Venezuela has the largest known oil reserves in the world, yet is going through a starvation crisis exacerbated and hidden by its own government.

Common items like baby formula are almost unattainable for the average person and the crisis is deepening.

Alas, missing from the Times analysis is nearly any discussion of the reality that Venezuela is a socialist country once praised by America’s liberal elite.

In fact, only a single mention of the ruling socialist party near the end of the piece can be found.

Venezuela was once praised by left-wing pundits—including in the Times’ opinion section—for being a model of glowing success.

In fact, scoffing at claims of Venezuela’s alleged mismanagement under then-President Hugo Chávez, one New York Times contributor wrote in 2012:

Since the Chávez government got control over the national oil industry, poverty has been cut by half, and extreme poverty by 70 percent. College enrollment has more than doubled, millions of people have access to health care for the first time and the number of people eligible for public pensions has quadrupled.

Less than half a decade later, the collapse has come. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who once published an op-ed in The New York Times, has made himself a dictator as the country faces runaway inflation reminiscent of Zimbabwe.

Venezuela’s inflation spiked to 4,115 percent at the end of 2017, according to a CNN Money report, leading more than one economist to conclude that the country’s economy is in a “death spiral.”

So how did Venezuela get here?

The answer is that socialism, as always, ends with running out of other people’s money.

James M. Roberts, the research fellow in economic freedom and growth at The Heritage Foundation, wrote about how dysfunctional policies such as nationalizing industries and redistribution schemes have destroyed a once thriving country.

The private economy has been almost completely wrecked, and is now unable to meet even the most basic demands of the population.

But it isn’t just socialist policies that have led to this catastrophe. Venezuela is one of the most corrupt countries in the world and has very little economic freedom.

Roberts wrote: “Venezuela’s score in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index makes it the most corrupt country in the Western Hemisphere, and helped drag the country to the bottom of The Heritage Foundation’s annual Index of Economic Freedom, too.”

As Heritage’s Latin American policy analyst, Ana Quintana, noted in The Hill, Venezuela’s leaders have managed to secure for themselves absolute power and wealth through repressive government actions and turning their country into a criminal enterprise.

Their leaders are “directly involved in corruption, the drug trade, human rights violations, and support for terrorist groups,” Quintana wrote.

For instance, the current Venezuelan vice president, Tareck El Aissami, was designated by the U.S. Treasury as drug kingpin with connections to Islamist terrorist organizations. He’s been hit with heavy sanctions by the Trump administration, but is a good example of the kinds of problems that pervade Venezuela’s government.

He’s only one of many.

Despite egalitarian socialist rhetoric, Venezuela’s ruling class has managed to both enrich itself and protect that wealth at the expense of the public.

With outright corruption rampant, promises of material care by a benevolent state can seem appealing as an alternative to “capitalism” when capitalism is simply defined as cronies in government working with cronies in big business for their own benefit.

Alas, like in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” the new overlords end up being just like the old ones, or worse.

The rule of law and a free economy have generally combined to form the secret sauce of a flourishing economy.

Lacking both, Venezuela has somehow squandered a gold mine—or oil reserves to be more literal—in its downward descent into bankruptcy, tyranny, and mass starvation. Being oil rich has only masked the deep dysfunction under the surface of the Venezuelan regime.

Perhaps this should be a sobering wake-up call to millennials who in worryingly large numbers say they’d rather live under socialism or communism rather than capitalism.

Socialism’s failures in the last century should be enough to disabuse Americans of any notion that this broken political philosophy, which runs counter to human nature, is in any way the answer to our problems.

But if history fails to be a guide, then the modern demonstration of yet another socialist country immolating itself, starving its people, and destroying any measure of real democracy should be evidence enough.

SOURCE

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Trump slams FBI, Obamacare in post-Christmas tweets

PALM BEACH, Fla. — After a quiet Christmas Day, President Trump was back at work Tuesday — on Twitter.

Trump began his day criticizing the FBI and claiming the now-famous dossier containing allegations about his connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin is a ‘‘pile of garbage.’’ Trump, who is vacationing at his private estate in Mar-a-Lago, appeared to be watching and quoting from the morning cable news show ‘‘Fox and Friends’’ while tweeting.

‘‘WOW, @foxandfrlends ‘Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.’ And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!,’’ Trump tweeted.

The Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee helped fund the dossier, which was first published by BuzzFeed. Officials have said some of the information has been corroborated, but other parts — including the most salacious claims about Trump — remain unverified.

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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Trump coins show that Trump widens the range of the possible



The news about the Trump presentation coins was a good laugh. They are twice as thick as ones by previous Presidents and instead of being nickel-silver are -- OF COURSE -- in gold, presumably gold-plated.  Trump has always liked gold.  It is his trademark color.

And the media went wild about how crass and vulgar it all is.  The man has no taste, no restaint!

And the lack of restraint is the key.  Nothing conventional or accepted restrains him.  He does what he thinks is a good thing, regardless of any convention.  He is extraordinarily independent. He has clearly had a life in which he didn't need to seek approval from others.  He gained all the acceptance he needed just by being himself.

And American society in general and the Presidency in particular had become  heavily tied up in conventional expectations about what you could and could not do.  And, unfortunately, many of those constraints have come from the Left and have been genuinely oppressive.

But Trump has burst the barriers wide open. The Leftist constraints are going at a great rate and other ways of doing things are now possible.  His coins are a graphic symbol of that. Who can doubt, for instance, that future Presidents will tweet?  They will undoubtedly do it more cautiously but they will do it.  It will even be expected now as evidence of frankness and openness.

So expect more and more shrieks from the media as Trump steadily normalizes more and more of what was once forbidden or at least heavily decried -- JR

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Excellent Christmas day news

The US should completely withdraw from this corrupt and biased body

The U.S. will cut its 2018 contribution to the United Nations by $285 million—nearly 25 percent -- an announcement that comes days after more than 120 nations criticized the United States for its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Ambassador Nikki Haley made the announcement Sunday, but specifically blamed the world body for its budgetary excesses without making a specific reference to last week's vote on President Donald Trump's controversial Jerusalem decision.

“The inefficiency and overspending of the United Nations are well known. We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of or remain unchecked,” Haley said in a statement announcing the cut to the U.N.'s overall $5.4-billion budget. “This historic reduction in spending—in addition to many other moves toward a more efficient and accountable U.N.—is a big step in the right direction.”

Haley said there might be further budget cuts in the future. President Trump's proposed 2018 spending budget would end funding for U.N. climate change programs and would cut funding to the United Nations Children’s Fund, also known as UNICEF, by 16 percent.

Trump has long discussed cutting U.S. contributions to the U.N., and Haley hinted that the current administration could be motivated by a lack of support for its efforts around the world, specifically after the Jerusalem vote on Thursday.

"The United States is by far the single largest contributor to the U.N. and its agencies," Haley at the time. "We do this because it represents who we are. It is our American way. But we'll be honest with you. When we make generous contributions to the U.N., we also have a legitimate expectation that our goodwill is recognized and respected." 

SOURCE

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Nikki Haley, the Trump administration's breakout star

by Jeff Jacoby

AMONG THE LOW POINTS of the Obama administration's final weeks was its refusal to veto a blatantly anti-Israel resolution in the UN Security Council.

When Nikki Haley attended her first Security Council session a few weeks later as the new ambassador under President Trump, she promptly reversed course. "I am here to emphasize," she told reporters, "that the United States is determined to stand up to the UN's anti-Israel bias."

Haley lived up to that promise on Tuesday, when she vetoed a resolution demanding that the Trump administration rescind its decision recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. She followed up her veto with formal remarks calling the resolution "an embarrassment" to the UN and scolding those who "presume to tell America where to put our embassy." On Twitter the next day, Haley laid down a marker ahead of Thursday's vote on the topic in the UN General Assembly.

"When we make a decision . . . abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us," she tweeted. "On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names."

Reckless and counterproductive? Hardly. Haley's performance at the UN has been a joy to behold. The former South Carolina governor, who came to the job with no foreign policy experience, has turned out to be a natural — behind the scenes no less than in the spotlight.

This fall, Haley succeeded in winning unanimous Security Council approval for economic sanctions on North Korea in response to its continuing nuclear belligerence. Displaying a knack for political deal-making, she initially proposed a package of sanctions so severe that Russia and China would doubtless have vetoed them had they been put to a vote. Then she set out to negotiate a compromise — dropping demands for a total oil embargo, for example, but digging in on other restrictions. "That made it possible for both China and Russia to join the consensus," reported The Nation, a journal far from friendly to the Trump administration. "Haley got a unanimous 15-0 'yes' vote against North Korea, an outcome that sent a message of unity" to Pyongyang.

Last week she did it again, winning unanimous Security Council approval for a new layer of sanctions on North Korea.

Nearly a year into the job, America's ambassador to the UN comes across as refreshing, unabashed, principled, and savvy. She is one of the most popular officials in a historically unpopular administration. "The breakout star of Trump's Cabinet," CNN calls her.

This would be impressive under any circumstance. It's especially so in the Trump presidency, which has been very rough on the reputations and careers of numerous high-level officials. It's even more remarkable given Haley's own history with Trump. She publicly opposed his presidential bid, urged Republicans not to "follow the siren call of the angriest voices," and endorsed Marco Rubio in the South Carolina primary. After Trump won that primary, he lashed out on Twitter: "The people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley!" (Her unruffled response: "Bless your heart.")

Trump holds grudges, yet he made Haley a key diplomatic face of his administration. Trump hates to share the spotlight, but he has done nothing to impede Haley's celebrity. And while the president has publicly rebuked or undercut other Cabinet members, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, he hasn't done so to Haley — not even when she has expressed views and taken stands that are quite different from his.

Which she has. Haley has loudly denounced Russia's continuing aggression in Ukraine, vowing that sanctions would never be lifted until Crimea is restored to Ukrainian control. Despite Trump's open embrace of Vladimir Putin, Haley warns bluntly: "We cannot trust Russia. We should never trust Russia."

Haley vigorously castigates dictatorships for their human rights abuses, something that neither Trump nor Tillerson considers a priority. "For me," Haley stresses, "human rights are at the heart of the mission of the United Nations."

On most issues, of course, Haley supports the president, as all ambassadors do. "I don't go rogue on the President," she has said. But she has figured out how to distance herself from Trump even when defending him. During the furor over banning travelers from several Muslim nations, Haley publicly justified it as a security measure. But she immediately and more memorably added that it would be "un-American" to "ever ban anyone based on their religion."

Haley plainly outshines Tillerson, a hapless if well-meaning secretary of state who has managed to wow neither the president nor the public. Tillerson brought an admirable international business resume to the job, but he lacks the political skills that Haley acquired during her meteoric rise from total unknown — she was the bookkeeper for her mother's clothing business — to governor of South Carolina. Haley has quickly acquired the foreign-policy fluency in which she was totally deficient a year ago. It is quite plausible that Trump will ask her at some point to replace Tillerson at the State Department.

Critics treated Haley's warning that the US would be "taking names" on the UN's Jerusalem resolution as an appalling diplomatic gaffe. It wasn't. The best UN ambassadors have always known that the job entails more than behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing: It calls for the vigorous defense of moral truth as well. Like Adlai Stevenson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, Haley has shown that she can be effective in the UN while bluntly decrying the lies and prejudices that sully it. Her first year on the job has been brilliant. Whatever Trump may have gotten wrong, his choice of Nikki Haley was a masterstroke.

SOURCE

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Congress repeals individual mandate, first step of ending Obamacare

This will kill off Obamacare.  Insurance firms will now be able to balance their books only by hiking their already high premiums and deductibles.  That will make health insurance unaffordable for just about everyone.  Even the RINOs won't be able to defend Obamacare after that

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning praised efforts by Congress and the Trump administration to repeal the individual mandate under the health care law:

“Thanks to President Trump and Congress, the tyranny of the individual mandate is coming to an end, which penalized individuals if they chose to opt out of purchasing health insurance. As a result more than 6 million Americans were being penalized more than $3 billion a year.

Now, starting in 2019, every American will once again have what they are entitled to by right, a choice to participate in the insurance market. No more guaranteed customers. Now companies will have to compete on price to attract individuals to their plans. This is the first step to repealing the health care law. Ending the individual mandate takes away the cornerstone of Obamacare, and is another promise kept by President Trump and Congress. Although it is disappointing that the repeal will not occur for another year, this is a giant step in the right direction for the American people.”

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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No posts today, maybe tomorrow

If you are looking for something congenial to read, you might find my list of short articles interesting. They cover a wide subject range.  The subject index is here

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR  to all those who come by here

In case anybody is wondering, my surgery went off without a hitch and I am already as right as rain again. For any curious minds,  I have put up a detailed account on my Personal Blog

I want to mention something that seems to have passed almost unnoticed in this Christmas season.  It occurred in the speech President Trump gave to coincide with the lighting of the White House Christmas tree.  He at one stage invoked "Our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ". 

In that utterance he expressed the core doctrine of evangelical Christians.  That was unprecedented as far as I can remember.  Even Reagan, an undoubted man of God, was not so emphatically Christian.  Many Americans DON'T think Jesus is their Lord and saviour so it was a bold thing for a politician to say.  It would have been a dagger aimed at the heart of Leftist anti-Christians and a warm glow in the hearts of committed Christians. 

Trump got most of the evangelical vote last time so he will probably get all of it next time but it was clearly not a good electoral calculation.  He stood to lose non-Christian voters while picking up only a few more Christians.  So why did he do it?  The speech was undoubtedly written for him by an evangelical pastor but he ad-libs readily so could easily have toned that bit down if he had wanted to.

The obvious reason is that he believed what he said.  Trump is amazing the way he speaks his mind.  He is clearly no career politician.

But I think there is a second reason. Christians have copped so  much abuse and condemnation in recent years that they deserved some support -- and Trump gave them that.  He validated their beliefs and principles.  It told them that the days of travail are easing.  And if it stabbed at the anti-Christian left, it was about time they got some heat back.  It was justice for the meek.

And the media were amazingly silent about it.  They criticized a few minor details but ignored the Christian invocation as far as I could see.  Maybe they were wary of antagonizing Christians

And how splendid that Trump finally got most of his tax reforms through. It was like herding cats but it was done. The reforms hit a lot of targets but one that I think has not been mentioned as much as it should is the drastic cut to the company tax.  The tax went from high down to middling by international standards. Tax cuts in general stimulate economic expansion but this one is particularly stimulatory.  Where the old tax was a big disincentive to overseas investment, the new tax should unleash a flood of overseas investment into the USA -- meaning lots of new jobs and government revenue. It might even enable paying off some of the Federal debt -- JR.

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God First Means America First

Yaacov Ben Moshe

As much as I have always tried to confine my reasoning, observation and writing to secular and factual areas, I often wind up with this (mostly unexpressed) thought: “Only God can help us now.”

I have known that if I were to write it or even just say it out loud, it would sound like despair and resignation- but it is not. It is really just my belief that if our fellow Americans, inheritors of the great Judeo-Christian culture, whether Jews, Christians or secularists could find a reconnection to The Divine many of our worst problems would just evaporate. I am not talking about a specific religion or even, necessarily, a belief in “God” as such. All that is required is an appreciation of the divinity behind the miracle of creation. It is only with faith in the creator as a force for good and order, that we can hope to dispel the moral relativism and post-modern sectionalism that are daily degrading our culture. In the guise of justice and equality they are dissolving our commonality of interest and sapping our energy as a civilization.

This is still an upstart of a nation- the fastest growing, richest and most diverse country on the planet. There is more opportunity here for anybody than anywhere else in the world. In this age of globalist ennui, faltering faith, Islamic conquest, rejection of tradition and conceited intellect, we are still as Lincoln said,”  …the last best hope of earth”. All we really need, in my opinion is a general reconnection to the source of all life and goodness. For inspiration I look, as I often do to the founding documents of our country and the framers who were inspired to create them.

When the founders of the US sought to create a new kind of nation, one more immune to corruption and abuse than any other in history, they did a profoundly revolutionary thing. They sought a higher authority to overrule the “rights of kings”- an even higher authority than the doctrine of any particular church. They assessed human nature as flawed and prone to corruption. So they also sought to avoid the rule of "a man" or a secular "theory of man” (socialism, fraternalism etc…). The result was a nation governed by three independent branches of government, empowered to counter-balance (read: stymie) the natural human drive to amass power and wealth. The higher authority that superseded royal prerogative, they called “natural law” not so much derived from God as it was from their understanding that every man may have his own “personal relationship” with The Creator. It is fortunate that Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Washington were themselves men of complicated and subtle faith who were of such generous spirit that they could credit any other person of good faith with equal right to their way of worship.

Jefferson called upon "natural law”  in the Declaration of Independence not only to sever the “right" of the British King to rule the American colonies, but to found the first nation in history that would set as its charter, every individual’s “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The founders called on the highest possible authority to construct our nation for a very important reason. They and their forebears were here on this wild continent because they had already disagreed with, fled and finally, revolted against kings and churches in “The Old World”. They knew that without God, we are just so much meat- animated by dangerous proclivities, taking up space and making trouble. Yet they were also acutely aware that with any specific and organized God there would be unavoidable and ultimately fatal conflict over the exact description of that God and its laws. Only in the sometimes infinitesimal space between the personal God and doctrine is there a hope of finding a common ground for unity and mutual respect. The already disparate collection of religious mavericks, lumberjacks, northern farmers, slave-holding planters, self-sufficient pioneers and merchant traders needed to find that common cause to be worth fighting for for the new nation to survive. Otherwise they would be unable to resist conquest or co-option by the powers of  The Old World. Without a higher binding principal they would have been left with only fear, envy and anger and their evil results. The founders provided a meaningful and successful framework by acknowledging the blessing that God’s love for the individual and his liberty could bring forth. They created a nation that mirrored that blessing or as Abraham Lincoln put it at Gettysburg: “…conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…,”.

Lincoln was our president at the moment of the nation’s greatest peril and need. He staked everything on what he knew was right. He did so with the certain knowledge that God would bless his actions. Here is a bit more of the lines that I quoted a few words of above. It is from his address to congress about his forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation:

“We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.”

The blessing of whatever divinity you acknowledge must be used to help us blend that plain, peaceful, generous, and just way into our common existence here in America. If we can recreate that unity of spirit, we will continue to be safe, happy and secure at home and maybe even inspire some of our old allies and even, competitors to a better way. But we owe it to ourselves to do it in America First.

Epilogue:

Here is my best shot at a sales pitch for a revival of faith: Take God personally! Religious fundamentalists, agnostics and atheists are at a far higher risk of being a “glass is half empty” person. Having a belief in a loving Creator/God gives you a much better chance to be a “glass is half full kind of person”. Having a personal relationship with that loving and transcendent God is the portal to becoming a “cup runneth over” being.

SOURCE

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The Reason the Left Gives Communism a Pass

Walter E. Williams

Before the question, how about a few statistics? The 20th century was mankind’s most brutal century. Roughly 16 million people lost their lives during World War I; about 60 million died during World War II. Wars during the 20th century cost an estimated 71 million to 116 million lives.

The number of war dead pales in comparison with the number of people who lost their lives at the hands of their own governments. The late professor Rudolph J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii documented this tragedy in his book “Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900.” Some of the statistics found in the book have been updated.

The People’s Republic of China tops the list, with 76 million lives lost at the hands of the government from 1949 to 1987. The Soviet Union follows, with 62 million lives lost from 1917 to 1987. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi German government killed 21 million people between 1933 and 1945. Then there are lesser murdering regimes, such as Nationalist China, Japan, Turkey, Vietnam, and Mexico.

According to Rummel’s research, the 20th century saw 262 million people’s lives lost at the hands of their own governments.

Hitler’s atrocities are widely recognized, publicized, and condemned. World War II’s conquering nations’ condemnation included denazification and bringing Holocaust perpetrators to trial and punishing them through lengthy sentences and execution. Similar measures were taken to punish Japan’s murderers.

But what about the greatest murderers in mankind’s history—the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin and China’s Mao Zedong? Some leftists saw these communists as heroes.

W.E.B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian in 1953, said, “Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. … The highest proof of his greatness [was that] he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.” Walter Duranty called Stalin “the greatest living statesman” and “a quiet, unobtrusive man.”

There was even leftist admiration for Hitler and fellow fascist Benito Mussolini.

When Hitler came to power in January 1933, George Bernard Shaw described him as “a very remarkable man, a very able man.” President Franklin Roosevelt called the fascist Mussolini “admirable,” and said he was “deeply impressed by what he [had] accomplished.”

In 1972, John Kenneth Galbraith visited Communist China and praised Mao and the Chinese economic system. Michel Oksenberg, President Jimmy Carter’s China expert, complained, “America [is] doomed to decay until radical, even revolutionary, change fundamentally alters the institutions and values.” He urged us to “borrow ideas and solutions” from China.

Harvard University professor John K. Fairbank believed that America could learn much from the Cultural Revolution, saying, “Americans may find in China’s collective life today an ingredient of personal moral concern for one’s neighbor that has a lesson for us all.” By the way, an estimated 2 million people died during China’s Cultural Revolution.

More recent praise for murdering tyrants came from Anita Dunn, President Barack Obama’s acting communications director in 2009, who said, “Two of my favorite political philosophers [are] Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa.”

Recall the campus demonstrations of the 1960s, in which campus radicals, often accompanied by their professors, marched around singing the praises of Mao and waving Mao’s “Little Red Book.” That may explain some of the campus mess today. Some of those campus radicals are now tenured professors and administrators at today’s universities and colleges and K-12 schoolteachers and principals indoctrinating our youth.

Now the question: Why are leftists soft on communism? The reason leftists give communists, the world’s most horrible murderers, a pass is that they sympathize with the chief goal of communism: restricting personal liberty.

In the U.S., the call is for government control over our lives through regulations and taxation. Unfortunately, it matters little whether the Democrats or Republicans have the political power. The march toward greater government control is unabated. It just happens at a quicker pace with Democrats in charge.

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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Trump Has Made Our Government More Moral

Andrew Klavan

Here is a funny thing about the human mind: when we didn't see something coming, we often can't see it came. There's a good reason for this. Wrong predictions are an indication that there is something off or unrealistic about your worldview. When your predictions are vastly incorrect, you have to choose: will I paper over my mistakes and pretend to myself I was actually right in some way, or will I admit the error and adjust the way I look at life?

People almost never adjust the way they look at life. It would mean risking their sense of their own wisdom and virtue.

This is why so many pundits both on the left and right are completely blind to what happened this year in politics.

Donald Trump — a political neophyte, a New York loudmouth who plays fast and loose with the truth, a massive egotist and a not altogether pleasant human being — has delivered conservatives one of the greatest years in living memory and has made our government more moral in the process. The left and many on the right didn't see it coming because they hate the man. And because they didn't see it coming, they won't see that it's come.

The first assertion is easily proven. After a year of Trump, the economy is in high gear, stocks are up, unemployment is down, energy production is up, business expansion is up and so on; ISIS — which took more than 23,000 square miles of territory after Obama left Iraq and refused to intervene in Syria — is now in control of a Port-o-San and a book of matches; 19 constitutionalist judges have been appointed and 40 more nominated; the biggest regulatory rollback in American history has been launched (boring but yugely important); the rule of law has been re-established at the border; we're out of the absurd and costly Paris Accord; net neutrality, the most cleverly named government power grab ever, is gone; our foreign policy is righted and revitalized; and a mainstream news media that had become little more than the information arm of the Democratic Party is in self-destructive disarray. If the tax bill passes before Christmas, it will cap an unbelievable string of conservative successes.

Now you can tie yourself in knots explaining why none of this is Trump's doing or how it's all just a big accident or the result of cynical motives or whatever. Knock yourself out, cutes. For me, I'll say this. I hated Trump. I thought he'd be a disaster or, at best, a mediocrity. I was wrong. He's done an unbelievably great job so far.

But even more important is my second assertion. Our government is more moral now. How is this possible when Trump has sex with Vladimir Putin disguised as a Russian prostitute, when he kills and eats black people in his spare time, when he hates women and goes into insane temper tantrums fueled by 48 cans of Diet Coke a day? Okay, even leaving Maggie Haberman's fantasy life aside, Trump is not always statesman-like, not always nice to people and not always strictly honest.

But Trump's outsized New York personality and the feeling it evokes in us only obscure what he has done to the government he leads. As Aristotle knew, a thing can only be good if it fulfills its purpose. What is the moral purpose of government? We know the answer because our Founders told us in no uncertain terms.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men..."
That's right. Government does not exist to make us equal, but to treat us equally. It does not exist to make life fair, but to treat us fairly. Most importantly, it exists to secure our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Only in liberty can we treat each other ethically, because only in liberty can we make the choices that are the necessary condition for ethical life.

Trump has made our government more moral by making less of it: fewer regulations, fewer judges who will write law instead of obeying the law, fewer bureaucrats seeking to expand the power of their agencies, less money for the government to spend on itself. He has made government treat us more fairly and equally by ceasing to use the IRS and Justice Department for political ends like silencing enemies and skewing elections.

This is what moral government looks like. And if every male senator in America is grabbing the buttocks of some unsuspecting female while, at the same time, voting for more limited and less corrupt government, the senators are immoral, yes, but the government is more moral. That is why we should never let the leftist press game us with scandal hysteria, but should keep focused on voting in those who will help fulfill government's moral ends.

Trump has delivered conservatives an astoundingly successful year and made the government more moral in the process. You don't have to like him, to salute him. I salute him. Well done.

SOURCE

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Former White House Insider Explains What Trump Did to Devastate ISIS

President Donald Trump is defeating terrorism by allowing the military to do its job and by combating extremist ideology, a former adviser to the president said Friday.

“Our troops have been unleashed,” Sebastian Gorka, former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and counterterrorism adviser, said Friday at The Heritage Foundation.

“I had a tier one operator, meaning a top of the top special operations guy on detail from the National Security Council … come up to me in maybe week five of the administration and say, ‘Sir, you have no idea, no idea how the morale amongst our forces have skyrocketed because we are no longer micromanaged … and we are allowed to do our job, and it is clear the president trusts us,” he said.

The contrast in strategy has made all the difference, Gorka said.

“We have been told by the last administration that ISIS is a generational threat … [that] our children, our grandchildren will be fighting ISIS jihadis decades from now,” Gorka said. “Well, I guess the Trump administration has defined generations to last just a few months.”

While President Barack Obama called ISIS a “J.V. team” in a January 2014 interview in The New Yorker, Gorka said Trump and his administration did what the Obama administration said would take years.

“There is no ISIS caliphate any longer,” Gorka said. “We have liberated Mosul, we have have taken back Raqqa, the operational headquarters of ISIS, and just three weeks ago, the last ISIS stronghold in Syria has fallen as well.”

Trump has been successful, Gorka said, by evaluating threats and responding to threats strategically.

Trump “looked at the threat we faced clearly as a war, not as some problem to be managed, but as a war, and not only that, he wants to win that war, and that is exactly what we have been doing as a nation,” Gorka said.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis has also been key in Trump’s successes in defeating terrorism.

“We have gone under Secretary Mattis from a strategy of attrition, he has said this openly, a strategy of attrition to a strategy of annihilation,” Gorka said.

Trump has also made gains on winning the war on terrorism by acknowledging that there is an ideology behind it.

“Instead of looking at the religious ideology of groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, the last administration was driven by very, very flawed concepts from social science, specifically social movement theory … [which] would have you believe that all violence of an organized nature is the result of physical and economic issues,” the former presidential adviser said.

An example of this approach can be seen, Gorka said, in the comment made by Obama State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf that providing terrorists with jobs is a solution to defeating ISIS.

“We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people,” Harf said in 2015.

This type of approach is not part of Trump’s strategy to end terrorism, Gorka said.

“The political correctness from Day One is gone,” Gorka said. “Why, look at the Riyadh speech … He went to the heart of the Muslim world, the area where Islam was founded, and … what did he say, he said, sort out your societies, he actually said rid your places of worship of the extremists, rid your societies of the terrorists,” Gorka said.

His approach is even being accepted by unlikely recipients, according to Gorka.

“As an Arab woman told me two weeks later, that is the speech we have been waiting for for 16 years,” Gorka said. “No brushing the issues under the carpet, [but] calling out our Muslim friends to start by cleaning out their own front doors, their own backyards.”

Combating terrorist ideology will remain a priority for Trump in the future, according to Gorka.

“Killing terrorists is great, but it is not a metric of victory, because when you have enemies who have a massive recruiting pool, you can kill a jihadi with a drone strike and 20 guys tomorrow will volunteer to replace him,” Gorka said, adding:

Just like during the Cold War, we must defeat the ideology. As St. John Paul and the great Margaret Thatcher and the great Ronald Reagan who delegitimatized the ideology of communism, we must do the same with the ideology of global jihadism.

SOURCE

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Trump: Strong Economy Equals Strong Security

His national security strategy is a stark reversal and repudiation of Obama's failed policy

President Donald Trump released his “America First” national security strategy Monday. The 68-page document sets forth a clear and sober understanding of the genuine threats the nation faces, as well as outlining a strategy for confronting these threats. In short, it represents both a reversal and a repudiation of U.S. policy over the previous eight years. Gone are the Barack Obama-era references to the supposed imminent security threat posed by climate change. So too is Obama’s self-defeating doctrine of “leading from behind.” No more apologizing for American global power and influence. That nonsense has been replaced with a realistic view of the world and America’s roll as the world’s leader.

Trump’s policy is based on four fundamental principles: protecting the American people and homeland, promoting American economic prosperity, maintaining peace through strength, and expanding American influence across the globe. Strategically, the policy focuses on controlling America’s borders, rebuilding the military and taking the lead in both NATO and the UN. The document states:

"We must convince adversaries that we can and will defeat them — not just punish them if they attack the United States. We must ensure the ability to deter potential enemies by denial — convincing them that they cannot accomplish objectives through the use of force or other forms of aggression. We need our allies to do the same."

Trump’s national security strategy also doesn’t shy away from naming those nations that pose the greatest threat to the American way of life, namely China and Russia, as well as the “rogue regimes” of Iran and North Korea.

What may be the biggest break from Obama’s foreign policy, however, is Trump’s emphasis on establishing U.S. national security via building up the nation’s economic strength. Trump declared that “economic security is national security,” explaining, “Economic vitality, growth and prosperity at home is absolutely necessary for American power and influence abroad. Any nation that trades away its prosperity for security will end up losing both.” Obama was far more focused on social engineering in the military and redistributing the nation’s wealth to his favored constituents.

In his announcement, Trump summed up his primary national security perspective, stating, “We are calling for a great reawakening of America, a resurgence of confidence, and a rebirth of patriotism, prosperity and pride. And we are returning to the wisdom of our Founders: In America the people govern, the people rule and the people are sovereign.”

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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Levin: The ‘So-Called’ Conservative Intellectual Movement Is on Life Support

Levin in fact concludes that "there really is no conservative intellectual movement" and that is right.  But it is right for a good reason. It overlooks what an "intellectual" is.  An intellectual is someone who puts a sophisticated gloss on a simple idea.  And the great headquarters of simple ideas is the Left.  They never think anything through, which is why their policies are always disastrous -- check Obamacare

In fact Leftists have only one idea:  "If people won't behave the way we want, then we will MAKE them behave. Compared to the complexities of libertarian policy proposals, their ideas are childish and unoriginal.

So when someone comes along who can make Leftist thinking sound half-decent, he is greeted rapturously, hailed as an "intellectual" and given lots of publicity.

Conservatives don't need that.  Between the Bible and America's founding documents, they have all the guidance they need to create a good society and a good life for its people.  They already have policies and ideas that work and are well-known. Erudite men like Levin can help publicize those mighty founding ideas and show how they apply in modern times but that is just a badly-needed educative role, not any kind of new discovery.

I can't put it better than Reagan did:

"In all of that time I won a nickname, 'The Great Communicator.' But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation -- from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in principles that have guided us for two centuries."

So we can safely leave intellectuals to the Left.  We don't need them.  The average IQ of Leftists and Rightists is about the same but we apply our minds to practical problems and the real world, not high flown theories, speculations and justifications for hate.


On his nationally syndicated radio talk show Thursday, host Mark Levin began his program’s opening monologue on a somber note, suggesting that the “so-called conservative intellectual movement” is “on life support.”

“[T]he so-called conservative intellectual movement is very weak right now – very weak,” stated Mark Levin. “In fact, I think it’s on life support.” Below is a transcript of Levin’s remarks from his show on Thursday:

“From time to time, often actually, I sit back and I watch what’s going on in the news or go on the internet and start reading various stories and so forth, and then I try to think back to history and philosophy and try to think back to our founding and try to make sense of it all.

“The vast majority of what comes across the television, what comes across the internet, what comes across the radio, in terms of news, is about the federal government. Maybe it’s about a congressman, maybe it’s about the Supreme Court, maybe it’s about a tax bill – it’s about the federal government.

“And this really is a massive alteration of what the founders of this country intended, that we would be spending so much time talking about the federal government, fearing the federal government, trying to win elections so we can control the federal government, expanding the federal government. It was never supposed to be this way.

“And you can see the deleterious effects.

“I said yesterday that, as a result of the conservative movement, we’ve had a lot of electoral victories at the federal level, but very few advances in terms of rolling back what the left has done and advancing liberty.

“And I believe that. I believe men and women, most of you, believe in America’s founding principles, believe in Americanism – Americanism.

“I also believe – it’s a sorry truth – that the so-called conservative intellectual movement is very weak right now – very weak. In fact, I think it’s on life support.

“You know, I write books about liberty, and I write books about the Declaration and the Constitution. And I write books about Supreme Court rulings. I write books about natural law and liberty and what all that means.

“The reason that most of these books sell about a quarter of a million copies or more every time I write them – which is by far the largest among conservatives, and yet receives virtually no attention among the fledgling, barely existing conservative intellectual movement – is because there really is no conservative intellectual movement. Or it’s very small, it’s very weak.”

SOURCE

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A Constitutional Republic or a Police State?

Eight years of Obama's efforts to "fundamentally transform" America left corrupt law enforcement institutions

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office that there’s no way [Donald Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.” —one of the text messages sent by FBI official Peter Strzok to fellow FBI official and DOJ attorney Lisa Page, Aug. 15, 2016

After eight years of Obama administration efforts to “fundamentally transform” our nation, Americans may be facing the reality that our major law enforcement institutions are fundamentally corrupt, and that Democrats and their Leftmedia allies — now indistinguishable from one another — will attempt to minimize this damning reality.

Yet at some point, Americans are owed an explanation about an “insurance policy” that resembles a strategy to undermine the 2016 election. We can already surmise that “Andy” refers to Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, whose wife received nearly $700,000 in campaign donations for her Virginia Senate race from Clinton allies — while he was supervising the Clinton email investigation.

That Strzok was removed from the Russian collusion investigation for this text and the approximately 10,000 other exchanges between him and his extra-marital partner — a removal exposed by leaks, as opposed to full disclosure by Special Counsel Robert Mueller — begets a reasonable question: Why does he remain at the FBI in any capacity?

Strzok was once the nation’s second-in-command for counterintelligence. Yet he carried on an easily traceable affair with a colleague — when he wasn’t busy leading the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and critically editing the memo that gave former FBI director James Comey cover to exonerate her. Strzok also failed to charge Clinton associates Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, despite proof they were lying about having no knowledge of Clinton’s private server, even as he facilitated the indictment of Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn — for the same crime.

Strzok was hardly an outlier. The stench of partisanship attaches itself to other members of Mueller’s team. Bruce G. Ohr, the former associate deputy attorney general and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, was demoted after evidence revealed he was in contact with Fusion GPS, producer of the infamous Steele dossier paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. (His wife, Nellie Ohr, was hired by Fusion GPS specifically to probe Trump). Andrew Weissmann emailed former acting AG Sally Yates to express his “awe” for her refusal to implement Trump’s legal travel ban. Aaron Zebley represented Clinton IT staffer Justin Cooper, the man who set up Clinton’s server — and smashed her Blackberries with a hammer. Jeannie Rhee was a Clinton campaign donor, represented the Clinton Foundation, and functioned as Obama deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes’ personal attorney.

Page and Strzok had another equally damning exchange. “Maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace,” Page stated in a text that also included a Trump-related article. “Of course I’ll try and approach it that way,” Strzok replied.

Was Strzok’s aforementioned editing job that included changing the words “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” in Comey’s memo part of that “approach?”

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Dec. 7, current FBI Director Christopher Wray insisted his agency is above reproach. Yet when Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) asked him if the Steele dossier was used to spy on Trump associates, Wray refused to answer, citing the ongoing investigation conducted by the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General as the reason. Six days later, Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein declined to answer the same question — but insisted there’s no bias in Mueller’s investigation.

What about illegality? Trump attorney Kory Langhofer is accusing Mueller of illegally obtaining transition team emails from career staffer at the General Services Administration (GSA), including confidential attorney-client communications, in an apparent violation of the president’s Fourth Amendment rights.

Moreover, Wray and Rosenstein aren’t the only stonewallers. On March 20, 2017, Comey told Congress the counterintelligence operation into Russian collusion was recommended by Asst. Director of Counter Intelligence Bill Priestap, who was Strzok’s former boss. Priestap also decided not to inform congressional overseers “because of the sensitivity of the matter,” Comey testified.

Disingenuous? Priestap’s boss was McCabe. McCabe’s boss was Comey.

McCabe was scheduled to testify behind closed doors before the House Intelligence Committee last Tuesday, but abruptly canceled due to a “scheduling error.” Some members of the Committee apparently weren’t buying it. “McCabe has an Ohr problem,” a congressional source surmised.

He is scheduled to testify this week, and while the Committee is prepared to subpoena McCabe to compel his testimony, one suspects he would invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination — before stating anything that might reveal the nation is in the midst of the biggest political scandal in its history.

In the meantime, a trio of other stories buried by the Leftmedia are extremely troubling. First, former DNC Interim Chairwoman Donna Brazile revealed that after the DNC’s servers and computers were was hacked, they replicated the information on both — and then “destroyed the machines.”

Those were the machines the DNC refused to turn over to the FBI for examination, and the agency’s assertion they were hacked by the Russians is based solely on the assessment made DNC-hired cyber security firm CrowdStrike.

Brazile insisted the DNC cooperated fully with the FBI, and that Comey’s testimony to the contrary was false. Yet Brazile is a documented liar who initially denied sending primary debate questions to Clinton’s campaign before admitting the truth.

Second, Robert Mueller was granted an ethics waiver to serve as special counsel — and the DOJ refuses to explain why they accommodated his blatant conflicts of interest.

Third, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, a 2012 Obama appointee — who also sat on the FISA Court while the Trump team was under surveillance by the Obama administration — recused himself from the Michael Flynn case without explanation.

With so many players and moving parts it’s easy to ignore the one individual who may have been the prime mover behind all of these machinations. “Lest we forget, President Obama had endorsed Mrs. Clinton … to be president,” Andrew McCarthy writes. “Moreover, Obama had knowingly participated in the conduct for which Clinton was under investigation — using a pseudonym in communicating with her about classified government business over an unsecure private communication system.”

Americans should also remember former AG Loretta Lynch’s airport tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton while his wife remained under investigation, and that she directed Comey to call that investigation a “matter.” Emails released Friday by the DOJ reveal department officials were less concerned by the meeting itself than that it was leaked to the press and how to prevent further leaks.

Americans should also remember Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power unmasked Americans.

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s office has compiled more than 1.2 million pages of documentation, and even if the aforementioned players don’t cooperate, indictments are a real possibility. Thus, Americans will soon learn if we are still a constitutional republic — or whether the aforementioned “fundamental transformation” has succeeded beyond the former president’s wildest dreams.

Trump is said to be dismantling Obama’s “legacy.” Taking down a potential police state should be priority number one.

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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