PROGRESSIVES SAY: Boycott the world (that's not in our bubble)!

RANDOM THOUGHT: The Senate consists of 52 Republicans with one vote each and one Democrat with 48 votes.

CALEXIT: Group has 180 days to collect signatures for secession. Can former Californians sign the petition?

DEMOCRATS PROVE THEY LIVE IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY: Democrats hold lessons on how to talk to real people.

ANN COULTER: Can I be the poster child against Obamacare?

THEY SHOULD LOOK FOR OTHER WORK WHILE THEY STILL CAN: EPA employees still ‘coming to work in tears’.

AMMO GRRRLL: Leftist psychotics, get a grip!

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN': Officials announce proposal that would establish California as separate nation.

We should encourage them. Then after the nation of California goes bankrupt, perhaps Mexico could be persuaded to annex it.

RELIABLE SOURCES: Donald Trump versus the mainstream media.

TRUMP IS PLAYING WITH THE PRESS: He’s gaslighting them and they fall for it every time.

WELL, HE SHOULD KNOW: Disgraced newsman Dan Rather thumps Kellyanne Conway for 'alternative facts'.

TECHNOLOGY: Superfast camera sees shock wave from light.

ROBOT NANNIES: Should gadgets raise your kids? Asimov aside, the comments are uniformly negative.

OOPS! WE BAD: Limousine torched in [tolerant liberals'] anti-Trump riot belongs to Muslim immigrant.

BRING POPCORN AND ENJOY: The Democrats' post-election temper tantrums continue.

GOOD NEWS: autopsies are performed on the (politically) dead.

FROM FIVE YEARS AGO: Think about the post-Trump inauguration's liberal snowflake meltdown when you read this.

HEH:

Linked from this PowerLine post.

ELIZABETH WARREN isn’t wowing them in Massachusetts. That's high praise compared to her standing here in Georgia.

U.S. AIR FORCE CHIEF lends support to light attack aircraft buy.

BECAUSE CONTROL: Elections matter too much.

Steal a few bucks if you must, but get the hell out of my life!

I'M A LIBERAL; THEREFORE I'M AN INTELLECTUAL: The science of intellectual tribalism.

SWARMING DRONES for reconnaissance.

TAKING ONE FOR THE NARRATIVE: It's been a really bad week for journalism.

SISTERS NO MORE: Two months before the Women's March, white women voted 53 percent to 47 percent against Hillary Clinton.

SCIENTISTS BUILD an Artificial Intelligence that is smarter than most adults.

Being smarter than most liberals is easy; most adults is much harder.

DEPENDS ON HOW MUCH FUEL THEY HAVE FOR THEIR EXCAVATOR: How low can liberals go?

THE WASHINGTON POST: We need a better class of readers. If they continue down their current path as Democrat shills, they're going to need readers, period.

YES, LET'S AUTHORIZE LYING: Press seeks 'new rules' in the age of Trump.

2017: The year of autonomous air taxis?

Unlikely, but piloted air taxis? Maybe.

DONALD TRUMP'S FIRST STATE OF THE UNION should be "I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message."



It would be a great reminder of the political party the Democrats used to be.

THE LIBERAL TRANSLATION GUIDE: translating things that liberals say:

If you listen to liberals, it quickly becomes apparent that what they’re saying has very little relation to reality. They’re like the “Boy who Cried Wolf” except they spend their time yelling that the sheepdog is about to kill everyone while the wolves sneak in the back gate they left open while they were too busy arguing with their friends about whether eating Chinese food is “cultural appropriation.”

The simplest way to translate liberal bromides is to ignore them.

OXFAM GRABBED HEADLINES with a report claiming that the world's eight richest men own as much wealth as the world's poorest 3.7 billion people — half of the planet's population - but failed to note that the world's poor have been climbing out of poverty at the fastest rate in human history.

BREAKING NEWS: Law schools haven’t laid off nearly enough faculty yet.

JOINT TACTICAL AERIAL RESUPPLY VEHICLE (JTARV) being developed to deliver supplies to soldiers on the battlefield.

LOTS OF FOLKS (including me) didn't read the instructions for the drones they got for Christmas. Rule 1 is "don't fly them near trees."

ANOTHER LIBERAL PROTEST impedes traffic. Mayor deBlasio certainly didn't make New Yorkers happy.

EXCELLENT! Anti-Trump protestors face significant jail time.

STILL NOT TIRED OF WINNING? Watch an airline throw a rabid hillary supporter off a flight!

IT TOOK UNTIL TODAY for the mainstream media to pick up this story; the MSM-reviled Breitbart News published it the day it happened.

A ROUNDUP OF ILLEGAL GUNS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. PROVES TELLING: strict gun control laws don't control illegal guns.

Kind of obvious when you stop to think about it, but then D.C. denizens have never proved too strong on thinking....

WASHINGTON POST ON MAXINE WATERS: Four Pinocchios only because 5 aren't available.

SCREAMIN' DINGO wins first place in international aircraft design competition.

The 2016 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Undergraduate Team Aircraft Design Competition called for aerobatic light sport aircraft meeting certain criteria. A combined team of aerospace engineering students from KU and Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology answered with its design for the Screamin’ Dingo.

The small plane comes in one- or two-seater models, can be built by the buyer or the manufacturer, and features detachable wings so the plane can be put on a trailer and driven to the runway if needed.

Will someone please build one for me?

A GREAT IDEA: Drug testing floated for White House press corps. I particularly liked the update about giving them more anti-psychotics.

WE'VE REMOVED SMOG FROM AMERICAN CITIES; now it's time to remove smug. Take note of the heavy dose of 'conservatives are evil' projection in the minds of the progressives.

Linked from Hot Air.

TEXAS GOV. GREG ABBOTT threatens to cut funding to [Travis] county over sanctuary city policies.

Heh. Travis county is essentially Austin, my former home. Follow through, Gov. Abbott, follow through. Make Austin livable again.

'DIGITAL HEROIN' AND 'ELECTRONIC COCAINE': Medical experts say addiction to technology is a growing concern.

It reads to me as another case of 'experts' searching for another non-problem to interfere with.

MY THOUGHT EXACTLY: “Next time we have a peaceful transfer of power, can there be less of it to transfer, please?”

Here's a modest start.

THE U.S. AIR FORCE'S MYSTERIOUS X-37B SPACE PLANE has now spent 600 days in Earth orbit on the vessel's latest mission, and is nearing a program record for longest time spent in space.

AMERICA'S REACTION to the tyranny of the so-called experts.

America’s elite – that collection of puffed up mediocrities who until recently held the undisputed command of the heights of our politics and culture – is in crisis. Its unbroken track record of failure has finally stirred the rest of America from its coma. The normals are now hella woke, and the elitists are being hella rejected. Unused to accountability, the elite is in a tizzy over the way people are not only blaming it for its myriad failures but are taking concrete steps to restrict its power. It’s not just electing Donald Trump. It’s ignoring the media, ignoring Hollywood stars, and ignoring the cabal of “experts” who presume to tell us how to live.

And it’s about time.

No, it's well past time....

THE SCOREKEEPER on media's snowflake crybabies: "Mom dies, cry. A politician loses, meh."

ANOTHER MIDNIGHT REGULATION: the Obama Energy Department just outlawed your three-way bulb. So I'll just start using 150 watt (lumen equivalent) bulbs in all my 3-way lamps.

NEW PICTURES of Saturn, its moons and rings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

MEMO TO THE PRESS: We don't believe you.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES, special edition. My favorite:

As usual, go and see the rest.

AND THESE are the 'good guys and gals'?

AND YOU THOUGHT the Trump administration wasn't ready?

DUE TO THE INAUGURATION, PowerLine's Week in Pictures is a day early. Here's my favorite.

I can now die happy. And after eight more years, I expect I will be able to die even happier...

PELOSI: Maybe the Democratic Party should wear its religion on its sleeve. They do; it's just that their religion does not involve God....

IT'S NOW ABOUT 3 PM, and the stock markets are still up about two-tenths percent for the day, yet down from the early market peak of about a half percent.

IT'S OVER: eight years of Obama.

Note the sharp spike in approval just before the 2012 and 2016 elections. Surprising to me, since the numbers are remarkably consistent except for the two elections.

The Trump Approval Index now begins: +2 on January 20, 2017.

IT'S A LITTLE AFTER 2 PM, and I'm watching the protestors rioters trying to disrupt the inaugural parade. Ninety arrests so far, hopefully many more to come.

OUR NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER:

It's Trump time!

IT'S JUST AFTER 10 AM, and the stock markets are all up about one-half percent. I wonder what it will be like in about 2 hours.

AMMO GRRRLL looks at the future of the mainstream media.

Starting tomorrow.

A NEW DAY DAWNS:

Now it's time to get to work repairing 8 years of damage.

PLEASE DO; don't disappoint us like those so-called 'A-list' celebrities. One-third of federal workers still considering quitting after tomorrow.

HEH: "We're less than 24 hours away from Hillary Clinton watching someone else take the oath of office ... again."

WARREN VS. DeVOS: How a perceived handshake ‘snub’ exposed the right wing’s cultural ignorance. Uh-huh. And how many others has Fauxahontas greeted with a wave rather than a handshake?

A REPORT CARD: Trump’s pre-presidency.

THE MEDIA WAKES UP - just in time for Donald Trump's inauguration.

ON PROGRESSIVES: "[T]hese people are not as smart as they think they are."

SPACE.COM: Crescent Jupiter is covered in storms in new photo.

WORST SENATOR EVER: Elizabeth Warren won’t shake Betsy DeVos’ hand.

I watched the DeVos confirmation. The Democrats threw everything they could at her, including the bathroom toilet. then had a hissy fit when they weren't granted more time to throw feces.

Common courtesy is not a progressive value.

UPDATE: Watching the Mnuchin confirmation hearing, the Democrats (specifically Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)) are still aggressively posturing instead of asking questions. What assholes.

THE OBAMA ERA IS OVER:

Obama and his supporters loved talking about history. His victory was historic. They were on the right side of history. History was an inevitable arc that bent their way.

The tidal force of demographics had made the old America irrelevant. Any progressive policy agenda was now possible because we were no longer America . We Were Obamerica. A hip, happening place full of smiling gay couples, Muslim women in hijabs and transgender actors. We were all going to live in a New York City coffee house, work at Green Jobs and live in the post-national future.

The past was gone. We were falling into the gorgeous wonderful future of dot com instant deliveries and outsourced everything. We would become more tolerant and guilty. The future was Amazon and Disney. It was hot and cold running social justice. The Bill of Rights was done. Ending the First and Second Amendments was just a clever campaign away. Narratives on news sites drove everything.

Presidents were elected by Saturday Night Live skits.
John Oliver, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee were our journalists. Safe spaces were everywhere and you better watch your micro-aggressions, buddy. No more coal would be mined. No more anything would be made.

The end of men was here. The end of the dead white men of the literary canon. The end of white people. The end of binary gender and marriage. The end of reason. The end of art. The end of 2 + 2 equaling 4. This was Common Core time. It was time to pardon an endless line of drug dealers. To kill cops and praise criminals. To be forced to buy worthless health insurance for wealth redistribution to those who voted their way to wealth.

This was Obama's America . And there was no going back. We were rushing through endless goal posts of social transformation. The military fell. Then the police. Now it looks as quaint as anything from the 50s, the 70s or the 80s. A brief moment of foolishness that already appears odd and awkward. And then one day nostalgic. It wasn't the future. It's already the past. It's history.

Scalia died. Hillary Clinton was bound to win. And she would define the Supreme Court. Down-ticket races would give her a friendly Senate. And then perhaps even the House.

But there is no right side of history. There is only the side we choose. The Obama era was permanent. It was history. Now it is history.

It‘s shocking ascendancy has been paired with an equally shocking descent. The Obama era is done. It's gone. It's over. It was wiped from the pages of history in one night that left Congress and the White House in Republican hands.

It would have been bad enough if Jeb Bush had succeeded Obama. That would have been inconvenient, but not a repudiation. Instead Obama's legacy was dashed to pieces. His frantic efforts to campaign for Hillary did no good. The public did not vocally reject him. What they did was even worse. They brushed past him. They sidelined him. They gave him passable approval ratings while dismissing his biggest accomplishments. They forgot him. They made it clear that he did not matter.

And that is in its own way far more brutal and wounding. They didn't just destroy the Obama era. Instead they dismissed it as if it never existed.

Obama didn't make history after all. He wasn't a teleprompter demi-god standing athwart of history. He was Carter and Ford. He was there to be forgotten. He didn't change the world. He wasn't the messiah. He was merely mortal. Just another politician who will sag and age. Who will, in the end, be photographed like Bill Clinton, lonely and lost in a world that has passed him by.

The Obama era ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. With a national consensus that maybe he didn't really matter so much after all. And those to whom he mattered the most were his enemies determined to undo everything he did.

Obama once thought that he belonged to the ages. Now he belongs in the rubbish bin.

From my email (the original post is here).

MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN:

Heh.

OBAMA EXITS STAGE LEFT, with a lie and a threat.

A METAPHOR for Democrats at the Trump nominee confirmation hearings.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN takes on Dr. Ben Carson at his confirmation hearing - and loses.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Why California's silly succession scheme can't succeed.

I suggest we let a President Trump help - give California back to Mexico and improve the economy of both nations.

Maybe we should keep Oregon and Washington state since I doubt Mexico would want them....

GARRISON KEILLOR ponders quitting Christianity over Trump. Somehow I doubt he was ever much of a Christian.

JANE FONDA doesn't want you to be fooled by good-looking liberals.

Shouldn't she worry more about being fooled by better-looking conservatives?

GOOD NEIGHBORS:

Ex-Army sniper takes out neighbor's home intruder.

Good samaritan kills gunman in ambush attack on state trooper.

Friends like these are handy to have around....

THE LEFT’S siren song of coerced equality."The real goal is power — and concentrating it into fewer and fewer hands, all located in Washington, D.C."

KURT SCHLICTER TO BARACK OBAMA: "Good riddance, and welcome aboard the solar-powered high-speed rail express train to Karmatown."

ADVICE FOR CONSERVATIVES: How to cope when your toddler progressive makes you really angry.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION yanks Second Amendment Rights from SSI (Supplemental Security Income) recipients.

I might be willing to go along if the definition of 'mentally deficient' were widened to include liberals....

THE EPA SHOULD BE ABOLISHED. Then we can have a rational discussion of what far more modest agency should take its place.

WHAT EXPERTS PREDICT, reality will contradict.

Hear them out, if you like, but remember: There's an excellent chance they'll be wrong.

Sound advice.

THAT $9 TRILLION OBAMA ADDED TO THE NATIONAL DEBT? It's (former president) Bush's fault.

ON CLIMATE CHANGE: I was skeptical of climate change until Donald Trump got elected and now all the snowflakes are melting.

JEFF JACOBY: Barack Obama's legacy of failure.

5G CELLULAR: near instantaneous access to all the stupidity in the world.

2017: The year of self-driving cars and trucks.

A WONDER OF NATURE - the NGC 6357 nebula:

A composite image showing the NGC 6357 nebula located roughly 5,500 light-years from Earth. The image contains X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ROSAT telescope (purple), infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (orange), and optical data from the SuperCosmos Sky Survey (blue) made by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope.

OOPSIE: Golf course considers “divesting” itself of Obama over Israel policy.

Heh.

THE OLD POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You don't get to determine what's offensive to the offended.

THE NEW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You don't get to determine whether or not I care if you're offended.

Linked from Instapundit.

MR. OBAMA: Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

OUR FIGHT against liberal fascism has only just begun.

I wish I could tell you that, having dodged the naggy bullet that was Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit, we can now spend the next four years being left alone. But that’s not in the cards. Liberals won’t – because they can’t – pause to reflect on how they should stop being such insufferable jerks and live with us normals in peace and mutual respect. Instead, they are doubling down on their gambit for unrestrained power over every aspect of our lives, fueled by a hatred for Donald Trump that is, in reality, a hatred for us.

Read it all.

MORE LUNACY FROM THE WASHINGTON POST: The electoral college is thwarting our ability to battle global warming.

BECOMING SHEEP: a hybrid relational assemblage.

A new high (or is it low?) in academic stupidity.

THOMAS SOWELL retires his Creators Syndicate column. Here are some of his Sowell memes in pictures. My personal favorite is this one:

Go and see the rest.

CABINET NOMINEES are in for a rude awakening.

This Townhall post was written about a month ago, just as Trump's Cabinet nominees were beginning to be named. When it was published, I tended to agree with the author based on my own experience in the defense industry, but now that the confirmation hearings are underway, I'm beginning to believe thatTrump's cabinet nominees will be able to move the bureaucracy.

I AGREE: Liberalism ruined the college football bowl season.

TECHNOLOGY: a possible lidar replacement for self-driving cars? It's going to take a cheaper replacement to make self-driving cars commercially feasible.

ONE 82-YEAR-OLD LADY loves Obama and she may have a very good point. She says that Obama is amazing, and is rebuilding the American dream! She gives us an entirely new slant on the "amazing" job Obama is doing, and she says that she will thank God for the President. She says:

1. Obama destroyed the Clinton Political Machine, driving a stake through the heart of Hillary's presidential aspirations -something no Republican was ever able to do.

2. Obama killed off the Kennedy Dynasty - no more Kennedys trolling Washington looking for booze and women wanting rides home.

3. Obama is destroying the Democratic Party before our eyes! Dennis Moore had never lost a race. Evan Bayh had never lost a race. Byron Dorgan had never lost a race. Harry Reid - soon to be GONE!,These are just a handful of the Democrats whose political careers Obama has destroyed. By the end of 2016, dozens more will be gone. Just think, in December of 2008 the Democrats were on the rise. In two election cycles, they had picked up 14 Senate seats and 52 House seats. The press was touting the death of the Conservative Movement and the Republican Party. However, in just one term, Obama put a stop to all of this and gave the House and the Senate - back to the Republicans.

4. Obama has completely exposed liberals and progressives for what they are. Sadly, every generation seems to need to re-learn the lesson on why they should never actually put liberals in charge. Obama is bringing home the lesson very well: Liberals tax, borrow and spend. Liberals won't bring themselves to protect America. Liberals want to take over the economy Liberals think they know what is best for everyone. Liberals are not happy until they are running YOUR life.

5. Obama has brought more Americans back to conservatism than anyone since Reagan. In one term, he has rejuvenated the Conservative Movement and brought out to the streets millions of freedom loving Americans. Name one other time when you saw your friends and neighbors this interested in taking back America!

6. Obama, with his "amazing leadership," has sparked the greatest period of sales of firearms and ammunition this country has seen. Law abiding citizens have rallied and have provided a "stimulus" to the sporting goods field while other industries have failed, faded, or moved off-shore.

7. In all honesty, 4 years ago I was more afraid than I have been in my life.
Not afraid of the economy, but afraid of the direction our country was going. I thought, Americans have forgotten what this country is all about. My neighbors and friends, even strangers, have proved to me that my lack of confidence in the greatness and wisdom of the American people has been flat wrong.

8. When the American people wake up, no smooth talking teleprompter reader can fool them! Barack Obama has served to wake up these great Americans! Again, I want to say: "Thank you, Barack Obama!" After all, this is exactly the kind of hope and change we desperately needed!!

9. He has saved Carter’s legacy and made Jimmy Carter happy, since Jimmy is no longer the worst president we've ever had. Credit goes to where credit is due. I feel better now!

From my email.

OBAMA: I’m the father of the Tea Party, you know. In a weird way, he's right. Certainly his narcissism, arrogance, and overreach were significant contributing factors to the growth of the Tea Party leading up to the 2010 elections.

REALITY CHECK:Yes, let's mock the special snowflakes.

ONLY 79 SELF-REFERENCES? The video is here. I watched Obama's "Farewell Address" and what struck me is that whenever he he tried to (obliquely) criticize his opposition - living in bubbles; need for 'safe spaces'; etc. - he didn't seem to realize that he was criticizing his own self.

THE WASHINGTON TIMES: Oblivious Obama pens farewell as world burns down around him.

"THE LESSON liberals need to learn is that despite their arrogance, they do not have the power to alter reality."

SHUT UP! A New Year's resolution for the Left.