Sunday, December 29, 2019

THE ARROGANCE OF THE DEEP STATE: "We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” may be the most self-aggrandizing, self-satisfied, self-projecting campaign slogan ever adopted, but among the liberal elite the conceit is even stronger today than it was in 2008.

“We should be in charge—not those guys!” is the subtext of every statement in the recent Democratic presidential primary debates. “We are the professional ones, not the Trump crowd”....
No. No, you're not.

Now go read it all.
PERHAPS: The unhinged Left can doom us.
“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad,” is a line from a poem by Longfellow. It’s not Biblical, but the Bible often talks about the lofty being made low, and the prophet Isaiah talks about God causing the wisdom of the wise to perish. Much of the elite and the Left have been hostile to God for years, and as their anger has grown so has their irrationality. At the 2012 convention, the Democrats even booed God, and that’s when things started really getting crazy. To be fair, the Democrats are neither crazy nor stupid, but they are in rebellion against God and God is making them look stupid.
I'm betting against the 'unhinged Left'. And I'm not convinced they aren't both crazy and stupid.
GOP DEMANDS APOLOGY: An allegedly regretful Trump voter in Pennsylvania, highlighted in videos by a Democratic political action committee and by the New York Times, never actually voted in 2016.

Democrats will lie at the drop of a hat.
THIS IS NEWS TO ME: Christopher Steele used John McCain to spread dossier nonsense. To be sure, McCain hated Trump, but I never thought he'd stoop that low.
'WOKENESS' IS A VIRUS that infects everything.
BREAKING NEWS from America's news outlet of record: San Francisco dogs begin bagging people poop.

Even the dogs have tired of navigating the homeless- and drug-infested streets....
WASHINGTON EXAMINER OPINION: We should discourage students from attending college, not make it free.

While I understand - and largely agree with - the opinion, I don't care for the phrase 'discourage students from attending college'. The point is not to discourage students from going for further education; it's to ensure that they have - and the colleges they attend provide - marketable knowledge/skills on graduation.

Personally I don't think it's possible without a massive overhaul of the entire education system.
WHY LIBERALS hate Christmas:
[I]t is not just a moral distinction, though there is that, that drives liberal disdain — it is a fierce desire to maintain a social distinction wherein liberals believe themselves to be intellectually and culturally superior to conservatives. The central appeal of liberalism is the sense of superiority it confers on its followers, no matter how hollow its basis. The appeal of liberalism is to know, indisputably and at every moment of one's life, that you, as a liberal, are better than those mindless ordinary persons that you grew up with.
They're not nearly as 'superior' as they think they are. It's why their bubble is so dense.
DAVID SOLWAY: Common Sense and Common Folk.
Having recently moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, my wife and I decided, as part of our intention to integrate into the community, to attend a Vancouver Canucks hockey game. It was something of a special occasion as the game featured the only meeting of the season at the Rogers Arena between the Canucks and the Montreal Canadiens, the team I grew up rooting for and, indeed, once dreamed of playing for.

What surprised us was that the stadium seemed packed with Canadien fans, red white and blue sweaters everywhere around us, cries of “Go Habs Go” (from the team’s French nickname, les habitants) and loud cheers erupting for every Canadien goal dwarfing the vocal enthusiasm for the home team. Raised in Vancouver, Janice was appalled. Where was the municipal spirit, the fan loyalty, the pride of place? Was this the residue of rampant multiculturalism? I, of course, a native Quebecker, was delighted. And after all, win or lose, les Canadiens are a storied franchise akin to myth, going back to the founding of the National Hockey League in 1927, recalling the “flying Frenchman” of old, and comprising a pantheon of hockey greats that dominates the history of the sport. Canadien games are always sold out.

But there was something else we found equally if not more conspicuous, namely, the good nature, spirit of camaraderie, courtesy, respect and conviviality we were surrounded by. Recovering from a serious soccer injury, I was hobbling on a cane, as a result of which I was treated as a VIP. Security personnel escorted us to the Call Wicket and picked up our reserved tickets for us. The jammed corridors parted like the red sea for my halting passage. The fast-food vendors were patient, not fast, in serving us. Our row and seat neighbors were the soul of concern and graciousness. The aisle usher was unfailingly attentive. We were among real people, the so-called common folk from all walks of life, some well-off, some not so much, all standing for the anthem (no one, so to speak, taking a knee), most participating in the spirit of the game in an amiable and welcoming atmosphere.

On the Skytrain back to our new home, Janice and I, both early-retired professors after years of exposure to the nasty complexities of academic life, fell into conversation about the gaping difference between “the world” and “the academy,” between ordinary folk doing the world’s work and the cloistered parasites of the university hothouse, between lively people in the stands and bored students in the amphitheaters, between practical people and theoretical people, in short, between the do-ers and the talkers.

This summary is obviously to some extent a facile generalization -- there are some estimable people in Academe and unprepossessing people among the general public -- but it expresses a larger truth. We have far better relations and interesting encounters with tradespeople, for example, than we do with the general run of academics. Academe, we agreed, has increasingly come to resemble a hen party of professional backstabbers, cultural sycophants, sanctimonious prigs, administrative mercenaries and intellectual supremacists who regard themselves as elite opinion-makers and bellwethers of social progress. And, of course, they are the most influential pedlars of leftist hallucinations, graduating an army of gainfully unemployable millennials and propagandized radicals trained to carry forth their program of social destabilization and “egalitarian” coercion.
It's a long piece, but very much a worthy reads. Go there.

ACE OF SPADES HQ: Make gas cans great again. All it would take is an Executive Order - a pen to paper - and he would be a hero to millions of normal Americans.
One more thing - after restoring functioning gas cans, President Trump should assemble the EPA team and ask every executive and manager in the EPA if they personally support the current non-functioning gas cans. Any EPA employee who replies in the affirmative should be terminated on the spot - with insults, derision, and mockery.
Those no-spill gas cans have been a recurring nightmare I've written about a number of times. No more, though; I've ripped the no-spill guts out of every one I own.
AMERICAN GREATNESS: The political meaning of Christmas.
Most of us, myself included, do not often reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. Christ came to earth to save flawed human beings. We tend to think of this on a personal level, but it applies to every facet of history. Some of the greatest men in history have been seriously flawed....

I am inclined to think that God has his hand on Trump, who, as flawed as he is, is a lot more humble than many of his sanctimonious critics.
Read the whole post.
I KNEW IT: My Christmas tree is racist.

And much more silly season stuff from the cancel-culture 'woke'academy.