TRUMP TWEETS are "... the laser dots that the puppies in the media chase."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD: The Primal Scream of Identity Politics. Longish, and there's a simpler explanation: they're nuts.

REPUBLICAN STUDENTS identify alleged vandal, UNCW investigates.

Does anyone want to bet that this 'investigation' isn't swept under the rug?

TWO HEROIC LOCALS who shot Texas gunman outside the church, chased him in their truck at 95mph and ran him off the road as he bled out.

Please explain to me why I have to go to a British newspaper to get reasonably accurate U.S. news....

TWO LETHAL LANDMINES in the tax reform bill. I can't comment on the small business pass-through provision, but I would hardly use the term 'middle class' for anyone who can afford a $500,000 mortgage.

IS DONNA BRAZILE signaling the Clinton era is over?

No, it was over before Donna Brazile crawled out from under the bus wreckage.

SPORTSCASTER VIN SCULLY: "I will never watch another NFL game."

ALSO: I noticed Papa John's is now advertising its pizza on college football game broadcasts....

HOW TO DESTROY AMERICAN CULTURE in six easy steps.

Luckily for us, most of American culture lives outside these liberal twits' bubble.

AMMO GRRRLL lends a helping hand understanding the American Muslim response to terrorism.

THAT DAMN PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM AGAIN: geometry perpetuates white privilege. If only those damn Greeks had been Muslims ... or Native Americans.

I wonder if she has a clue as to how much 'mathematics' there is in her mobile phone....

ONLY IN WASHINGTON, D.C.: For the bureaucrat, it makes perfect sense.

MOSTLY PEACEFUL: afterpolice relieve antifa protesters of baseball bats and axe handles.

NEVER A DULL MOMENT: On a scale of 1 to 10, the Democrats' outrage meter is locked at 11. Or 12. Or 13....

AUTUMN LEAVES, November 5:

What a difference a cold snap makes. Here are this week's pictures. As usual, we begin with the view from our deck and this week it's all reds, golds, and bare.

Here are last weeks pictures for comparison.

The driveway view isn't as dramatic, but still we're seeing quite a bit of change over the week with the browns and golds (and a bit of red) take center stage.

It was warm enough that I ventured down to the pond again Here's the pond view, and for comparison, a similar view from two weeks ago. Another dramatic change -- the green is almost entirely gone, replaced with reddish browns. Note, too, that the pond surface is covered with a surface scum left from all the fallen leaves.

Here's another pond view taken, as the one from two weeks ago, about midway up the 126 steps from house to pond.

As a bonus this week, here's a picture looking back from Seminole Way, an overgrown 'road' that serves as a back entrance to the pond.

Its narrowness, combined with the overhanging branches, make it seem more like a tunnel than a roadway.

IT'S NOT TOO MUCH to ask demand our GOP hacks show some loyalty to their voters.

FEUDING WITH DONALD TRUMP is a bad idea.

MALLARD FILLMORE explains Hollywood culture.

THIS WEEK'S EDITION of PowerLine's Week in Pictures has posted. It's an omnibus mockery edition, but this 'Hillary-o-ween' cartoon can't be beat.

Now click on over and see the rest.

FROM MY EMAIL: Is it time to remove sound suppressors (i.e. mufflers) from all rental trucks so we can hear them coming?

Democrats should approve. After all, they're the ones insisting on keeping 'silencers' (technically, suppressors) on guns illegal, so (as they appear to believe) that the victims can duck before the bullets hit....

ON TRUMP'S LACK OF DECORUM, DIGNITY, AND STATESMANSHIP:

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.” Here’s my answer:

We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.

We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?

We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?

And the results were always the same. This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today. The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety. With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America ’s first wartime president in the Culture War.

During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”

General George Patton was a vulgar-talking, son-of-a-bitch. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum then, Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.

Trump is fighting. And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You magnificent bastards, I read your book!”

That is just the icing on the cake, but it’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics. That book is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals’ war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis. It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.

Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after “the fake media” — and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri — Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal.

Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.” ... Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. ... They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices. They can either “go high” (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery. The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve.

It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive. Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s church.. Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.

So, to my friends on the Left — and the #NeverTrumpers as well — do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”? Of course I do. These aren’t those times. This is war. And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years. So, say anything you want about this president - I get it - he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don’t care. I can’t spare this man. He fights for America!

This came in my email. Whoever wrote it, he or she brilliantly captured the zeitgeist of 'Trumpism'.

He fights. He fights for me.