American sports fans not from the Philadelphia area have been conditioned never to root for any Philly team, ever.
And American sports fans not from the Boston area have been conditioned never to root for any Boston team, ever, especially if that team is the New England Patriots of the National Football League.
Well, the match-up for Super Bowl LII has now been set and it is the New England Patriots versus the Philadelphia Eagles. Heaven forfend! What shall American fans do? What, what, I ask!
Well, for me, I subscribe more to the first paragraph than the second, so...
One story we haven't been able to get away from over the past week is the allegation that Donald Trump described Haiti and some unidentified African countries as "shitholes."
I happen to believe the allegation, and look, I understand why it upsets people that a POTUS would say that, but here's the thing: Haiti is a shithole, and so are many African countries, and everybody including Corey Crocodile Tears Booker knows it.
Trump is being criticized not for telling a lie, but for telling the truth. No matter how much they publicly claim to be horrified by his adjective of choice, every single Democrat politician and left wing journalist privately agrees with it, and I suspect many of them have used it themselves (privately of course) when talking about the exact same locales.
For those who care about the human condition, the proper response to Trump's remark is not to ask "why would he call those places shitholes?" but to ask "why have those places been made into shitholes?" And then: "What can be done to make them not be shitholes? What can be done to enable their inhabitants to reach their fullest human potential?"
I italicize the word "care" on purpose, because there is a big difference between caring about a bad situation in a general sense (which most people do) and caring about it to the extent that it keeps you up at night (which few people do). What annoys me to no end is politicians pretending to be justice warriors and armchair philanthropists pretending to be real ones. The publicly vocal critics of Trump's remark come overwhelmingly from those two incestuous populations of hypocrites.
By the way, yes, I know that Trump talked about "shithole countries" in the context of immigration. And yes, that does give his critics reason (real reason) to wonder if there was something more sinister behind his adjective, but I see no actual reason to believe there is: Let's not forget that before he ran for president as a non-Democrat (which is what his critics consider to be his true crime) Donald Trump was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, and was praised more than once by Jesse Jackson in front of Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.
The evidence that Trump is racist amounts to people saying he is racist. And their main reason for saying so is that there were some racists among the scores of millions of people who didn't vote for Clinton. But there were also some (more?) racists among the scores of millions of people who did vote for Clinton. It's called math.
If we are being honest, there is much more evidence that Barack Obama is racist than there is that Donald Trump is racist. However, the hyperventilating Facebook sociologists who knee-jerkingly accuse Trump of racism would never consider looking at the former evidence, much less consider admitting that it even exists.
I, like all conservatives, am pro-immigration. My heart strings, just like those of all conservatives, are easily tugged by stories of people from "shithole countries" coming to the USA and attaining for themselves a better lot in life than they could have attained in their homeland, all while contributing to our blessedly mongrel culture and supporting the blessed cause of individual liberty. But that does not change the fact that our borders cannot be open like a sieve, and that we must therefore pick and choose who we allow in.
If there are 20,000 jobs to go around and 15,000 Americans looking for jobs, how can we let in 50,000 job-seekers from other lands? Wouldn't doing that drive wages down rather than up, and thus drive standards of living down rater than up? And are we facing a janitor shortage or a doctor shortage? And don't medical and technology specialists, who are not easy to find and replace, have more to offer than those who sweep rooms and clean toilets and are easy to find and replace? It feels kind of wrong to say these things out loud, but they are obvious truths and must be dealt with as such; refusing to acknowledge them does not do anyone any good.
Another story we can't yet get away from is The Great Government Shutdown of 2018!
A big part of me wants to tread lightly, because I have personal friends of both political persuasions who work for the federal government and who are being told to report to work and perform their jobs while receiving no pay. One of them has four kids to feed. Another is pregnant. When it comes to the shutdown business, this is the human side which rarely gets mentioned but of which we should be aware.
Still, there is a big part of me that wants to tread heavily on this, because in almost every instance I can remember -- including this one -- it has been Democrats who shut the government down yet Republicans who got blamed for it. And it has been Democrats who have deliberately chosen to shut down parts of the government most likely to impact "ordinary Americans" (like national parks where people go on vacation) rather than shut down superfluous crap (like the NEA).
In order to avoid the current shutdown, last week's Senate bill needed to get 60 votes. Republicans voted in favor of the bill by a count of 45-5 while Democrats voted against it 44-5, and somehow this is being portrayed as the Republicans shutting everything down.
Elementary math tells you the Democrats opted to do this. And when you consider that they had no objections to what was in the bill (they simply wanted it to have more) it is obvious that the only way Democrats would not have done this is if Republicans rolled over and obediently did every single thing Democratsdemanded they do asked them to do -- never mind that Republicans are in the majority because a majority of Americans (who employ them) put them in the majority in order to enact Republicans measures, not Democrat measures.
In other words: Shutting down the government was an act of dictatorship by the minority, planned and orchestrated by the same political party which defended slavery and imposed Jim Crow, the same political party which has long had a soft spot for dictators from Stalin to Minh to Castro.
Shutting down parts of a representative government, against the people's will, because you don't get what you want, is not in the same league as throwing political prisoners in gulags. But it does stem from a tyrannical impulse, especially when done by a political party whose history is what I described above. That party is one of the two dominant parties in these United States, and it is the Democratic Party, and it does no good to play nice with that party when it routinely slanders and harasses and lies about anyone who disagrees with it. I think it is time to start calling a spade a spade and referring to the Democratic Party as the Dictator Party.
I am a conservative and I have problems with the GOP -- which I also do not trust, albeit to a much different degree. But those problems do not include The Great Government Shutdown of 2018! Said shutdown is nothing more than political theater intended to deceive the ignorant, and it is the Democrats' shutdown, not the Republicans'.
And now for some links...
In the "shithole countries" section above, I italicized the word "care" and explained why. Here is the article, published 16 years ago by John Derbyshire, where I kind of got the idea. I say "kind of" because when I read it now, it doesn't rally give a care-in-italics explanation the way I recall. But it kind of does, and is where I got the idea regardless, and is still a good read.
Nikita Kucherov doesn't only have game -- he also has merch!
An American hockey winger playing for South Korea in next month's Olympics.
Secret paths to spots where Catholic Mass was secretly held in old Ireland.
Th U.S. government lied to you about Cliven Bundy.
Speaking of lying, this "call 'em out" piece is an oldie (actually, only 35 months old) but a goodie.
If only there were more like him.
Dilbert's creator knows about more than just how to doodle.
And American sports fans not from the Boston area have been conditioned never to root for any Boston team, ever, especially if that team is the New England Patriots of the National Football League.
Well, the match-up for Super Bowl LII has now been set and it is the New England Patriots versus the Philadelphia Eagles. Heaven forfend! What shall American fans do? What, what, I ask!
Well, for me, I subscribe more to the first paragraph than the second, so...
* * * * *
One story we haven't been able to get away from over the past week is the allegation that Donald Trump described Haiti and some unidentified African countries as "shitholes."
I happen to believe the allegation, and look, I understand why it upsets people that a POTUS would say that, but here's the thing: Haiti is a shithole, and so are many African countries, and everybody including Corey Crocodile Tears Booker knows it.
Trump is being criticized not for telling a lie, but for telling the truth. No matter how much they publicly claim to be horrified by his adjective of choice, every single Democrat politician and left wing journalist privately agrees with it, and I suspect many of them have used it themselves (privately of course) when talking about the exact same locales.
For those who care about the human condition, the proper response to Trump's remark is not to ask "why would he call those places shitholes?" but to ask "why have those places been made into shitholes?" And then: "What can be done to make them not be shitholes? What can be done to enable their inhabitants to reach their fullest human potential?"
I italicize the word "care" on purpose, because there is a big difference between caring about a bad situation in a general sense (which most people do) and caring about it to the extent that it keeps you up at night (which few people do). What annoys me to no end is politicians pretending to be justice warriors and armchair philanthropists pretending to be real ones. The publicly vocal critics of Trump's remark come overwhelmingly from those two incestuous populations of hypocrites.
* * * * *
By the way, yes, I know that Trump talked about "shithole countries" in the context of immigration. And yes, that does give his critics reason (real reason) to wonder if there was something more sinister behind his adjective, but I see no actual reason to believe there is: Let's not forget that before he ran for president as a non-Democrat (which is what his critics consider to be his true crime) Donald Trump was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, and was praised more than once by Jesse Jackson in front of Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.
The evidence that Trump is racist amounts to people saying he is racist. And their main reason for saying so is that there were some racists among the scores of millions of people who didn't vote for Clinton. But there were also some (more?) racists among the scores of millions of people who did vote for Clinton. It's called math.
If we are being honest, there is much more evidence that Barack Obama is racist than there is that Donald Trump is racist. However, the hyperventilating Facebook sociologists who knee-jerkingly accuse Trump of racism would never consider looking at the former evidence, much less consider admitting that it even exists.
I, like all conservatives, am pro-immigration. My heart strings, just like those of all conservatives, are easily tugged by stories of people from "shithole countries" coming to the USA and attaining for themselves a better lot in life than they could have attained in their homeland, all while contributing to our blessedly mongrel culture and supporting the blessed cause of individual liberty. But that does not change the fact that our borders cannot be open like a sieve, and that we must therefore pick and choose who we allow in.
If there are 20,000 jobs to go around and 15,000 Americans looking for jobs, how can we let in 50,000 job-seekers from other lands? Wouldn't doing that drive wages down rather than up, and thus drive standards of living down rater than up? And are we facing a janitor shortage or a doctor shortage? And don't medical and technology specialists, who are not easy to find and replace, have more to offer than those who sweep rooms and clean toilets and are easy to find and replace? It feels kind of wrong to say these things out loud, but they are obvious truths and must be dealt with as such; refusing to acknowledge them does not do anyone any good.
* * * * *
Another story we can't yet get away from is The Great Government Shutdown of 2018!
A big part of me wants to tread lightly, because I have personal friends of both political persuasions who work for the federal government and who are being told to report to work and perform their jobs while receiving no pay. One of them has four kids to feed. Another is pregnant. When it comes to the shutdown business, this is the human side which rarely gets mentioned but of which we should be aware.
Still, there is a big part of me that wants to tread heavily on this, because in almost every instance I can remember -- including this one -- it has been Democrats who shut the government down yet Republicans who got blamed for it. And it has been Democrats who have deliberately chosen to shut down parts of the government most likely to impact "ordinary Americans" (like national parks where people go on vacation) rather than shut down superfluous crap (like the NEA).
In order to avoid the current shutdown, last week's Senate bill needed to get 60 votes. Republicans voted in favor of the bill by a count of 45-5 while Democrats voted against it 44-5, and somehow this is being portrayed as the Republicans shutting everything down.
Elementary math tells you the Democrats opted to do this. And when you consider that they had no objections to what was in the bill (they simply wanted it to have more) it is obvious that the only way Democrats would not have done this is if Republicans rolled over and obediently did every single thing Democrats
In other words: Shutting down the government was an act of dictatorship by the minority, planned and orchestrated by the same political party which defended slavery and imposed Jim Crow, the same political party which has long had a soft spot for dictators from Stalin to Minh to Castro.
Shutting down parts of a representative government, against the people's will, because you don't get what you want, is not in the same league as throwing political prisoners in gulags. But it does stem from a tyrannical impulse, especially when done by a political party whose history is what I described above. That party is one of the two dominant parties in these United States, and it is the Democratic Party, and it does no good to play nice with that party when it routinely slanders and harasses and lies about anyone who disagrees with it. I think it is time to start calling a spade a spade and referring to the Democratic Party as the Dictator Party.
I am a conservative and I have problems with the GOP -- which I also do not trust, albeit to a much different degree. But those problems do not include The Great Government Shutdown of 2018! Said shutdown is nothing more than political theater intended to deceive the ignorant, and it is the Democrats' shutdown, not the Republicans'.
* * * * *
And now for some links...
In the "shithole countries" section above, I italicized the word "care" and explained why. Here is the article, published 16 years ago by John Derbyshire, where I kind of got the idea. I say "kind of" because when I read it now, it doesn't rally give a care-in-italics explanation the way I recall. But it kind of does, and is where I got the idea regardless, and is still a good read.
Nikita Kucherov doesn't only have game -- he also has merch!
An American hockey winger playing for South Korea in next month's Olympics.
Secret paths to spots where Catholic Mass was secretly held in old Ireland.
Th U.S. government lied to you about Cliven Bundy.
Speaking of lying, this "call 'em out" piece is an oldie (actually, only 35 months old) but a goodie.
If only there were more like him.
Dilbert's creator knows about more than just how to doodle.
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