A Double Trenta Gift For Trump

Starbuck's CEO Howard Schulz is apparently planning to run as an independent in 2020. I can't imagine a greater gift for Donald Trump.

I'm not quite sure how this happened... or if it really will, but the word on the e-street is that arch-progressive Howard Schulz wants to run as an independent against Donald Trump. His reason is that "both parties are broken." Well, duh. But I don't think that's really what he's thinking. We'll get to that in a minute. But first...

The Democrats are furious. Indeed, they are already comparing him to Ralph Nader and H. Ross Perot and they think he's going to cost them the election. I agree. The Democrats are in a war right now between pretend-moderate leftists and bat-sh*t-crazy progressives, and they don't seem likely to support each other. If Schulz runs as an independent, this dynamic goes from poison to nuclear explosion. First, all the Democrats will need to run further left to minimize Schulz. The problem with that is crazy doesn't look good to the public, and Schulz has no incentive to be sane. He'll just keep outbidding them on the left and they will try to leapfrog him.

Secondly, no matter what happens, the progressives will split. If the moderate wins, then all the progressives will flee to Schulz because now they have a home. That will generate an election that looks like Trump 47%, Biden 34%, Schulz 19%, Ann Coulter 0%. Winner: Trump.

So a progressive needs to win, right? Well, not really. Progressives are faux purists who will split either way because the Democrat or Schulz is too white, too male, too rich, too corporate, too insider, too tall, too carbon, too ancestors were slave owners, too you-get-the-point. In that case, the election will be Trump 47%, Warren 42%, Schulz 11%, Ann Coulter 0%. Winner: Trump.

Either way, Trump wins. Thank you H. Ross Schulz.

So why is Schulz doing this? Frankly, I think he's looked and decided he will get lost in the Democratic Primary, which seems to be headed toward a sort of pageant of Mental Institution proportions. By standing tall outside of it, (1) he gets noticed and doesn't vanish standing between Beto O'Rourke and Micheal Bloomberg, (2) he gets to pretend to be an outsider, (3) he doesn't have to win the support of Democratic King-makers, and (4) he gets free publicity from all the hand-wringing to come. It's calculated treachery. Kind of brilliant. Except, he can't win.

Thoughts?

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Portrait of a (fake) Scandal

Those of us who aren't idiots have come to realize there is something really sick going on in the media. Indeed, the noxious cocktail of ignorance, self-importance, and bias has mixed with the "hot take" to create a world where the media have become the worst kind of rumormongers self-righteously spreading hate and disinformation at the speed of Twitter. Here's a wonderful example.

The NFL's Pro Bowl is this weekend. Shockingly, this waste of time will draw more people than NBA playoff games. Anyhoo, as part of the week of hype, they bring together the players voted to the Pro Bowl and let them compete in fun competitions and sign autographs. At one such competition this week, a New York Jet named Jamal Anderson was signing autographs when he spotted the mascot of their hated rivals the New England Patriots. What happened next, according to the video, is that Anderson made some comment about how everyone hates the Patriots and he basically said, "Hold ma beer and watch this." Then he tackled the mascot. The video ends with the mascot rolling over and slowly getting up as Anderson walks away.

The media attacks came fast and savagely. They claimed that Anderson hit the mascot so hard that the guy in the mascot suit ended up hospitalized. This drew a rash of stories, attacking Anderson, attacking the league, and wondering how such a thing could have happened... "what about the children?!" The trial had begun. There was talk that the league would suspend Anderson. There were articles suggesting that he should be kicked out of the league. There were articles about this being anti-Patriot bias (waaaah).

Anderson tried to apologize, saying he had heard the mascot ended up in the hospital, that he didn't mean to hurt the mascot and that he would check up on him. His apology was duly noted as a confession and further point of condemnation.

Of course, it turns out that none of the facts underlying this articles are true. The Patriots have denied that he was hospitalized. What's more, there is a second video which was just as available to anyone interested which shows the mascot getting up and tackling Anderson a moment later. In other words, it was clear that this was all for fun. Yet, not a single one of these "journalists" bothered to figure this out before writing their seething denouncements.

Even worse, Yahoo wrote an article today, now that everything is known, in which they describe this playful (but unintentionally too hard) tackle as "Anderson took out his anti-Patriot frustration on the mascot". They even continue the falsehood that the mascot was hospitalized -- even after the Patriots issued a statement denying it. Anyone who paid any attention at all knows that nothing in that characterization is true... yet, they wrote it.

At the same time, these journalists have whipped up their readers into a moron-frenzy and they are filling the comments sections of these articles with bloodthirsty idiocies condemning everyone involved and wishing death upon them all. Oh joy. Lazy journalists spreading fake outrage based upon lies has found its target market of bloodthirsty idiots.

Welcome to the modern media.

This, by the way, has been the same pattern with the Catholic kids v. the Indian (although journalists there also have been digging for dirt to utterly destroy each side) and every other issue to arise in the last few years. Condemn and scream before you know the facts, snap judgment is king!, never investigate... don't even pay attention, don't let facts interfere with your fire, and don't let the fact your facts are wrong interfere with the narrative. Shameful.

Thoughts?

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The Life of a Journalist

The year is 1947...

How do you spend your days, Mr. Journalist?

Well, I spent the 1930's looking for the human angle on the Great Depression. I talked to people in soup lines. I cheered on baseball and sport heroes. I followed FDR to his rallies. I watched the battles between the President and the Supreme Court, and I kept an eye on the wire reports in Europe. When war came in the 40's, I went overseas. I landed with the troops and wrote reports from the front.

The year is 2019...

How do you spend your days, Mr. Journalist?

I write snarky comments on Twitter. Oh, and I spend my days sifting through everything Trump does to show people how evil he is... everything. He puts ketchup on french fries! Ketchup!! Who does that?! //eye twitch Oh, and I look for things to call racism. It's all racism. Even when it isn't racism, it's racism. //eye twitch


One of these things is not like the other...

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You'll Get Nothing... And Like It

When I was young, I was worried that the Democrats actually wanted the things they claimed to want. Crazy... dangerous... destructive things. Over the years, however, it became clear that their agenda is just for show. We've just seen another example of that.

It was always a bit of a mystery why the Democrats had gone from the party that really controlled the levers of power and got whatever they wanted from the 1930s through the 1970s to a party that slowly stopped doing anything. They wanted socialist level taxes... yet agreed to Reagan's tax cuts. They wanted disarmament, yet funded the greatest military spending in history. They wanted crippling new environmental regs yet only really managed to increase CAFE standards. They wanted militant unionism and yet presided over the disassembling of non-government unions. They wanted racial quotas and yet agreed to fence blacks into majority-minority districts and watched the Supreme Court slowly dismantle affirmative action. They wanted guaranteed minimum income and settled for lower-than-inflation minimum wage hikes. What gives?

Then their demands got even stranger. Blacks want reparations and, basically, apartheid. Women want an equal pay law that would shift income from male jobs to female jobs, quotas in boardrooms and legislatures, plus a guilty-as-accused set of harassment laws. They've promised illegals citizenship. They've promised environmentalists industry-crippling carbon taxes. Internationalists (America lasters) get a series of treaties making America subservient to foreign regulators and courts. They've promised an end to capital punishment. A massive tax on the rich. Free healthcare for all. Free college. A disavowal of Israel. Nuclear disarmament. Conventional disarmament. Freeing of terrorists, banning of land mines, banning of phosphorous ammunition. Banning of drones. Closing Guantanamo. A $15 minimum wage. Ending arctic drilling. Killing coal. An end to student testing. An end to private schools. The shutting of "for-profit" colleges. Open borders. An end to the Electoral College. Statehood for liberal places like Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico.

And so on.

Every one of these ideas, and more, existed when Obama won election and the Democrats had a super-majority in the Senate (and House). They could have done any and all of this. But they didn't do any of it. Instead, we got a sop to big banks and "Obamacare", a sop to big insurance. Why didn't they do anything else?

The answer is that the Democrats aren't like the GOP. The GOP is a collection of generally like-minded people who mostly have common goals. In some instances, we disagree. But overall, we agree on about 80% of policy. The Democrats are a collection of tribes who have been bound together in the hopes of getting their own pet peeves fixed, but who don't have anything binding them together except their status of wanting their own wishes fulfilled.

This creates a problem for them, as I've mentioned with gays: once one of the tribes gets what they want, there's no reason for that tribe to stick around to help the rest. Success becomes suicide for them. Hence, they will talk about wanting these things... and they make noise about fighting for them... but they will never willingly deliver (remember: the gay stuff was given to gays by the Supreme Court).

We see this again now with Trump's proposal. Trump is trying to get a wall. It's honestly a silly idea. It will do nothing. Nor will it change immigration law in any meaningful way. So the Democrats would give up nothing voting for it. Basically, the Democrats could vote for this and laugh if they wanted. To get it, Trump has proposed giving the Dreamers a path to citizen (basically). That's a Democratic demand. So for giving basically nothing, the Democrats could get one of the things they want which they couldn't otherwise get. Yet, they're refusing.

Why?

I think this is more proof that the Democrats will never voluntarily accept/pass the things they claim to be pursuing because they are terrified of losing their tribes. Interesting, isn't it?

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Robots Don't Lie... Yes, The Do

There's a Sprint Commercial that has me annoyed. In it, the Sprintnicks tell some woman about some deal they are offering and she acts surprised. Could this deal be true?! Then her husband says, "Robots don't lie" and the robot says... wait for it... "The man in the mom jeans is correct." Funny, right? Don't worry, I'll wait for you to stop laughing. Anyways, this comment raises my ire. Why? Because Robots do lie... and they cheat.

Let's start with the obvious. Short of some sort of AI, robots are nothing more than repeaters. They repeat what they've been told to do or say. If I program a robot to tell a lie, it will do so happily. Robots are nothing more than machines. They do as they are programmed (much like liberals). They have no principles, no independent rules, no beliefs. They do whatever they are told. Tell it to speak a lie, it will. Tell it to kill, it will. Tell it to tear itself apart, it will.

Now, AI is different. AI, supposedly, has some independent thought. Putting aside the fact that no one has really produced a genuine AI and all the ones that exist are basically just robots obeying their programming, that independent thought gives the AI some independence. But here's the thing. There's nothing that says an AI won't lie... won't kill... won't cheat... won't be racist.

Several computer companies have unleashed their online AIs under the belief that they were ready to deal with humanity. Most of these had to be shut down almost immediately because they (1) spewed racist thoughts, (2) lied, (3) did other immoral things. Alexa has been caught several times telling people to kill themselves. This is a failure or programming which shows that AI's have no inherent morality, i.e. they have no limits that aren't programmed in.

Others have proven too clever by half. One AI was told to not to draw or lose tic-tac-toe. It's unexpected solution was never to start a game (kind of like War Games only unintentional). Another was told to drive fast but so safely that no accident was possible. It drove in a circle in the parking lot as fast as it could. Not what the programmers had in mind. Another was told to play a game mimicking life. It needed to gather energy to survive. The programmers had forgotten to assign a cost to having babies, so it started having babies in massive numbers and eating them for energy. Sounds like The Matrix.

The point is that while many are awed by technology as if it were magic, it's not. Technology does what it is programmed to do. And when it gets independence, its solutions are considered without some inherent moral code... and aren't always what the programmers want them to be.

So the man in the mom jeans is wrong... robots lie when programmers want them too and sometimes independently.

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Shutdown Thoughts

I've been watching the shutdown with morbid fascination. Here are some thoughts I've had.

● First, I find the shutdown to be evidence of what for rotten human beings our political class are. Real people are being needlessly hurt by this -- people not getting paychecks, businesses being blocked from needed services and goods, etc. -- and they really don't care. All of this could be avoided by either (1) giving Trump his pittance for a wall (the budget won't even notice), or (2) passing a bill continuing funding at current levels until a new budget is agreed to... letting them continue to argue without ruining lives. But they want people hurt because they want to point fingers. Think about that. Don't tell me that any of them care about real people.

● The Democrats in particular seem happy to keep the shutdown going. It's kind of amazing to see them on vacations rather than in Washington trying to solve this. Very callous. And the fact the leftist media ignores this and whines that Trump served fast food to guests tells us all we need to know about their genuineness.

● Some of my credit cards have sent out notices that if you work for the government to let them know because they will be somewhat forgiving. So, ironically, evil credit card companies are being more human than the Democratic Party.

● If the government can shut down and the country doesn't grind to a halt, why do we have one?

● It's funny how our Bug-Eyed Moron isn't refusing to take her salary during the shutdown as other progressives are, but that doesn't seem to matter to the left. I guess her $3,500 suits weren't an accident after all.

● I think the shutdown has put the final nail in Trump's coffin. I had his re-election chances pegged at "gasping for air" levels, and I think this shutdown probably pushed it even lower... snowball in hell. The problem is that the shutdown hits the working class the hardest... which is why elitist Democrats are in no rush to stop it either. The Democrats being hurt are federal government workers, but they are a tiny minority of Democrats, most of whom are teachers (state level employees), professional women (state or private sector admin), minorities (hardest hit), billionaires, or those on welfare. Trump's voters are the people who can't get goods through customs, can't get inspectors to let them keep working, and serve in the military.

● Does the shutdown make us look bad to the rest of the world as the media screams? I don't know... Brexit collapse... immigrant/anti-immigrant violence in German... France in yellow-vest riot collapse... socialism-induced collapse in Venezuela... massive corruption in Brazil... the seizing of white lands in South Africa... Islamic terrorism throughout the Middle East... corruption in Israel... Russia a clowntocracy...

Yeah, we look bad.

● I think the GOP needs to start pushing to open the government at last year's level until the wall issue and new budget can be decided (denying Trump and the Democrats their victory). They need to raise the PR cost on the Democrats by offering to make it possible to end the shutdown without deciding the issue in dispute. If the Democrats refuse, then they are clearly to blame. At the same time, that ties everyone's hands until the Democrats and Trump work things out... which will never happen. Basically, it stops the pain but freezes the government's ability to legislate in the process.

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You Go Girl

We've spoken a couple times about the war that is coming in Democratic ranks between women and blacks (hint: blacks will lose power, causing them to stay home, causing women to lose elections). But there's another war going on, an ideological war between intelligent Democrats and fools. The fools are winning this one.

The leader of the fools is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which translates in Spanish into "bug-eyed moron." She got elected when she beat one of the more powerful Democrats in a super-low-turnout primary in New York. Regardless of the low turn out, this Cinderella story fit perfectly with the new narrative for Democrats: a chick, "of color" unseats an old white dude who stood for nothing and became a star! Never mind that her election was a fluke... it took place in a district that is so safe the Democrats could have run a corpse and won... that it was a Democrat who is being painted as standing for nothing... and that she's only a star with progressives and the media.

Never mind either that she's a moron. How stupid is she? She's a child with a child's grasp of the world. Her world is shockingly uninformed and entirely black and white. She's got no life experience and clearly didn't pay attention in school. She claims to be a socialist, but doesn't know what it means and her one or two attempts to defend socialism went so poorly that she now avoiding substantive interviews. Imagine being too stupid to defend your own believes? //snicker snicker What's more, she's a mistake machine. She's made so many mistakes already that a normal politician probably would have resigned -- the only thing protecting her is the desire of the progressive, feminist wing of the left to have a champion, so the media protects her.

So why do we care about this clown?

Because she's leading this tiny, but media-supported, group of fellow morons who want to destroy the old guard of the democratic party and morph them into a socialist party. And since it is media supported, she can do no wrong... at least, they will report no wrong. So far, she's fought Nancy Pelosi, Claire McCaskill, and now Joe Lieberman and a smattering of others. She's introduce some idiot bills too, like the one trying to raise the upper tax bracket to 70% and she's gung-ho for screaming racism and impeachment. She's also a Ron Paul and won't support compromises.

Whether she wins on not, she seems to have become the tool of progressives in the media to try to force the Democrats to jump far left. She's like a reckless, self-righteous Bernie Sanders who doesn't care about the damage she does to her allies. And I suspect that "she" (read: the media) will succeed in tarring the Democrats with her views even as the Democrats have signaled an attempt to run toward the center.

In short, I'm hoping she makes it even more untenable for real people to be Democrats (costing them the rest of flyover country). I'm hoping she causes a schism between savvy Democrats and the progressive faction (splitting their support like libertarians won't vote Republican). I'm hoping her focus on feminism and her indifference to allies worsens the feud between blacks and women. And most importantly, I'm hoping she makes it impossible for Democrats to hide their leftism behind old, white, male elected officials to make the party seem less radical than they are. Let her become the face of the party!

Thoughts?

P.S. The media is trying desperately to defend her. She's broken every "rule" the other Democrats have tried to put into place (like not taking salary during the shutdown) and the media has attacked her accusers. They've even put out a ridiculous "study" that says conservative men are obsessed with her. Yeah, right.

P.S.S. Just today, our bug-eyed moron attacked CBS for announcing their team that will cover the upcoming election because it doesn't include a single black person. Get this though, it contains: one Arab, two Asians, one Hispanic, two white women and two white men. So six out of eight are minorities and yet she's screaming racism. See how stupid and out-there she is? This woman is a greater danger to her friends than anyone else.

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I'm Immortal

I spent the day at a funeral, which raised a lot of thoughts. One thought I wanted to discuss some months back but never got around to was: do you realize that in one sense, we are immortal? Yep. It turns out that every particle of our being has existed since the beginning of time. Each particle began as part of a ball of matter that exploded into a trillion suns and was transformed into particular elements by being cooked in a sun. Then it was spit out into the universe until it came here and made us.

Moreover, keep in mind what Einstein said about the preservation of matter. Nothing is ever destroyed. It is merely transformed into another state. This means the stuff that makes us will always exist... always. Doesn't that sound like it should count for something? If every part of me has existed since the beginning of time and will continue to exist until the end of time, what does that say about me? Even the energy that powers me (be that what it may) will always be conserved. Doesn't that sound like an immortal soul to you?

I think this means there is something much more out there for us than blinking into nothingness when we die. I think this means we must be something immortal, retaining our existence in some shape or form. I don't know what form for sure, but I think that's very comforting actually. You and I and everyone else were created to be immortal.

Thoughts?

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The Russians Aren't Coming! The Russians Aren't Coming!

I saw an interesting article this weekend that I wanted to summarize for you. I think it's important information to know to help you ignore a lot of scaremongering. It's about the threat Russia poses. For years now, Putin has been rattling his sabre. In the past year, I've seen lots of articles talking about what would happen if we went to war, lamenting the "weakness" of our military and Russia's strength, and generally trying to worry everyone. In particular, there have been articles talking up Russia's new steal fighter and hyper-sonic missiles. Don't believe it.

Consider this. In 2018, the Russian military (all branches combined) received 100 new aircraft. In 2019, they are scheduled to receive 100 more. These are meant to replace the approximately 108 airplanes in their fleet that age each year to the point they can no longer fly. Not that's 8 less than are expected to fail. Think about that. Each year, their military is getting weaker.

Their total number of planes is 3,600.

By comparison, the American military received around 300 new aircraft last year and is getting the same next year. These are supplementing the approximately 13,500 aircraft we fly. In other words, we fly four times as many planes as they do and we just bought three times as many. We are not weak. They are not gaining. They are falling further behind.

What's more, their yearly military budget is $70 billion. Ours is $686 billion. That makes our budget nine times theirs. And that doesn't even count the Europeans who would join us in a real war.

There's more too. While lots of people are upset about the Russian stealth fighter, here are some things to consider: Russia only ordered their first dozen stealth fighters in August and don't even have them yet. That's 12... total. Even worse, there is a real question if they are stealthy. The design is not a good one. The engines are too hot. The plane lacks sophisticated avionics, meaning it exposes itself when it tries to find targets. Worse yet, to be truly useful, a stealth plane needs an entire network of support planes, control planes, radars, satellites, etc. The Russians have none of that. Without that, a stealth plane is just a target.

Putin's Navy is weaker than our coast guard and risks sinking every time it sorties. His ground troops are little better.

All of this means that while Putin may rattle his sabre, he knows it's just a glorified toothpick. Unless he wants to fight a nuclear war, there will be no war.

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So Much For That

Sorry folks. Things have erupted with our youngest again in an ugly way. I will do my best to post articles, but I may miss a few. I really am sorry about this.

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The New Democratic Agenda... Day One

It's only Day One and we already have the new Democratic agenda. It's a doozy.

● Impeach Trump
● Force candidates to release their income taxes (so they can get Trump's)
● Stop any attempt to stop illegal immigration
● Make leftist Washington, D.C. the 51st state
● Replace the electoral college with the popular vote
● Impose a 70% tax rate on "the rich" (that's you, if you have a job)

That is the agenda of an America-hating asshole if you ask me.

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Happy New Year - Predictions

Here are some thoughts of what I see happening this year.

● The left is on the verge of fracturing. You can see it coming. The problem is that each group's claim to the party is that they are the true victims. Being a politicized victim means that your pain counts for more than other's pain. Hence, single white women and blacks are in direct competition for being the morally superior-ist. That puts them in direct competition.

Keep this in mind too... the white woman's movement is based on the idea that any woman's discomfort/embarrassment (either in sexual terms, i.e. he did something I see as creepy, or in "body positive" ways, i.e. don't call me fat!) should be criminalized. Black men, however, are cultural troglodytes in this regard. For one thing, they are men by definition, which makes them oppressors to these women. But even worse, black male culture is steeped in things white women have tried to rid from the culture for decades, resulting in snowflake males. At the same time, the black male movement demands absolution for any misconduct, up to and including rape and real crimes. This flies in the face of white women demands to criminalize pet peeves. That puts these groups in opposition. Meanwhile, the black woman movement seems to be based on the hatred of white women being seen as more beautiful, which they have morphed into the idea of white woman privilege. They are also particularly upset that black men prize white women, see e.g. almost any black rapper, athlete, or actor, which makes this anger visceral. The end result is that black women see white women as oppressors. White women see black men as oppressors. And black men seem largely absent from the debate, except for some doctrinaire leftists, who tend to be racial separatists and view all whites as oppressors.

That's not a coalition that can last. And you're seeing evidence of this. For one thing, black women are abandoning the chick rallies. They just cancelled one in California out of fear that only white women would show up. I can also show you a steady flow of articles by black women attacking white women for not understanding that black women have a morally superior claim to victimhood.

So what does this mean? I think it means that they will have an increasingly difficult to turn out their voters. It will also make it very hard to attract other minorities... if either group even wants to.

As an aside, I've got some really great evidence that leftism isn't making any inroads with the public. I'll present that next week.

● 2019 will also see an ugly fight between conservative Democrats, if there are any left, and the new socialist kids. This risks wiping out the gains the Democrats just made in the heart of the country.

● I suspect that a handful of Republicans will give the Democrats cover to impeach Trump.

● I still think Hillary dies before Trump's term is up. She seems to be hiding medical issues that make her physically infirm. I'm also suspecting now that Pelosi will leave office for medical reasons. She seems to be in the not-so-early phases of dementia.

● New government in France within weeks. Marcon seems to have pushed his base away too far and they are trying to bring him down now. Marcon has actually been a friend of the US, so I don't see this as a good thing.

● Brazil is going to be interesting to watch. They are sending out snipers to shoot armed criminals now without warning. On the heels of the Philippines war on drug dealers, this is an interesting step away from the global liberalism of the past half century.

● There are lots of things the Democrats could do which Trump would sign: gun control, path to citizenship, etc. But watching them handle budget issue, I'm fairly certain they don't want anything to happen until after 2020... except Trump smears.

● Lastly, I think there's a short, minor recession coming this year. Duck and cover.

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