The Joys Of Victimhood

                                                                     

This past month we saw a Snowflake rebellion over on the campus of Syracuse University. Seems someone had scribbled racist comments on a bathroom wall and it set off an explosion of outrage that someone on their campus might harbor racist thoughts.

Both local and campus police quickly began investigating. The FBI was brought in. That was not enough. Thousands of students congregated in protest. They demanded that a million dollars be set aside to re-educate the entire faculty on racial and social oppression.

Syracuse's liberal dean immediately allocated the million and was drawing up plans to mentally cleanse the faculty........even if the professors never stepped a foot in said bathroom.

Upon the dean's satisfying what the Snowflakes demanded the Dean called an assembly and announced he was meeting all of their demands. The students said it wasn't enough. They stomped their feet in loud unison and demanded the dean's resignation. They demanded safe spaces

In the interim another racist comment was found on campus. Except the guy was caught. He turned out to be a fellow snowflake and explained he wrote that stuff to call attention to all the submerged racism.

Turns out all the racist comments scribbled were not by racists but by the snowflakes themselves..........looking for something to protest about.

All that ruckus about nothing. These snowflakes had shit in their own diaper, then complained about the stink.

Added note: Last year a liberal think tank, alarmed by the growing racial incidents, funded investigations to find out why. They fanned out all over the country, performing "deep background" investigations on all the purported racial incidents. The liberals were shocked to find out that fully two thirds of alleged racial incidents were totally contrived.........either made up or falsely staged.

It must be absolutely miserable to be a snowflake. Seems their life has so little purpose, so little meaning, they must actually create ways they might be offended.

Victimhood is now a plague on our society........one that may never be resolved.

Sad. Oh so damned sad.

Why Meatloaf Ought To Be On The Thanksgiving Table

                                                                   

It was Benjamin Franklin who wanted the turkey to be deemed our national symbol. Thankfully better heads prevailed and our founders chose the eagle.

I don't know why Franklin and his ilk had such a fetish for turkey. They are ugly birds. And, let's face it, if you don't dress the dish up with cranberry and stuffing, and smother it in gravy, it ain't really much of a meat.

So the other night, as I was scarfing down my wife's utterly delicious meatloaf, I began to think meatloaf really ought to be the centerpiece on our nation's Thanksgiving Day table. 

Consider how meat loaf is made. Your toss into a bowl a certain amount of ground beef, you add ground sausage, you toss in an egg, then you dump your chopped up, stale, three day old bread into the mix. You add spices, stir it all up, then dump into a loaf pan for baking.

Let's face it; America has always stood for diversity. We have somehow been able to mix English, German, Irish, Italian, Chinese and Japanese and Hispanic, and served up a melting pot that nourished us for more than two hundred years.

All we are as a people is basically meatloaf, the the sum of our parts much greater than the many parts that make up that whole! 

You might be interested in knowing that meat loaf has been around since Roman times. But it wasn't until America began preparing it that it became a tasty dish indeed!

So we are wrong to be embracing the turkey. No matter how we doll it up it will never achieve the culinary delight we find in a good pan of meatloaf. 

Maybe we could save the turkey for another holiday. New Year's Day perhaps? When our stomachs are a bit queasy after the New Year's Eve debauchery of downing quarts of hard liquor? A good Bloody Mary and the penance of dry turkey meat ought to be our lot for drinking, dancing and wearing funny hats the night before!

That's all I got to say. If you think I'm crying "fowl" on turkey, well you're right!

Happy Meatloaf Day, Blog friends!

A Thousand Shards Of Hell

                                                                 

Twenty years ago one struggled to detect future societal trends. Today they rise up and bitch slap you in the morning headlines. 

Tim Tebow putting his dog down was heart-rending. Watching Elizabeth Warren being shouted down by the very folks she and her liberal brethren have spawned was equally sad. While I have no affection for Warren it is sad to see what liberals have wrought in the spermal offal liberals they produced.........whole generations of severely imperfect societal tit suckers demanding perfection from others.

The media loves it. The national chaos fills their air time and keeps eyeballs glued to the screen.

There is a reason why we are experiencing a surge of folks who love dogs. All in all they are far nobler creatures than their human masters.

Trying to figure out what kind of society we'll have in twenty years is like trying to put together a jig saw puzzle. Government entities sue the drug companies for their drug abuse woes and their own failures in managing the problem. Problems themselves become society's solutions. Drug problem? Legalize cannabis and pass out free needles to those into heavier stuff.

Crime problem? Attack the police, call them racist when you find minorities represent the largest criminal element. Make police work such a hard road to hoe the good ones give up and you get cops as corrupt as that in a third world country. 

Immigration problem? Ignore the immigration laws that are hard to enforce. Legalize the illegal. Throw out the welcome mat to all of central and south America and worry about the consequences later.

Education Problem? Ignore poor parenting and poor teachers and administration and just throw more money at it. Then dispense with grading and merit scores and failure becomes success. And when the illiterates migrate to adulthood forgive their student loans and raise hourly salaries to "living wages" with $15 dollar Big Macs, so that no one is a loser.

Our nation's history? Re-write it. Demonize the founders and every imperfect icon who ever trod on the American landscape. Stow their statues in industrial warehouses somewhere, then champion instead those who did nothing........and thus offend no one.

Capitalism? Do away with it. Brand every wealthy success story as an attack on the unproductive. Confiscate their wealth and give it to those too lazy to work. Rather than working to bake a bigger pie, fight over the little pie.

Heroes? Integrate women into combat units, even when they physically can't meet combat standards. Ignore the military altogether and choose as your icon Hollywood divas who display a talent for displaying butt and boob. Label blue collar as "dumb" for going to work everyday and keeping the lights burning and water running.

Greening? Shut down nuclear reactors, coal mines, natural gas companies and oil rigs and then try to figure out a way to keep the economy running on solar panels and windmills......or wonder about the energy source you'll use to re-charge that electric car. Cheer the "green champs", even as they flit about in their private jets and own a carbon footprint larger than your entire neighborhood.

There are 990 more of those "shards from hell"......but I'm tired of writing about them. As a nation we either try to piece those shards back together or we crumble, like Rome, into the ash heap of history.

Sigh.

I'm Not Ready For Still Another Social Experiment

                                                                           

Democratic candidates for President are so out of the mainstream even their party loyalists are agonizing over who might govern from the "left-middle". Not a week goes by that we don't see some new champion emerging in the polls. First it was Biden out front, then Bernie for a week or two, then Liz for a month. Now the polls in both New Hampshire and Iowa have South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg taking the lead.

I'm sorry but I'm not ready for "Mayor Pete" to be "President Pete". I'm sure I'm in the minority on this but I'm not ready for a "First Man", I'm not ready for the hand-holding and victory kisses. But most of all I'm not ready for the 20 percent of the country who are cruel savages, who fill social media with terms like President Butt Plug, or a Commander in Chief labeled as President Butt Giggle.

Frankly, I'm not ready for still another social experiment. First we voted in a Black man who nearly destroyed us. Then we elected a businessman who couldn't recite you even the Preamble to the Constitution, or even score five of the ten Bill of Rights. This nation cannot afford still another social experiment.........just too see how a gay man might steer the ship of state.

There may come a time for that. I don't believe it is now and I don't believe why I say that stems from my aversion to gay marriage. While I have resolved myself to accepting (and not being cruel about) gay marriage, I believe there are far too many important national issues that need to be resolved. And we don't resolve those with ever increasing fractures in our society.

Call me a sexual bigot if you like. But even when I throw out all the other objections to Buttigieg I can only come up with a mayor of South Bend, Indiana who has been largely ineffective in solving even that city's woes. How can we expect him to lead a nation when he has shown he can't even manage a city?

I have no idea who's gonna win the Democratic Presidential lottery. And don't much care. My values clash so fiercely with all of them I find none to be acceptable......"Mayor Pete" among them.

Deep State

                                                                       

Every few months some conservative political pundit writes an essay about the "Deep State" that anyone elected to go to Washington, to stop the dry rot on the ship of state, has to combat. Almost always those essays are targeting some rogue who sits high in the governmental pecking order.

Unfortunately it is not folks like today's impeachment witnesses, Lt. Col Vindman or Ms. Williams, who present the biggest roadblock to reform. Instead it is the hundreds of thousands of government bureaucrats who actively or passively resist ridding Washington of waste and corruption, which is the source of their well financial well being. It is those GS 5's to GS7s, parked in cubicles on the multi-floor, marble fronted governmental ant hills, who want everything to stay as it is. Tens of thousands of those bureaucrats serve no useful purpose. Many were hired as political favors from some federal solon. And as we have seen in the occasional headline-grabbing revelation, many of them are cruising porn sites or gaming or mixing it up on social media when they are supposed to be laboring at some dreamed up task they were hired for.

And most of these deeply burrowed but well compensated moles are bonafide members of the Democratic party. It is the Democrats who best protect and defend their unionized lethargy.

Those "deep state" people are the ones who sneer at the citizen who seeks some form of government assistance. Those "deep staters" are much like the guy at your local DMV, or the municipal bureaucrat you can't get on the phone when you wish to protest a property tax error.

There are two million people working for the U.S. government at the federal level. And many of them have never spent a single day in all their years of employment doing something productive for you and I. The only commonality those deep staters have in common is resistant to change.

That's the formidable obstacle a reformer like Mr. Trump must battle to change anything in Washington......... a task that is virtually impossible. You would have to burn Washington down to its roots to make any headway in ending Washington corruption.

So as we watch the impeachment hearings. As we listen to Lt. Colonel Vindman, or Miss Williams, let's remember that they are only what we see above the surface. These are just the people who work in government and get their 15 minutes of fame.

I am not denigrating either of these two witnesses in any way. Unlike the character assassinating that Mr Trump practices, I'm just saying that President Trump is being attacked, not because he's a bit idiotic, but because he's Republican. You would never see teams of bureaucrats rebelling against Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. Those Democrats were one of them........they, as Democrats, are their protectors of the status quo. Now those two million largely Democratic federal workers are coming out of the woodwork, doing their best to discredit someone who, no matter how inept, is trying to root out fifty years of government corruption.

The Deep State is alive and well, people. You should be afraid...........very afraid.

Why You May Not Want That Pay Raise

                                                                       

Read three opinion pieces this week from liberals demanding higher pay for American workers. Idiots.

First of all, one ought to realize that only under Trump have American workers seen an increase in their paychecks. Obama sure didn't make it happen.

Secondly, a bigger paycheck does not guarantee you either a better life, or greater buying power. One need only look to 1980, the last year of the Jimmy Carter Presidential disaster. 

During Carter's term the AFL and CIO and UAW unions were demanding and getting 10% annual raises. But in order for the Democrats to satisfy greedy unions, companies had to charge more for their products and services.

So, in Carter's last year the inflation rate was nearly 14%....meaning your buying power was declining by that much each year. And the hardest hit were people living off their life savings, or drawing a Social Security check. (Yes, there really were old people eating dog food back then).

Once elected it took Ronald Reagan several years to wring inflation out of the economy. (See chart below) To do that he had to battle the George Meany and Jimmy Hoffa union thugs, and fire all the Air Traffic Controllers en masse.

Compare Carter's numbers to Trump's. The current inflation rate is 1.76 percent and American wages have increased 2.5 to 3 percent annually since Trump took office.

So what would you, the average Joe working in small business, or on a government pension prefer to have.....a 3 percent wage hike and low inflation.........or a five percent wage hike and 14 percent annual inflation?

If I have to explain why Trump's economy is better than Carter's or Obama's we are all in trouble.

Whipped Cream Before The Beef Is Served

                                                                       

That's exactly what the first morning of public impeachment hearings was like. The Democrats hit the "go" button on a can of Reddi Whip and ginned out fiction as fragile as a fairy.

Then came the Republicans' chance to question the two witnesses. Using the transcripts of the witnesses's own previous testimony the Republicans served up the beef. And the Democrats' trumped up charges went "poof" like a fallen soufflé.

Most telling was the witnesses' own admission that the Ukrainian government during the Obama/Biden regime was so corrupt Hunter Biden's Ukrainian boss ran off to Monaco with $14 billion of the U.S. taxpayer's money.

Put in that context one has to wonder why Trump might be concerned about the Biden-Ukrainian connection and, perhaps worse, the Ukraine's intervention into the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton, as well as where $400 million of U.S. foreign aid will managed THIS time.

Heard that only 33 percent of Americans tuned into this morning's hearings. Maybe they gagged on all that Reddi Whip and hit the "Off" button on their remotes.

We can be assured that the Democrats will not give up. Still bereft over the 2016 election they are hoping this dog and pony show will help them in 2020. I wouldn't bet on it. Beef before Reddi Whip.......every damned time.

Sigh.

Money Never Helps If Your Message Doesn't Resonate

                                                                   

In the last year two billionaires have learned the hard way that they can't buy the Presidency.  Now it seems Michael Bloomberg might give it a shot.  Long before Starbucks magnate Howard Schultz tried, decades before liberal billionaire Tom Steyer tried to stuff the ballot box, Ross Perot funded much of his own campaign, did relatively well, but really only managed to get Bill Clinton elected.

So far at least the Presidency is not for sale, except collectively, by party, if a bigger gravy bowl is promised.  Going solo hasn't worked very well.  How many of you would be surprised to know that Hillary Clinton spent twice as much as Trump during their 2016 struggle.  Instead Trump turned campaign funding upside down.  Instead of hustling votes through small towns he simply held big media following rallies that ran on both the morning and evening news.  Ironically it was the media that elected Trump.  Anytime they wanted high ratings they simple had Trump drop by in the studio for an interview.  

Trump would then reiterate his campaign points.  The liberal pundits would patiently wait him out, then snicker at his agenda as soon as Trump left.  Those liberal snickers were what got Trump elected.  Seems the American people supported what Trump said, and what the media thought was funny.

I recently read a news piece that said the media gave Trump about $5 billion dollars in free media face time; TV time that Trump would have had to pay for had the media passed him up.

Anyone paying attention in 2016 witnessed Hillary ads 24/7.  Combined, Hillary's campaign and the Democratic party shelled out over a billion dollars in an effort to get Hillary crowned.  Didn't work.  America found her message both empty and false.

So good luck Mayor Mike.  You can shell out a billion for campaign ads and all people will remember is that you were dictator of New York.......dissing the NYPD, hiking cigarette prices to $14 bucks a pack, and forcing fast food chains to get rid of their large soda cups.   That's a message that won't sell.......even if you spend a billion dollars to pimp it.

12 Ounce Soda Cups In Every Kitchen!

                                                                 

Why Michael Bloomberg Is Running For President And Why He Will Save Big Money

Yeah, most of you know by now that former NYC mayor (and soda cup grabber) Michael Bloomberg announced he's entering the Presidential race.

Seems that Bloomberg, whose net worth is $50 billion dollars, sat down with his accountant and figured out that, if Liz Warren wins the Presidency, her 6 percent wealth tax will set the New Yorker back more than $3 billion a year. Eight years under Warren and Bloomberg's fortune will be reduced by half.

So here's the deal. Bloomberg figures that, even if he totally funds his Presidential campaign, and even if he spends a billion running, he's $2 billion dollars ahead by keeping Warren donning Indian headdress in Enid, Oklahoma.

No one ever accused old Mike of being dumb about money management!

When Ten Million Liberal Heads Exploded

                                                                     

Ten million liberal heads exploded Monday as they watched the Washington Nationals celebrate their World Series victory at the White House. Particularly galling to the libs was seeing Curt Suzuki don a MAGA hat. Almost as bad was Ryan Zimmerman expressing his appreciation to the President for keeping our country safe. Even Nats manager Davey Martinez was skewered for the kind words he had for the President.

This morning the liberal media chronicled their outrage that our nation's capitol's sports team would have a little fun at the White House. One headline read "Nats Swing and Miss At White House Celebration". And chronic liberal sports journalist Christine Brennan went as far as saying that the Nats should not have injected their political leanings at that celebration.

Isn't it odd that the liberal mainstream media have no qualms about sports jocks who refuse to attend those championship celebrations (thus themselves introducing politics into a sports story) yet go into a state of liberal shock when other jocks voice their support for our President.

Talk about hypocrisy. The liberals own it lock stock and barrel.

Kitchen Table Politics

                                                                       

1972 Presidential Election. After three years of service in Vietnam I was finally old enough to cast a vote. My choices were Richard Nixon or George McGovern.

I chose McGovern. I did not like Richard Nixon. Even then, before Watergate was excavated, Nixon seemed sinister. To me he always looked like he was wound too tight, his speeches and physical mannerisms odd. I intuitively felt Nixon was mentally disturbed.

By contrast George McGovern was a soft-spoken old school gent, one whom I would have been delighted to sit down and have a cup of coffee with.

George wanted us out of Vietnam. I had few qualms about that. The last six months of my last tour of Vietnam I had been firebombed by Saigon college students, had witnessed first hand the corruption of the Vietnamese regime, thought we had sacrificed enough treasure and lives for a Vietnamese people who seemed to care less than us about a communist takeover.

And in 1972 I was still an idealistic young man who believed that the downtrodden were suffering at the hands of a society that left them out.

So I stepped into the voting booth and voted George. And I was shocked to see how badly Nixon beat him.

My political awakening would arrive shortly after that election. I began to see folks better off than me using food stamps ahead of me in the grocery line. I began to look closely at my pay stub. I looked at how much the state and federal government was taking out of my pay check. I began to see how Democrats continually agitated for bigger government and bigger handouts to those unwilling to work.

1972 would be the last and only time I voted Democrat. The choice was easy. I saw how Democrats changed their ethics and beliefs as easily as they changed their clothes. I saw how they pandered to the lame and lazy to win and stay in power. And I began to see the effects of Lyndon Johnson's liberal judiciary turning America upside down.

But it was at the kitchen table where I converted to conservative. It seemed that, no matter how many part time jobs my wife and I worked, we could never seem to get ahead. The more we made, the more the government taxed us. As we struggled to pay our bills we looked on as millions of our fellows became financial leeches......leading a better life than us.

In the next 12 months America will again be faced to make a difficult choice. Turn out a less than admirable Trump, or sign on to a Democratic ticket that plunges America into socialist state bankruptcy.

I suspect "kitchen politics" will once again defeat the "greenies", the "Medicare For All" crowd, and the party with the big government gravy bowl. The good folks who look at their pay stubs just can't imagine an even uglier pay stub.

The American Dream's Alive And Well On Snead Drive

                                                                         

Three doors up the street from me lives an elderly lady who lives rather modestly in her 60 year old home. She drives a 90's era Buick and most probably lives on a widow's pension.

Each week a Hispanic lady drives up in her new Cadillac Escalade, plucks mop and broom and cleaning supplies from her ride, then walks in to the old lady's place for a couple of hours of house cleaning.

The Hispanic lady, if one can tell by the price of her ride, is far wealthier, and living a higher lifestyle than her elderly "employer".

And that is the essence of the great American Dream. One generation in elderly decline.......pinching pennies cause she can't work anymore, contrasted by the 40 something Hispanic lady who works her ass off, sweeping and dusting and mopping floors, building a future, one mop swipe at a time, for she and her family.

You see the manifestation of building The American Dream most often with the immigrants. Spawned in poverty, they come to this country, realize that if they work hard enough they can become prosperous, then set off to do so.....totally ignoring the established societal precepts that say working humble jobs is somehow beneath many of those born under the protective shelter of the American flag.

While immigrants are the largest swath of those who partake in the American Dream, they are not the only ones. The native born among us who were instilled with a work ethic are also American Dream "builders". They are the ones who start small businesses. They are the ones who believe welding girders, or assembling machinery, or wiring new homes are not beneath them. They don't much give a damn whether the job is "blue collar" or "white collar", as long as the money is good.

Alas, we have too few of those "American Dream Builders" these days. Too many government incentives instill a lust for sloth, in lieu of work. Too many wide-eyed youth believe Philosophy and Art degrees will win them success. And far too many are satisfied to lament about "income inequality" while some 7 million well-paying blue collar job positions remain vacant.

But it is heartening, over here on Snead Drive, to see that house maid pull up in her late model, luxury Cadillac. It says the American dream is real.........for anyone who wishes to pursue it.

The American Dream is not some lofty, unachievable goal. It was written into the American creed by Thomas Jefferson more than two and a half centuries ago:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." (emphasis on "the pursuit of happiness please)

Thomas Jefferson

That house maid, three doors up, did not have to read Jefferson to understand the American Dream. It lives in her heart, and in the heart of anyone who longs for a better life.......and is willing to work hard to make the dream come true.