Slay the Beast, Bring the Bird Home

Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and prepare the shield. For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed.

And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground. – Isaiah 21: 5-9

When Babylon was taken, its inhabitants were engaged in revelry.

As yet more soft snow settles silently around me I try to imagine how President Trump must feel today. I hope he’s angry. In fact I hope he’s enraged. Furious that although he was elected by millions of Americans to fix our dangerous, porous border, the rest of the ruling class has chosen to spit in his - and our - eye.

I suppose we should be grateful that they’ve finally made clear what we’ve suspected all along: they really don’t give a crap what we the people think or want. They are engaged in their own revelry.

Again I point out the constancy of Yeats poem in these strange days.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

As do the words of Dylan’s bit more contemporary take on the situation (performed here by Jimi Hendrix):

All Along the Watchtower

There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief

Business men, they drink my wine
Plowman dig my earth
None were level on the mind
Nobody up at his word
Hey, hey

No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But, uh, but you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin' falsely now
The hour's getting late, hey

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too
Outside in the cold distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl

Songwriter: Bob Dylan

It might be worth noting that in later years whenever Dylan sang this song he repeated the first verse at the end. “There must be some kind of way outta’ here.” I like that, it seems a bit more optimistic.

Slay the beast, bring the bird home.

FLOTUS Friday: Coming To America Edition

Up until yesterday I thought NE stood for Nebraska.

Now I think that without the implementation of a National Emergency, there might be no Nebraska. Or at least on California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, Utah, parts of Wyoming, Colorado and Kansas.

And until yesterday I thought Rosenstein was just kidding about wearing a wire to get dirt on PDJT.

I was wrong.

Until yesterday I thought AOC (which once stood for “act of Congress” but now I think is something else) was dumb as a stump.

I was right. The socialist who wants to “guarantee jobs for everyone”  - or at least for everyone who’s not “unwilling to work” - cheered the Amazon announcement about pulling its plans to build a huge center in her district.

"Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world."

Tell me again how much her degree in Economics at Boston U cost. By no objective metric could her credentials be considered good value.

Thank goodness it was Valentine’s Day. At least we had candy and flowers, and some lovely pictures of our First Lady for FLOTUS Friday.

Regarding the weasel bill put together by the weasels in Congress, I can’t support it. As for as PDJT’s signing it: he’s dammed if he does damned if he doesn’t. That we’ve allowed the lawless progressives on both sides of the aisle to declare the U.S. a de facto open border country is beyond comprehension.

They’re coming to America: they think they have an invitation

So if it requires a NE to lock it down so be it. Let the border walls begin.

Happy Valentine’s Day 2019

Here it is, Valentine’s Day 2019.  Are you better off than you were the last time Obama was president on Valentine’s Day?  Allow me to answer, yes you are, so Happy Valentine’s – somebody loves you!

Fortunately for us, it’s our President

The largely unreported and to some ironic reality of the past two years is that the world overall is a better, safer, more prosperous place since the swearing in of Donald Trump as President of the United States in 2016. Better than it was under Barack Obama and better than it was under George W. Bush…The Revolutionary Act – read the complete valentine.

And he sends his love today whether you believe in Valentine’s Day or not:

Regardless of how you self-identify:

Or who you love:

So I join with the President in wishing you all a Happy Valentine’s Day.

Unless you happen to be in Virginia, which is decidedly no longer for lovers . Along with New York they seem to have declared open season on Eros.

But for everyone else, get out there and buy some flowers and chocolates and enjoy this most commercial of made-up holidays.

This Is Your Last Warning

Consider this a Valentine’s Day Heads-up. You now have only one day to make or acquire a proper Valentine card and gift for that special someone.

If you fail, there will be consequences.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Now go have some more covfefe and get to work.

Time’s a wastin’

Shut Up and Let Them Sling

Alinsky Rule #13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

In 2016 Rule #13 was pretty much the Democrats’ only tactic against Donald Trump: to draw him as everything despicable they could think of: stupid, racist, misogynist, fascist, anti-Semetic…and paint his “deplorable” supporters as equally reprehensible reprobates.

Unfortunately for liberals that tactic will not work as well in 2020 as Democrats have done everything under the sun to validate the conservative trope that “whatever charge they level against their opponents is precisely what they have been up to themselves.” In fact their antics make PDJT look like the only reasonable man in the room by comparison. Let’s review:

• Just over the past week we see that Democrats have elected certifiable anti-Semites to national office. I guess that’s what happens after opening our borders to members of a political religion that is known to be more anti-Semitic than Hitler.
• Democrat “pro-lifers” have clearly demonstrated their complete disregard for the life of a baby in the womb if the mother decides she doesn’t want it, even if it is so “viable” that it has been born. The “all abortions all the time” stance that many Democrats have actively embraced will insert the word “infanticide” into the debate. Not a good look.
• The state of Virginia is in gridlock because the top 3 elected officials are all on or subject to some version of R&R (Racist and Rapist) leave.

Or, as Victor Davis Hanson writes this week, the Democrats have made the President’s campaign much easier :

Trump in 2020 might have controversially slurred his future Democratic rival as a socialist, radical late-term abortion advocate, open borders chauvinist, a Medicare destroyer who wished to make it free for everyone, or wacko environmentalist intent on banning gas and diesel engines.

Now he won’t have to smear anyone: the Democrats have largely done that to themselves. Policy-wise the 2020 choice will be between Trump’s mostly doctrinaire conservatism, spiced with populist trade and immigration agendas, and what is a now a new Democrat orthodoxy of Bernie Sanders’ adolescent socialism and incoherent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Neverland something or other. 

In the rest of the article VDH points out, rather meanly I must say, how inadequate the Dems’ leading candidates look.

Starting with Ka-Mal-ah:

Harris recently went on an anti-Catholic rant while berating a nominee to the federal bench, and already has signed on to the Green New Deal without a clue what such a program would entail.

Spartacus:

(Booker) incoherently cross-examining a judicial nominee and inferring she was biased or worse in not previously hiring gay clerks—while having no idea she had never been a judge in a position to hire any legal clerks at all.

Fauxcahontas:

For all practical purposes, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has revealed that she was a knave, not just a dunce.

He swipes Beto away by describing his antics as a “quarter-life” crisis, and summarizes the Virginia  Democratic ClusterFluke thusly:

The larger point, however, was simple: a party that non-stop smears Trump as a sexual assaulter and racist seems incapable of dealing with alleged racists and sexual assaulters among its top state officials. Or put more cynically, is there one single liberal Democrat state official in soon to be liberal Virginia who had either not worn youthful blackface or been accused of sexual assault, or could at least tell us what were the post-Kavanaugh rules of due process?

In light of the current state of the Liberals’ party of record I offer this bit of advice for our President:  Shutup and let them sling. With their lockstep adherence to the party line they should take themselves out.

Read the whole thing.

Which Doesn’t Belong And Why? 2020 Horse Race Edition

Did you catch the latest “ladies throwing their hat into the Presidential ring” antics last weekend? Amy Klobuchar, railing against global warming in the midst of a winter storm:

And Elizabeth Warren,

another angry Indian on the warpath against President Trump.

But then there was the weirding of Michelle Obama at last night’s Grammys. After 8 years of bare arms and inappropriate décolletage all winter long she shows up at a glamour-rama show wearing…pajamas modestly covering every inch of her not insubstantial frame.

Q. (L-R) Jada Pinkett Smith, Michelle Obama, Alicia Keys,  and Jennifer Lopez and Lady Gaga. Which doesn’t belong and why?

A. Trick question, they all belong; they’re all performers: different arenas, same audience.

It is my experience that when people “unexpectedly” pop up to participate in events at venues where they would not normally be in attendence, they’re running for something. And Lady M’s appearance sure was…unexpected:

Grammys 2019: Michelle Obama makes surprise appearance at Grammys – CBS News

Former first lady Michelle Obama made a surprise appearance at the 2019 Grammy Awards. She was greeted with deafening applause before delivering a unifying message about music – CNN

Women took centre stage at the 61st Grammy awards in Los Angeles on Sunday night, with Michelle Obama making a surprise appearance – The Guardian

#MichelleObama made a surprise #Grammys appearance with the girl gang of your dreams – InStyle

And normally when such an “unexpected” appearance occurs, the “unexpected” guest is there to take the pulse of a very important demographic – in this case donors. I’m guessing Michelle got a pretty good read.

Alicia Keys brings out Michelle Obama during her #GRAMMYs opening and the crowd couldn't even get enough. – Newsweek

And my favorite, a tweet from somebody named Phillip Lewis (front page editor @huffpost):

Michelle Obama: -breathes- 

Frankly, in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Sweepstakes, breathing-while-female-and-black may just be an adequate attribute to win the prize among all the flawed candidates crawling out of the cracks.

So I’m going to go on record right here, right now, saying that I think Michelle muh-Belle will be the dark horse candidate sent in to run in the final lap in the Democrat Derby.

Prove me wrong. Please.

Choose To Be a Happy Little Cloud

I don’t know why this little story made me smile so bigly. Maybe I’m world weary in general or, more likely, just tired of condescending elitists.

In any event, how bad can things be when a class of middle school art students stage a Paint-Like-Bob-Ross flash mob? The class donned baby blue button down shirts and curly wigs and followed along with a soothing Bob Ross instructional video on how to paint happy little trees. 

The schtick was the idea of their Madison Middle School art teacher Brady Sloane.

Her pre-Advanced Placement eighth-grade students had been stressing about projects and grades but still pumping out high-quality artwork. So Sloane hoped for a way to reward them for all their effort.

She put on her thinking cap. Or, rather, her curly wig.

Sloane became Bob Ross, an art world legend thanks to a resurgence of his public broadcasting television show from the 1980s and 1990s and internet culture's love for memes. – Abilene Reporter

Honestly, how can you not love this? Middle school art students paying homage to a guy that you know every elitist in America looks down their nose at, even if he was on PBS for decades. They refer to his style as “pizzeria art.”

Okay, I see their point

Imagine their contempt if they knew that Bob Ross had an 18 year career in the Air Force as a drill sergeant before launching his art career, where he felt his calm speaking manner would offset the 18 years he spent barking orders at people.

Or that the man who never charged PBS a dime for making the hundreds of painting shows they aired did make millions of dollars on marketing his own line of paints and painting tools to amateur artists. Perhaps that helps explain why he was so vilified in the art world:

"I am horrified by art instruction on television," said Richard Pousette-Dart, an Abstract Expressionist who teaches at the Students Art League in New York. "It's terrible -- bad, bad, bad. They are just commercial exploiters, non-artists teaching other non-artists." He added, "I don't teach a technique or a method, I nurture students to find their own." – NYT

You’ll be happy to know that the painter of happy little clouds ignored his critics. Nor did he exactly have an abundance of respect for some of them either, especially the abstract expressionists, saying: "If I paint something I don't want to have to explain what it is."

So you can see why the man – and his legacy – must be destroyed. I expect we’ll soon be hearing allegations  of cultural appropriation leveled against Mr. Ross (posthumously), Ms. Sloane and her students. You see, while Bob Ross (RIP) was a white man, that head of curly locks? A perm. He didn’t own that Afro any more than Rachel Dolezal.

That’s right, Bob Ross had straight hair.

Bob Ross, in his early Air Force days (l) sported a Tom Brady ‘do

Let the character assassinations begin. I choose to be a happy little cloud today.

Meet Dr. Economics. She’s Not a Real Doctor…

Good morning everyone and welcome to the school of continuous learning. Today we’ll be studying sophomore level economics and by the end of the lesson you too will know how to eliminate poverty, inequity and global warming! And how to get enough money to make that happen. (Spoiler alert!)

“The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments and new public banks can be created to extend credit. There is also space for the government to take an equity stake in projects to get a return on investment.” Green New Deal Resolution

When we’re done with the tutorial you should be able to prove the hypothesis that “while there are limitations on human intelligence there are no such limits on human stupidity.”

Let’s start with the New Green Deal’s plan to eliminate poverty: all you need to do is give everyone everything they need or want by way of a guaranteed basic income and universal health care  “for those unable or unwilling to work,” and federal job guarantees for those who prefer to pretend to work and get a paystub showing what they made before 70% of it is recycled to the Federal Treasury.

That sure sounds good, but won’t that cost like a bazillion dollars?  How will we pay for it? Let’s have Dr. Ocasio-Cortez take it from here: “you just pay for it.” That’s a little something known as an economic “externality.” ¹ Or something.

But Doctor, isn’t this going to be a socialist system that will require massive government takeovers of, well, everything? Absolutely not, not just no, but hell no:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) said Thursday that her proposed Green New Deal would not be financed through a "massive government takeover."

"I think one way that the right does try to mischaracterize what we're doing as though it's like some kind of massive government takeover," Ocasio-Cortez said on MSNBC's "MTP Daily." "Obviously it's not that because what we're trying to do is release the investments from the federal government to mobilize those resources across the country."

Which would have been fine, reasonable deniability and all, had she not already let the cat out of the bag earlier in the day when she told NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep that it meant exactly that. And not just yes, but hell yes!

Is anyone else getting flashbacks to NPR’s “Ask Dr. Science! segments?

You know, the one where a citizen calls in and asks a science question that is then answered by the “expert” except the answer is always wrong and frequently nothing more than a meandering non sequitur on the way to a joke? The tag line is always “He knows more than you do.” and the skit always closes with the disclaimer: “I’m not a real doctor, but I do have a degree in…science!”

Doctor Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s deserves her own tag line. Her answers are always like that too: wrong, non-sequiturs - only not funny.

¹ Excerpt from AOC’s interview on Morning Edition:

INSKEEP: As you know, Congresswoman, one reason that people who are politically conservative are skeptical of efforts to combat climate change is that it sounds to them like it requires massive government intervention, which they just don't like. Are you prepared to put on the table that, yes, actually, they're right, what this requires is massive government intervention?

OCASIO-CORTEZ: It does. It does. Yeah. I have no problem saying that. Why? Because we have tried their approach for 40 years. For 40 years, we tried to let the private sector take care of it. They said, we got this, we can do this, the forces of the market are going to force us to innovate. Except for the fact that there's a little thing in economics called externalities, and what that means is that a corporation can dump pollution in the river and they don't have to pay for it, and taxpayers have to pay for cleaning up our air, cleaning up our water and saving the planet.

And that my friends is a fine example of a non sequitur so don’t say you didn’t learn something today: Rep Ocasio-Cortez does not just suffer from the Millennial vocal fry, she also has the brain fry to go along with it.