Hitting the Road

Our annual road trip to northern California is coming up. We will be loading up the ol' Expedition and heading up to the Sacramento area to hang out with my son, his wife, and their daughter. Somewhere I read that that makes me a grandfather, but I believe nothing in the media since I consider myself still 25 years old . . . .

I will have the ancient IPAD with me, for what good that does. So might write something or another, but can't promise it. Don't worry you'll get a refund.

Before I sign off, I must say, yet again, that I am feeling optimistic about Pres-elect Trump. He has picked some good people--I think Pence, in particular, is showing his worth--and he seems bound and determined to live up to his promises on Obamacare, tax reform, etc. I was impressed with how he followed up with Carrier and got them to stay in the USA instead of moving their plant to Mexico. I also think his "thank you" tour is a superb idea and shows that he has not forgotten the folks who elected him. He also shows a remarkable ability to troll the left with his tweets and to expose them for the hypocrites and low-info people they are. Masterful.

OK. On my way . . . well, in a couple of hours--after I watch some sic-fi on TV. Since I met the inventor of the time machine, I have been hopelessly addicted to time travel movies and books.  

Tough Times to be a Progressive

Progs are having a hard time with their narrative.

Events, i.e., facts, conspire against them.

Let's start our happy trip with November 8, although we really should start with Brexit (and here), but let me keep it close to home, for now.

Trump won the election for President, "fair-and-square," as once was said in this country. He followed the rules of the game, and won. He has 306 electoral votes; well over the required 270. For those progs and other low-info whiners crying about the popular vote, let me make a couple of points. In our country, the country established way, way back in something called the 18th century by really, really smart and brave Brits, we have a unique system of electing our presidents--and it works.

Our presidential election system has, in effect, 51 elections--46 states, four Commonwealths, and one District of Columbia. Each one of those "little" elections has electors assigned to it equal to the number of representatives it has in both houses of Congress; each state (in general) grants it electors to the winning candidate within its boundaries. Since we currently have 538 members in that Congress, a winning candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win. The idea of the now much-maligned electoral college is to serve as part of the intricate system of checks-and-balances that this band of really, really smart Brits instituted to avoid tyrannies by either a minority OR by a majority. Everybody gets a voice, regardless of whether they are big or little. Dear progs, please look at the UN that you love so much: every country there gets the same vote regardless of size: Luxembourg gets the same vote as China. Should we change that?

The gross popular vote is irrelevant. Back on October 28, 2014, I wrote a piece about how the Democrats would try to skew the popular vote. All that came to pass, and in spades. We had a President, no less, calling for undocumented people to vote and assuring them that there would be no legal consequences; Hillary's campaign, of course, included "outreach" to the "undocumented" and even hired "dreamers" for that outreach: All part of an effort, as I wrote, to make citizenship meaningless. I noted that we would see demands for citizenship as,

a smokescreen for electoral fraud. Citizenship is under assault from another direction, as well. Voting I.D. Yes, that is the main weapon being used and the one which reveals what is really going on. Our Attorney General Eric "Fast and Furious" Holder tells us that his agency will be very vigilant re attempts by states to use voter identification requirements to "suppress" turn-out. The DOJ has been filing lawsuits against states with voter I.D. requirements (here and here, for example.) The justification? The progs conjure up an imaginary poor rural black too stupid, too poor, and living in such a remote place that he or she just cannot afford or otherwise get valid state identification. Nonsense. Many states offer free identification cards, and, more important, poor, middle class, and rich black people have valid identification documents for driving, buying property, getting bank loans, voting, etc., just like everybody else. Progs have a Hollywood version of race in America which they sell to the willing media, and seek to turn into public policy.

Easily some three to four million illegal and legal aliens voted with an additional 2-4 million dead and multiple voters. Those votes went to . . . surprise ... the Democrats. I love how they are now criticizing Trump for saying this "without' evidence.  For years, the progs have conducted a successful campaign to destroy the evidence, and now they point to the lack of it. Nice try. No cigar.

Despite all that, the progs still lost. So now we see calls for a recount by "third party" Castro-admirer Jill Stein but only in states critical for Trump's victory. She has mysteriously raised millions of dollars for this effort, and has, it seems, roped in Hillary into backing it--assuming Hillary wasn't behind it with her friend Soros from the start. All part of the effort to delegitimize Trump as much as possible before inauguration. It will fail. The progressive narrative will take another hit.

Speaking of hits, the death of Fidel has shattered yet another icon in the prog pantheon. They can heap all the words of praise they want on the old tyrannical monster, but the fact remains that Cuba is infinitely less free, less prosperous, less happy, and less habitable than it was on January 1, 1959. Once the wealthiest country in Latin America, Castro's Cuba is now among the most irrelevant, poorest and most miserable in the region--although Fidel and family managed to squirrel away hundreds of millions of dollars and properties for themselves. Not long from now even the dodgy statistics produced about Cuba's miraculous literacy rates and its stunningly low infant mortality rates will be shown for the lies they are. I remember when the same stuff was said about Romania. Facts will not support the prog narrative.

As I wrote this, news reports of a "mass" shooting on an Ohio university campus had been coming in. The progs, including the execrable Tim Kaine, came out with their tweets and press releases blaming Ohio's "lax" gun laws for this "shooting." Lots of tweets implying white male, Trump supporting racists as the shooter(s). OOOPS! The only gun involved, it turns out, was in the hands of a good guy, a campus cop, who shot the thug dead with three well-placed rounds. The thug used a car and a machete to hurt several people (exact number is changing).

Oh yes, just by the way, the thug turned out to be a recently arrived and "vetted" Muslim Somali refugee . . . now we will see the search for a "motive" and demands for solidarity with the oppressed and fearful Somali community. Let's help the cops and guess what the motive might be . . .

Tough days to be a prog . . . love it.

Fidel Castro, RIH

Hard to believe that the old tyrant has finally died. I will write more about Castro later on but just want to record my initial reactions.

As bored readers of this blog might note, I have written quite a bit about Castro and Cuba. Much of my career at the State Department involved dealing with the Castroites at the UN, in South and Central America, and even in Asia. At the OAS, I spent much of my time on various efforts by certain Latin countries to get Cuba readmitted to the organization. In addition to my work, many of my dearest friends came from Cuba, and I often felt like an honorary Cuban. I visited Free Cuba (Guantanamo) twice while I was at SouthCom, and lived for nearly three years in Miami, a city made magical and wonderful by the Cuban migration.

The global left will fall all over themselves in tributes to this hideous mass murdering monster. We will hear nonsense about how he defeated illiteracy, brought medical care to the masses, established income equality, defeated imperialism, outlived his enemies, and on and on and on. None of those is true except for his living a long life--thanks, that is, to the Spanish doctors who saved him from the tender incompetent mercies of the vaunted Castroite medical system.

Cuba, yes, was a dictatorship in 1959, when Castro took over. The country never successfully established a stable, honest, democratic political system. Cuba in 1959, however, was far, far from being the shabby hell that the left and popular media have portrayed. It was a country with a highly educated and entrepreneurial middle class, full of doctors, lawyers, writers, artists, engineers, businessmen, etc., and was a haven for political and economic refugees from Europe. Cuba was a net importer of migrants; Cuba had a standard of living higher than much of Europe and higher than any other Latin American country. In sum, Cuba had a promising future ahead of it, a future wiped out by nearly sixty years of brutal Castroite dictatorship.

I hope, please God, that our inept President Obama will restrain himself and not go to the funeral or send the Veep, the SecState or anybody else. We owe at least that much to the millions of victims of Castro, and to the brave men we abandoned on Playa Giron.

¡Socialismo o Muerte! Socialism or Death! That was Castro's tiresome slogan for decades. Under his rule, however, that did not prove a choice. The Cuban people got both socialism and death, and now so has Fidel Castro, RIH (Rot in Hell.)

More to follow.

Ringing in Black Friday

Our Thanksgiving Thursday passed without major drama. We violated our recent tradition and had a turkey meal ordered from a local supermarket. It was OK. The Diplowife, of course, restricted herself to mashed potatoes and yogurt and stayed away as far as possible from the bird. We had all the kids together for the first time in a long time, and they and my father seemed to enjoy the day. Afterwards we drove south to our other house near San Diego. The three boys and I stayed up until all hours watching endless documentaries and YouTube clips of progressives melting down after the Trump victory. Lot of fun.

Today, the fear inducing day known as Black Friday because of the requirement that we engage in mindless shopping, saw the three boys and your humble servant at the gun range in Poway. It was packed! We, however, had reserved a couple of lanes on the 100 yard range and had a grand old time blasting away. We took a couple of 45s, a .357 Mag revolver, a .44 Mag revolver, the Henry Big Boy, a bazillion rounds of ammo, and lots of targets. Good time was had by all.

My ears are still ringing as the folks in a lane next to us had some monster rifle that shook my innards and my brain every time they fired it. Not even my high-tech electronic sound suppressing headset managed to kill that blast. So, I sit here ringing in Black Friday, waiting for the boys to come back from their run, and head off to the local Indian casino to compensate Native America for Columbus, Pilgrims, Custer, and the Department of Interior's policies.

Life is still looking a lot better since that November 8 result . . . Wisconsin recount be damned!

Hillary is Not My President!

A Thanksgiving Repost: Feathers!

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all, and a repost from The Diplomad's Thanksgivings past . . . .

Feathers 

Yes, feathers. Not the figurative kind that fill leftoid heads, but the real kind that cover birds. We are going light today. Our topic is feathers and how they nearly produced a civil war in the Diplomad clan, and how echoes of that strife apparently will reverberate on the 4th of July.

As the six regular readers of this blog are painfully aware, during the Reagan years I served for a time at the UN in New York. We loved New York City, even with all its inconveniences especially with two rambunctious boys. Schooling was a problem as the local PS was, well, pretty bad. When two of the vastly overpaid teachers at the school told us that they would never send their own kids there, we decided to yank our boys out and send them--at considerable cost to the Diplomad bottom line--to private schools. One went to a school run by Irish Catholic nuns, who wanted no parental involvement, "Thank you very much, but we know how to do this." The older son went to one run by strangely liberal, yet oddly conservative Jews who wanted lots of parental involvement in the school as long as the parents did what the school wanted. Hey, it's New York. Live with it.

Well, as it does every year, the Thanksgiving holiday rolled around. You must understand we had spent most of our lives overseas. The boys had been born in Spain, and hardly had been in the US. Educated abroad, they--God help me--had grown to love soccer football soccer with both of them becoming (and remaining to this day) rabid fans of Spain's La Furia Roja. Their grip on Americana was a bit weak. Please remember that as this saga proceeds.

Another piece of background you will need. My Spanish wife hates, detests, abhors, loathes, etc, feathers and any creature sporting them. She shows a special wrath for chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese. She cannot stand the thought of fowl on the meal plate. I have seen her blanche and break out into a cold sweat at fancy diplo dinners when served quail, duck or some other feather-bearing beast. It is not funny; better said, she has no sense of humor about this matter. My efforts to convince her that chicken tastes just like iguana have had no positive effect. Whenever we go to a restaurant, regardless of what she orders, she insists on, ahem, grilling the waiter on whether any foul fowl was involved in the making of her pending meal, "Uh, no ma'am, our salmon is, uh, salmon. It's a fish, not a bird." "Yes, yes, but the rice and the vegetables, were they cooked with chicken?" I am used to it by now.

Thanksgiving Day in New York, 1985. My older son, then about six was in a bad mood. I asked what was wrong, "You have no school today. Mom is making a nice Thanksgiving meal. What's wrong?" He glared at me, "The Pilgrims did not eat paella! They ate turkey!"

Explanation. Given the Diplowife's aversion to feathery creatures, our overseas Thanksgiving Day meals consisted of seafood paella. My wife had, ahem, implied in some way . . . oh, heck, she flat out told the kids that the Pilgrims ate paella with the Indians. Maybe she was thinking about Cortez and Pizarro, I don't know, but anyhow the kids had gotten into their heads that paella was the meal on Thanksgiving. Now in NY, the older boy had been asked the previous day to make a presentation at school on Thanksgiving. He, of course, reported that the English Pilgrims sat down and shared paella with the Native Americans. This caused a bit of a commotion and, I guess, led to some considerable ridicule, or what the politically correct nanny-staters now would label "bullying."

He was furious with us. He refused to eat paella and demanded a turkey. Even my wife was shocked into submission by the uncompromising fury coming from the tyke. It was Thanksgiving Day. I had to find a turkey in Manhattan! I dashed out of our building on the upper east side. All of the supermarkets were closed. A turkey! My kingdom for a turkey! I wandered the cold, darkling desolate concrete canyons, my despair growing and threatening to overwhelm me. I had let down my kids! The wages of sin, the consequences of falsehoods! God give me a sign that You will allow me to redeem myself . . . Wait! A deli! Still open but about to close! I ran in! Turkey sandwiches! They must have a turkey somewhere! A bizarre negotiation followed in which I finally convinced the suspicious Pakistani owner of the "Jewish" deli to sell me a whole kosher turkey at the price per pound of the sliced sandwich meat. I paid him a fortune--in cash--for a small bird about the size of a Chihuahua, and ran like the Grinch with my turkey under my arm.

My kids had turkey that day, and every other Thanksgiving since then has featured a big bird on the table. My wife refuses to sit anywhere near it, and has her own separate fish-based meal.

This will be an issue on the Fourth of July. The Thanksgiving paella got moved to Independence Day. The kids, now grown, of course, alas, are starting to make noises of impending rebellion against paella and in favor of hot dogs and other beast meat. The Diplowife mistrusts hotdogs, even the kosher all-beef ones, as stealth chicken missiles. She does not want anything with the potential of bearing fowl touching our BBQ grill or being anywhere near anything else that might be cooking. It appears that we might have a split Fourth meal. One side of the family eating chicken wings and hotdogs, and the other with the paella. Now that I think about it, this seems an appropriate metaphor for what is happening to our country.

Could that be Optimism?

Regular readers of this little blog know that its aging and grumpy owner is not prone to optimism. The word "pessimism" is my default setting, much as my predictive text's default setting for that word is "possums."

I, however, might have to move off that default setting a few degrees and, at least, for a time. Look, and I hate to admit it, but I think things are getting better since that November 8 election.

We see the improvement in little things and some big ones. We have Mexico expressing willingness to take another look at NAFTA; Ford announcing that because of Trump's plans to make America more competitive, it is not moving part of its Lincoln production to Mexico; Apple is exploring moving IPhone production out of China and to the US; vast new oil discoveries in Texas just about guarantee US oil independence for years to come and prove a major blow to the already crumbling Saudi energy empire; consumer confidence is up; and, almost best of all, we see the Democrats, along with their media and Hollywood allies in something close to a total meltdown--reduced to rioting in the streets by paid brainless anarchists and hurling insults at the Vice-President-elect by overpaid brainless actors on Broadway. To my Democratic friends, let me say that I heartily encourage more of all of this. And, of course, lest we forget, we can almost certainly see the beginning of the end for the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Crime Family's money printing press. Hey, Qatar, no point in giving money to losers, right?

Trump has made some good choices for the National Security Council, the CIA, Chief of Staff, and Chief Strategist. I hope he continues on that quality glide path. I am further encouraged by the fact that all the sounds coming from the transition team seem to indicate that we have a president-elect who intends to keep his core campaign promises. We might see the end, relatively quickly, of the hideous Obamacare monstrosity; a scrapping of hundreds of Obama executive orders on immigration, environment, education, and other fields; a new tax regime; a new conservative Supreme Court; and a more common sense approach to foreign affairs. All good.

If this keeps up, I will have nothing to write about . . . anyhow, we might, might just have a Thanksgiving full of genuine hope and thanks for the first time in many years.

I shall try to restrain my possums.

Makers & Payers vs. Takers & Players

Back in 2011, I wrote a piece about the battle between voters and taxpayers. I noted then that,

the real source of the crises facing the major currencies, and, in fact, our core economic well-being . . . comes down to a very simple and basic fact. The western nations have developed societies where those who pay for government services, in general, are not the ones benefitting from the services. In the United States, for example, we have the top one percent of earners paying 38-41% of all Federal income tax. We have nearly half of Americans who pay no income tax, and another large percentage 15-20% who pay minimal income tax (and lets not even get into "Earned Income Tax Credits".) We essentially have a society where some 25% of the income earners pay close to 90% of all Federal income taxes. That 25% does not consume anywhere near 90% of the services provided by the Feds.

The 2016 elections in the US showed that this battle certainly proved the case, again. Look at the electoral map, especially by counties, and you will see the country is awash in a tide of red; the Democrat strongholds of blue are little islands in a vast sea of Republican red. The Founding Fathers, in their great wisdom, designed our electoral college system to ensure that all parts of the country had a voice and that there would be limitations on the "tyranny of the majority."

According to the liberal media, of course, the majority, as represented by the popular vote, is actually Democratic, with Hillary winning the popular vote by perhaps a million votes. Irrelevant for a number of reasons. We, first of all, do not have direct election of the president, and it is unfortunate that the schools no longer teach the Constitution. There are, in addition, many electoral systems around the world where the popular vote does not directly translate into political power, including in most parliamentary systems. Even well-established and "democratic" parliamentary systems do not have direct election of the head of government, so we are not alone in that. Second, as noted, the electoral college system was meant as a brake on regional or urban majorities from being able to impose their will across our vast and very diverse country. Third, we might note, a typical Republican voter is more likely to be representing a family than many of the urban Democratic voters. Last, we might note, that there are some vigorous investigations underway, e.g. here, that are demonstrating what many of us have known all along (see here and here, for example): the Democrats launched a massive voter fraud effort for the 2016 elections, including having the President urge aliens to vote without fear of consequences. It seems that easily some three million votes were cast for Hillary by non-citizens, and nobody knows yet how many millions of dead voters weighed in for the Democratic candidate--all that, of course, in addition to the Democrats' usual drive to have multiple voting. I believe we could easily deduct some five to six million votes from Hillary's total.

All that, however, is irrelevant to the point of today's post: The red areas, overwhelmingly, are the parts of the country that actually make and grow things. These are the makers and the payers. Their energy and creativity support the blue takers and players. As we see in the anti-Trump riots now sputtering along in various parts of the country, and sure to make appearances at the inauguration ceremonies in DC next January, the people doing the rioting and breaking and playing around, obviously, have no jobs to worry about or families to support.

If President Trump keeps faith with those makers and payers, he will be a great president.

January 20, 2017 . . . It Can't Come Soon Enough!

Just got through watching President Obama (unfortunately, my President) give a little press conference before heading off for Greece, Germany, and Peru. This will be (Hallelujah! and RIP to the great Leonard Cohen) Obama's last foreign trip as our President.

Perhaps it's possible for a person to be more narcissistic, more condescending, and more out of touch with reality than our President, but I have seen no evidence of that.

This presser should be studied by students of psychology all over the world. The man has no ability to recognize that he has led his political party, not to mention his nation and great parts of the world, into disaster. He and his legacy have just been roundly rejected at the polls, and the one candidate vowing to erase that legacy from the books and our lives is waiting in the wings to replace him.

Everything Obama touched during his presidency turned to muck, yet he cannot and will not recognize that. Instead he gives paternalistic advice to his successor, sticks a shiv into the already sore and broken ribs of his own party's candidate--giving her campaign advice and telling her how he did it--and presumes to give us all a smug lecture on the ways of the world. He is off to console the foreigners on their sadness over the election of Trump; he has only praise for the disgraceful Chancellor of Germany who is his main rival for the title of Most Destructive Western Leader; he . . . oh, never mind.

Watch his performance for yourselves and try not to vomit.

Inauguration day is just too far away.

Towards a Pro-America, Pro-West Foreign Policy

For years, I have written in this humble blog that Obama and his team have created an unprecedented foreign policy disaster. The disaster bequeathed to President Trump is even greater than that left to President Reagan by Carter. The Carter mess, except for Iran, was relatively easy to correct, and Reagan did so with gusto and efficiency--bye, bye USSR. The Obama mess (see here and here, for example) is much more profound and dangerous, but it, too, can be fixed. I will provide a few steps that we need to take, in my view, to begin to fix our broken foreign policy.

The first step has already been taken: we have elected a President who, it certainly appears, wants America to "win." That seems almost needless to say but given that we currently have a President who openly stated he can't be bothered by concerns over whether or not America is winning, and a Secretary of State who infamously declared that it made no "difference" what had generated the Benghazi massacre, well, one can see that even a baby step in the right direction, is a step in the right direction--and to be welcomed.

A key component of power is leadership, a leadership committed to "winning" and a leader who has his people's back. We haven't had that for some time. It seems that Trump will be different; I can't imagine a President Trump abandoning his people to the jihadi mob in Benghazi, for example. Leadership can and does prove a power multiplier. We see that with Putin who heads up a nation much, much weaker than the USA, but who has played his hand masterfully, and greatly enhanced Russia's role in the world. We don't have to like Putin to acknowledge this.

Besides leadership, the primary requirement for successful diplomacy is wedding diplomacy to power. The two go together. We see, for example, Secretary Kerry's increasingly futile "efforts" in Syria which are hampered both by a lack of vision of an end game, and, of course, by an incompetent almost non-existent use of American power--I see Kerry is now beclowning himself in Antarctica. We have had an administration which has refused to recognize that successful American diplomacy requires a powerful military component and a leadership willing to pull the trigger. Yes, pull the trigger. We need right away to start a vigorous rebuilding of our military capabilities, and get the military away from distractions such as LGBT restrooms and lowering standards to get women into the Rangers.

Our military and diplomacy institutions must work closely with our allies, who must be encouraged to build up their own forces--Britain, in particular, needs to restore its once-formibable military clout. I would argue for a reinvigoration of the Anglosphere alliance, with Israel as an honorary member. We all confront similar threats to the existence of our nations, and will have to work together in confronting a nuclear armed Iran (Thanks Obama!) and the ever-present threat of jihadi terror. I see no reason for our current tense relations with Russia. We do not need to like or approve of Russia's government, but we should recognize that Russia could and would prove a formidable ally in confronting the jihadis, and in a flip of Nixon's China policy, in helping restrain growing Chinese big power aspirations. We should have no illusions about Russia but we should not be deluded about them, either. Russia is not a threat and offers an opportunity.

All power--sorry Mao--does not "grow out of the barrel of a gun." There are other key aspects to restoring American and Western power. One, of course, is energy independence. Despite absurd government policies, we have not been this close to having energy independence in many generations. That independence is a matter of economic prosperity and national security. We must develop our domestic energy resources, gas, oil, coal, nuclear, so that we cannot be blackmailed by tin-horn dictators or others wishing us harm. The US, Canada, UK, and Australia can achieve energy independence. We have to put in the casket all those idiotic "global climate warming cooling changing" so-called "theories" and recognize them for the dangerous and expensive hoaxes that they are. The polar bears are doing fine, thank you, better than our coal miners, in fact.

Energy independence will give us tremendous freedom of action on the world scene. OPEC is in collapse, and we should make sure that it continues so. It will also contribute to another key component of power, a prosperous and vigorous economy. Part of restoring our status in the world comes from having a growing economy, one that actually invents, designs and makes things. What a shock! Making things is important. I know the libertarians will disagree, but there are non-macro-economic factors to consider when choosing an economic policy. In theory, yes, free trade, natural allocation of resources, all that stuff is fine. In the real world, all that must be tempered by other considerations. For example, it might make more purely economic sense for the US and the West to buy our weaponry from China . . .  I think you can see the problem with going down that avenue. Part of restoring our power involves freeing as much as possible of the economy from regulation and taxation. The entrepreneurial spirit must flourish. Some restraints, however, will be needed to protect the nation. That's the way it is in the real world.

A sane immigration policy is also a requirement for re-establishing our power and protecting our economy. We must decide how much, if any, immigration we need (see here and here, for example, for previous discussions.) We need to enforce our existing immigration laws, and, yes, deport those we catch who are here illegally. The law must be respected. We should defend our southern border against the invasion to which it is now subjected. This is not racist or xenophobic. This is a matter of preserving our prosperity, sovereignty, laws, and, yes, culture--nothing wrong with that. We have the right, as do all nations, to decide who can and cannot come live in the country. There is no Constitutional or internationally recognized right to immigrate to the United States, or Britain, or Canada, or Australia, or anywhere else. I hope, in fact, that all those progressives "threatening" to move to Canada and Australia discover that Canada and Australia might not want them . . . and have no obligation to take them, even if it would make America a better place . . .

We cannot abuse our power. While we must never take orders from the UN or other international fora, we must recognize limits to what we can and should do in the world. We will have to deal with regimes we find unseemly and even odious. That's the way of the world. Most of the world will never become a Jeffersonian democracy, and we cannot expend our blood and treasure chasing that dream. Foreign policy cannot be a projection of domestic issues. There are vile totalitarian ideologies out there, one masquerading as a religion, which seek to subjugate and conquer us. Those can be resisted without engaging in silly nation-building exercises. Our military power must be overwhelming, but used only as a last resort--but when that resort is reached, it should be used overwhelmingly.

As Bastiat reminds us, there are always "unintended consequences." Whenever we undertake an action, we set in motion forces that we do not initially see or understand, and that could have serious consequences in the future. Rumsfeld said it best, "the unknown unknowns." While we need to try to foresee those consequences as best we can in our limited human way, we cannot let the fact that we will not usually succeed paralyze us. At times we have to deal with the immediate threat and worry about the future later. Defeating Nazi Germany and Shintoist Japan, for example, took precedence over worrying about creating power vacuums in Europe and Asia. Jihadis are a bigger threat than climate "change." One real enemy at a time.

Thanks to Donald Trump and the voters, we have a chance to step back from the edge of the cliff. Let's not waste it.

The Snowflakes Drift

One of our local freeways got tangled up last night because of a snow drift in southern California. Well, a drift of snowflakes, the oh-so precious kind. As part of their continuing war on democracy and the Republic, bands of leftist "protestors" (thugs, really, and probably many of them paid) decided to hold demonstrations of disgust for the election of Donald Trump. They did this, of course, with threats of violence, violence, vandalism, and a general disrespect for the rights of others, especially of working people trying to go on with their lives. These precious snowflakes can't stand the thought of somebody else getting the trophy they were promised, the trophy to which they were entitled. So we see gangs out demonstrating against President-elect Trump and presumably in favor of Hillary Clinton.

They, I guess, want the election canceled and the presidency given to Clinton; their wishes count more than our votes. Young unemployed thugs out rioting in favor of a 69-year-old grandmother who is in the pocket of Goldman Sachs and is one of the most corrupt and lawless candidates ever to appear on the American scene . . . ah, the Democrat Party, the party of progress . . .

The media, most of it, continue to show signs of very serious mental derangement. They have long been a danger to others, but now seem increasingly a danger to themselves. You don't need me to link to the stories, but check out the TV networks, much of cable, NYT, LAT, HuffPo, WashPo, and not to mention many of the foreign media who take their cue from the aforementioned beacons of progressive wisdom, and you will see ever increasing signs of suicidal behavior. They seem akin to those senior Japanese military who could not believe nor contemplate an American victory in 1945. They certainly need to have their second amendment rights curtailed, for their own good. No knives, either.

I am enjoying this, very much.

Trump

Wow! What a roller coaster ride that was!

I started the evening feeling a bit down, getting mau-maued by the media's relentless assault on Trump's chances, and not seeing how The Donald could do it. Must give credit to my youngest son who texted me throughout the night saying not to listen to the media and the polls, and that Trump would win. And he did ---by the way, my son won around $20,000 from bets he had placed long ago on Trump winning. Cocky kid.

I have so much to say about Trump's victory that I am almost speechless.

I just hope that he and the Congress come into office next January with all barrels blazing: repeal Obamacare; start on that border wall and get an immigration reform on the table, including defunding "sanctuary cities"; reduce and simplify taxes; kill tons of business killing regulation especially in the energy arena; begin the process of reducing the size and scope of government; name a good Supreme; address the shortcomings in our military; and let the world know that America is back. That can be started right off. No need to delay.

Anyhow, I am going to take my dogs for a ride down to our house in the Temecula area. I'll be writing a lot more and boring my faithful six readers for some time to come.

I think we saw a major victory for America, but it is one that will need to be preserved.

Congratulations to President-elect Trump.

Back from DC

Just got back to SoCal from a few days in DC, Virginia, and North Carolina. Biggest shock was the intensity of the electoral campaign in those regions. Here in Deep Blue SoCal, we get very little national political advertising and the election is not a major topic of discussion.

My DC-based son gave me an in-depth lesson on polling and how these things are manipulated to skew the results. In almost every poll he showed me, the Democrat sample is overrepresented, at times by quite a bit. Anyhow, he thought most of the polls are fakes designed to boost the chances for The Hillary. He is convinced that The Donald will win. I am more cautious, having gone through this before.

Whatever the result of the vote on the 8th, America will never be the same again. This is a watershed election much like those in 1860, 1932, 1964, and 1980. If Trump does not win, I see little chance in any foreseeable future for a Republican to take the White House. Even if he does win, the political and social tides are running against the GOP, and the traditional Anglo culture which made this country into a great nation.

Anyhow, I am hoping for the best, and resigned to the worst.

See you on the other side.

Going Away . . . for a Bit

Heading off to DC tomorrow. I'll be gone about a week. I should be back just before election day. Going to hang out with my ultra conservative son. Should be fun.