Skip

That’s from US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).  I’d like to believe that it’s true, that the Republicans would get tossed out of power like a pit bull throws around a rag doll.  But we’ve seen the result of that before when the Dems took control mid-last decade – due to the fecklessness of the Republicans forgetting what they stood for.  Or rather, not telling voters what they REALLY stood for.  After all, here in NH, did the base go “Sure, Jeb, pass Medicaid Expansion?”  I think not.  Democrats do that kind of thing, though.  After all, they never campaigned for homosexual marriage but that’s what they did when they assumed power.

The Congressional Republicans, on the other hand, have just done the opposite.  They ALL (with the exception of Collins) campaigned on repealing Obamacare.  For seven desperate years where Govt effectively nationalized the healthcare industry, they promised us Liberty from this Govt intrusion.  It is clear from earlier this week that they never had any intention of doing so – it was all a Kabuki Theater for the rubes in several ways:

Read more

Which is exactly what the Authoritarian Progressives (masquerading as Democrats) want for America because GOVERNMENT CONTROL.  Powerline has an excerpt from a report concerning an in-depth look at how good the Canadian system is – after all, the Dems keep tell us it will make it GREAT!  But what do the folks that have to live (and die) under have to say?

On measure after measure the data belie the boasts that medicare apologists tout as proof we have the best system in the world. When measuring the equity of our system against the others, we come a pitiful ninth out of 11, despite the fact that “fairness” is the argument most frequently trotted out to defend the status quo. Turns out Canadian health care isn’t all that fair.

Ditto for health-care outcomes. Despite being a fairly high spender, we are not able to turn that money into better outcomes for Canadians. Again, we rank ninth out of 11.

Read more

Today’s parents and Society in general seems to be adamant that today’s kids must be watched by an adult 24/7 and should never, EVER be exposed to any kind of physical risk at all (sorta like Progressives that are trying to mitigate all bad decisions resulting in bad outcomes).  Pure stupidity, in my humble opinion.  A sheltered child is going to fail to learn some real important lessons both in the now and later in life.  But, that seems to be what is going to – a pacified nation of corner-sitters rather than daring individuals willing to take great risks (and reaping the rewards).  It also means a dearth of experiences on which to call upon when needed.  So I just loved this post:

23 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do

And then gave 23 activities that we should all let our kids try.  I know growing up I did each and everyone of them – and it was FUN.  My kids did most of them as well (except I didn’t have any firearms back then)!  And now, our grandson will do the same as we attempt to raise him.  He’ll have

• Play With Fireworks (with supervision on this one)
• Hammer a Nail
• Stick Your Arm Out a Car Window

Read more

Rather shocking to see and hear this.  The Muslim community, especially CAIR, is often warning us about “Islamophobia” and backlashes.  Well, a phobia is an unsubstantiated fear.  If I was Jewish, well, this is some substantiation for why that fear exists.  It is clear that some mosques are at the forefront of radicalization.  I’m not sure that this rises to the level of some but the elevator has certainly left the Lobby level.

Imam Ammar Shahin is the Iman at the Islamic Center of Davis (CA) and an Islamic instructor at University of California-Davis.  Just like in Europe, we are seeing a more hateful environment on US campuses towards those of the Jewish faith; I’m betting that this is one nail in that process.

“Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews. Oh Allah, destroy those who closed the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Oh Allah, show us the black day that you inflict upon them, and the wonders of your ability. Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them.

Read more

I’ve been listening to a lot of nonsense about the impact of the different GOP “replacement” plans for Obamacare and the numbers just didn’t make any sense. After all, none of them drastically did much on the core structure of Obamacare.  They deleted most (but not all of the taxes).  They started to tinker with Medicaid Expansion implementations (showing their backbones made of Silly String while yammering about it). The only part that made a whole lot of sense in pulling that initial string out of the tangled ball of yarn that is Obamacare (since none of them dared to add in the Freedom for us to be able to buy across State lines) was the elimination of the individual and employer mandates.  Yet, the CBO numbers made the GOP look bad.

And now we know why – Avik Roy clues us in.  Take a look at this chart and then peruse the snippets I copied over:

Read more

Yet another failure by an old style politician to adapt to the speed of the Internet (emphasis mine, reformatted):

…Any interaction with a Democrat risks being covered by conservative outlets as a potential betrayal of the GOP, he said.  “Boehner blamed figures on the right who purchase lists of conservative activists and then position themselves as leaders of a movement. He said talks between party leaders can be ruined by ‘one person who creates a committee to preserve the Constitution’ and can ‘blast out information quickly. You used to have a little breathing room–24 hours, 48 hours before it actually got in the press. Well, that’s gone. Everything today is instant,’ he said.

…“Boehner pointed to the fragmentation of the national media as another reason for the paralysis and what he sees as alarming intensity and partisanship in politics. “’What’s making everything even worse today is because we have so much news, people get to choose where they get their news,” Boehner said. “It used to be we had three big TV networks, five big newspapers, and five big radio stations and whatever they said was the news. Everybody else followed what they do.’”

Read more

Via RedState:

Bernie Sanders and his wife Jane when they are in Washington DC, live in this house on Capitol Hill, ok? Part of their vast real estate empire. They’re like wannabe Trumps with their real estate holdings.

The next-door neighbor…their neighbor on Capitol Hill called the Washington Post and told the Washington Post that they were cancelling their Washington Post subscription because their very expensive Sunday Post stopped showing up. Not there this week, last week, the week before, then it was there one week but the week before it wasn’t delivered, so I’m cancelling my subscription to the post because your delivery person never gets to me. I’m paying for it but it never gets to me.

The Washington Post said, “Please, do not cancel your subscription to the Washington Post. We will investigate with the delivery person and we will get back to you.”

So the Post investigated. They got back to the person cancelling their subscription to the Post and they said, “Listen, we talked to the delivery person. Our delivery person claims has seen you come out of your house again and again and grab the paper on Sunday mornings. Immediately as the paper delivery person delivers the paper, they’ve seen you come out of your house and pick up the newspaper. So, sir, you are lying to us.”

Read more

Abstracted from Fox News: Concealed handgun permits surging, blacks, women lead growth

• Concealed handgun permits in the United States soared by 1.83 million since last July,
• New record for the fourth consecutive year
• Concealed handgun permit holders in the country = 16.3 million
• Largest rate of growth among women and African-Americans, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) said.
• More than 6 percent of American adults hold CCW licenses
• Outside the restrictive states of California and New York, that figure rises to about 8 percent.

Read more

Winning is only the precursor; what you do afterwards is most important

Stephen Green (“the VodkaPundit”) makes a few observation about what the DC GOP has been doing that runs counter to what they SAY they stand for.  It’s the reason why I’ve been saying for years is don’t LISTEN to politicians. Instead, pay attention to what they DO. And in this case, especially what they DO as they OWN DC politics.  We gave them what they wanted – are they keeping their word in “being Republicans”?

I hate to ask, but how’s that GOP majority workin’ out for ya?

• Jeff Sessions Announces Justice Department Will Increase Asset Forfeiture.
• House Republicans work to torpedo Trump’s air traffic control plan.
• House Republicans to fall back on more modest spending plan — counting on Democrat votes while ignoring fiscal conservatives.

Read more

“Everybody does it” is no excuse, but not everybody fights a horrible Civil War over it, then constitutionally elevates former slaves to full citizenship.”

Yes, were there slaves in the Colonies at the start of the Revolutionary War?  Were there slaves when the Constitution was written?  Of course there were and no conservative would argue the opposite (even as the Left now has migrated from calling everyone that disagrees with them from Birchers to TEA Partiers to extremists and now, to fit their latest narrative, White Supremacists).  But it seems that in reading about the college campus rampages and watching the “man in the street” interviews, it seems that our young’uns seem to think that ONLY the US had slavery in our history.  Why?

They aren’t taught actual history – the Leftist Academy conveniently leaves that out.  Makes it easier, I guess, to undermine the Founders with that “old white rich slave-owners” which, in turn, is meant to discredit the Constitution.  Which, in turn, makes it easier to “turn” a coupla few generations:

Slavery is by no means peculiar, odd, or unusual. It was common among ancient peoples such as the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Greeks, Persians, Armenians, and many others.

Large numbers of Christians were enslaved during the Ottoman wars in Europe. White slaves were common in Europe from the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages. It was only after A.D. 1600 that Europeans joined with Arabs and Africans and started the Atlantic slave trade.

As David P. Forsythe wrote in his book, “The Globalist,” “The fact remained that at the beginning of the 19th century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom.”

Read more

Yep.  The Democrat Party.  They are the ones with “the Political is Personal; the Personal is Political” and have turned it into the absolute weapon.  NOTHING in life can be made, seen, or discussed outside of their political realms – even eating a hamburger has life and death ramifications.  They haven’t figured out that sometimes eating a hamburger is just eating a hamburger with no other nuance that it tastes good.

Progressives have a problem: They ladle unto every decision, even the most mundane and trifling one, an unattractive glop of gooey political significance. They can’t resist warning the rest of us that we’re abetting the destruction of the planet every time we, say, tuck into a Quarter Pounder.

Josh Barro is a recovering ex-Republican who is now a member of a niche political group: the non-crazy Democrats. He coined a cute phrase — “the hamburger problem” — to describe the relentless politicization of everything by progressives and Democrats. He writes, “Democrats’ problem isn’t that they’re on the wrong side of policy issues [I vehemently disagree  -Skip]. It’s that they’re too ready to bother too many ordinary people about too many of their personal choices, all the way down to the hamburgers they eat.” He cites nonstop Democratic hectoring on, inter alia, the team name of the Washington Redskins, the way men sit on subway trains, and even some Americans’ choice not to abide by China’s one-child standard as the reasons why the party is today as electorally wobbly as Rocky Balboa in the 15th round. Yet the GOP’s success puzzles him still, because so many core Democratic cultural ideals (notably, gay marriage and marijuana decriminalization) poll more and more strongly.

Read more