Ending The Year With A Rainy Day

... and showing the California drought in two charts.

It's been a good start to the 2016-2017 rain year here in California. The heavy rain areas in the north are all over 150% of normal and here in SoCal, the most recent set of storms has put us in the 120-140% range. Still, we're in a drought, make no mistake.

I discovered that the California rain data I had used in the past to make charts has easy-to-access historical data, so I rewrote my code and harvested data from 2011-present for two cities, San Diego and Santa Rosa. I picked San Diego because I live here (yay!) and Santa Rosa because it's a heavy-rain location, averaging about 36" per year. As a reference, San Diego gets about 10" per year.

The two charts below tell the story, but you'll have to click on them to see. I'm still working out how to display charts. In this case, my code created a csv file which I imported into Excel where I made these dreadful charts. I want to watch the Alabama game, so I'm not going to work on improving them, you'll just have to make do. Sorry about that.

2013 was very dry and the years 2011, 2012 and 2014 were below average. 2015 was reasonable and it looks like 2016 will be above average, assuming the rain continues to be good.

Meanwhile, here in the Catican Compound, 2016 was not a very dry year and tonight will probably be no exception. I plan to buy a very nice double IPA to celebrate the New Year.

God bless you all, thanks for stopping by and here's to a great 2017!

Isn't 'Happy Holidays' Cultural Appropriation?

For about 1,000 years and maybe more, my ancestors have used the term, "Christmas." It is part of my culture to wish you a "Merry Christmas." If I wish you, "Happy Holidays" instead, isn't that an act of cultural appropriation?

Big Ideas Will Numb You

At Andrew Klavan's suggestion, I'm currently listening to Second Hand Time: The Last of the Soviets. It's a peek into the world of the Russians after the fall of communism. It's written as a series of topic-based interviews with ordinary Russians about life right after and 5-10 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I was in Russia in 1998 and my impression was that everything worked, but just barely. It was run-down and ragged, but deliberately so. When Russians repaired things, their workmanship was so bad that it could only have been done purposefully. For the most part, they were grumpy, shiftless and unskilled and clearly felt that whatever it was that needed to be done, it was someone else's job. As an America, the whole thing was stunning. Second Hand Time fills in some of the gaps in my understanding.

P. J. O'Rourke has a good take on this in his comments about Big Ideas.

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas—fascism, communism, the atomic bomb. Liberty was also a powerful abstraction in the 20th century. But liberty isn’t a big idea. It’s a lot of little ideas about what individuals want to say and do.

In a nutshell, that's the cultural difference between Americans and Russians, circa the late 1990s. Socialism is a big idea. Saturated in it for 70 years, the Russian psyche had been warped into thinking about everything through the lens of their Big Idea - Socialism. Americans take charge and solve problems in their lives while the Russians talked and talked and talked, mistaking words for accomplishments.

The examples from the book are legion. There are a ton of them discussing how in Soviet households, there were plenty of kitchen discussions of abstract ideas, but with the advent of Capitalism, it turned out that abstract ideas buttered no bread. The loss of their dorm-room-bull-session-as-accomplishment metric for success caused them tremendous pain. "Everything is about money now! In the good old days, we may not have had goods to buy, but ideas mattered!"

This makes me think of my progressive / Social Justice Warrior friends. They're always going on about some big idea or another - the White Patriarchy, for example, but there are precious few posts about woodworking, rebuilding a car or cooking something exotic. Instead there's one Robert Reich video after another and lots of "Resist Trump" nonsense. It's all Big Ideas in place of personal action.

Maybe that's why they'e having a hard time processing the ruins of Venezuela's socialism. It's too practical.

Cheezburger of the Day

Peter Kreeft's "Before I Go"

... is an excellent idea, typically well-executed by the good professor.

It's also not me.

You can buy it here.

I've thought about this a great deal - writing a book, probably serialized on this blog, of things I want to share with our kids. Professor Kreeft did just that and for the same reasons I would, a partial curative for the imperfections of fatherhood. I'm going through it now, but it's a harder slog than I would have expected for something and someone so simpatico with my way of thinking.

First off, the good. It's beautifully written. Peter is an excellent wordsmith and this flows as well as anything he's ever done. It's charmingly random. Early in the book he mentions this and the chapters have the warmth of odd thoughts which popped into his head that he wanted to get down on paper. I love the humanity of it. Finally, the lessons are right on the mark for things I'd like to impart to my own kids.

So it's lovely, charming and right on the money. What's not to like?

Well, being a lover* is an intensely personal thing. Everyone has to do it in their own style. It can't be otherwise as the job saturates your life. You can't be someone you're not as a parent. It's not that I don't like the book, it's that it's not my style at all. Professor Kreeft's love is very earnest. Mine is more chaotic and messy. Sort of like this blog. Topics all over the place, wild mood swings, solemn vows taken and then dismissed a week later and so on.

The book is a terrific starting point, a reference for others, but it's not you. If writing isn't your thing you could do far worse than to simply read it and then gift it to your kids, but for me, it's too personal of a job to not go beyond that. Of course, Professor Kreeft actually did it and I've only pondered it, so it's got that going for it.

In any case, reading it has renewed my interest in starting a series of posts serializing my own lessons to my kids. If you stick around for them and I actually write them, I've no doubt that you'll think to yourself, "These are good in their own way, but their just not me."

* - Parenting is a love affair, just with a different purpose than being your wife or husband's lover.

Mint vs. Your Bank

My wife retired a while back and when she did, we decided to track our finances a little more closely. I've used Mint before, but never very carefully. This time, I made the effort to have it access all the data I could. The end result has been less than hoped.

Ground rules: I just want to be able to tell at a glance how we're doing. We're not high rollers and our most expensive hobby is cooking at home. Outside of the steaks we buy at Costco and the occasional rack of lamb, we're pretty simple folk. Well, steaks, craft beer and good wines, but you get the idea. No fancy cars, jet skis, gambling trips or frequent wild vacations.

First off, every month, Mint tells me we're hosed. I've never had a month in the black. Every time, the thing informs me that our net income for the month is negative. When I first started using it, it frightened me. I figured it was just the timing of when I started and in a month or two, we'd be in the black. Nope. Every month, we're in the red.

Just when I figured we needed to sell our house in San Diego and move into a double wide out in Jamul, I checked the basic calculations our bank does when you ask for a summary. If you look at the last three months, a good period to pick as we're starting to get the hang of the smaller gross income, the bank says we're slightly in the black.

Personally, as the money we spend comes from the bank, I'd trust them a bit more than Mint.Mint does a good job categorizing our spending, but using it for the kind of gross monitoring that I really want to do is out of the question.

Not sure if any of you have used Mint, but if you have I'd like to hear what you think.

Merry Christmas!

The crack editorial staff at The Scratching Post would like to wish you all a very merry and blessed Christmas!

If This Doesn't Make You Smile, Check Your Pulse

The Worst Thing About Birthday Shopping For Your Wife

... is finding the right card.

My wife has a late-December birthday, so there are complications a-plenty right from the start, but we've found solutions to those over the years. No, the very worst thing, regardless of what time of year it is, is finding the right card.

I can usually find good ones for mom, dad, the boys, our daughter and friends, but for your wife it needs to be just right. This year, I spent more time and anxiety finding the card than just about everything else combined and I still don't like what I got.

I used to give blank cards where I could write my own sentiments, but for whatever reason, those are becoming harder and harder to find in stores and those you do find have clichéd photos - flowers, puppies, dolphins, rotifers, decaying leaves, buckets of spackle ...

OK, well, maybe a few of those aren't actually offered, but you get the idea.

A hypothetical rotifer birthday card for your wife: "To my little love-bug..."

Back in the day when I was still doing photography for this blog (I have no idea why I stopped, it just happened), I would make my own cards on our printer with a favorite photo as the cover. I never liked those either, as the card stock always seemed flimsy and unprofessional. Since the stock was 8 1/2 x 11, when folded, the cards were puny compared to store-bought cards.

I'm sure there are online artists who sell their work as cards and I ought to look them up and bookmark their sites, but to be perfectly honest, I usually forget and leave the card shopping until the last minute.

Grumble, grumble, grumble. (Leaves room, muttering to self about how things were so much better in the old days...)

Math Wins Again, Immigrant Terrorist Edition

The folks over at National Review are making predictable hay over the Islamist attack in Berlin wherein the refugee dude drove into a crowd, killing a bunch and injuring more bunches. I think this is unfair and they are missing the point.

Here's one tidbit.

The Daily Mail reports, “He was put on a danger list shortly after arriving in Germany in June last year, which meant authorities considered him prone to extreme violence. Yet just how much surveillance he was under remains unclear.” Wait, somebody can be on a “danger list, prone to extreme violence” and not under surveillance?

Here's another.

His terrorist activities aside, Amri has also been involved in narcotics trafficking, theft, and the torching of a school. That last felony occurred in Italy, where the “refugee” was sentenced to five years in prison before being welcomed into Deutschland. All that baggage, and still the Germans allowed him to remain. Reportedly, officials felt they could not deport him because he did not have a passport and the Tunisian government would not acknowledge him (despite the fact that the Tunisian government had convicted him in absentia of a violent robbery). That might explain a brief delay in repatriating him; it does not explain a legal system that permits a suspect with a lengthy, violent criminal record to remain at liberty while he is suspected of plotting mass-murder attacks.

Emphasis in the original.

European (and American and Western in general) security forces are designed to deal with a relatively small percentage of criminals in our midst and assume a limited criminal support infrastructure. Our laws are designed to protect the citizen from unwarranted surveillance and apprehension by the police. For this reason it takes a lot of resources to follow any particular dude.

As the number of dudes needing surveillance and apprehension increases. if you want to maintain protection of the population, you need to do some combination of these two things.

• Increase the size of your security forces and
• Relax the rules under which they operate, giving them more freedom and your citizens less.

For example, if, under the current rules, Detective Heinrich Mueller can reasonably keep track of 5 jihadis, if you increase the number of jihadis he needs to track to 10 or 15, some of them are going to slip through his fingers. It's not that Detective Mueller is incompetent or the people managing the security forces are soft on terrorism, it's a simple matter of mathematics. Your rules set an upper limit on how many jihadis can be 'managed' per person on the force.

By importing 1,000,000 refugees to Germany alone and allowing Muslims to set up independent city-states within their countries, the Europeans have blown that math problem to bits.

Europe now has a choice: Double or triple the size of their security forces or relax the rules governing their security forces until Germany is less like cool and groovy West Germany and more like rigid police state East Germany.

Mark Steyn had a typically telling quote the other day.

“It’s amazing to me,” he added. “I think this is insane when I listen to people say ‘oh, we’re now going to have to have metal detectors in night clubs, security in nightclubs. Ok, so what happens next? They blow up a bakery, they blow up a little pastry shop, so then you’re gonna have to have metal detectors to get into the pastry shop?”

How many cops will you need to watch every store?

The Holidays Are The Perfect Time For A Really Big Family Row

Christmas time can cause a great deal of stress in a household. Some might say that this is dangerous and can lead to unnecessary strife, but I say, take advantage of it! Use this time to really rip open those scabs and solve problems by yelling and fighting. The only way out is through!

Or maybe not. Maybe going through someone is a bad idea. Nah. They'll be really appreciative, once they pick themselves up off the ground. Trust me.

You know that fault your wife* has that drives you crazy? Focus on it! I mean, for the love of Saint Nick, she always uses the last bit of wrapping paper and when you need to wrap your presents, you're left with that awful pink flamingo paper you got as a gag for Aunt Betty's birthday, the one where she drank half a quart of cheap vodka and ended up in the backyard, screaming at the neighbors in the rain while her daughter went out and secretly got a tattoo of Juan Valdez and his burro on her backside while ...

Hmm. This might be getting too personal. Focus! I must focus!

So here's what I recommend. Focus is indeed the watch word. Focus like a laser on the way she uses the last bit of wrapping paper or the last bit of tape or likes to watch chick flicks or sappy Christmas movies or any of the other horrors she visits upon you. Above all, do not think about the following.

• She's introduced you to wonderful new friends
• She puts up with your sports fanaticisms
• She is a good cook
• She loves the kids
• She gives to others with a natural grace
• She's still beautiful to you after years of marriage, lovely as a summer day
• She shares your passions and interests just because they're yours
• She is willing to watch Watford vs. Sunderland with you on a Saturday morning
• She goes to church with you
• She encourages your good habits and makes you a better person
• (fill in your own examples here)

Look, you could focus on the positive things and fall deeper in love with whoever it is we're talking about, or you could finally solve that one, little niggling problem that invalidates that whole list. I mean, we're talking wrapping paper here, man!

Choose wisely and next year, you won't have to worry about anyone else using your wrapping paper ever again.

* - Wife, husband, son, daughter, father, mother, cousin-once-removed-and-about-to-be-removed-again-this-time-by-the-cops, whatever.

China: Our Allies In The Fight Against Global Warming Climate Change

With China on our side, we're unstoppable! Global Warming Climate Change doesn't stand a chance!

Analgesics To Addictions

I'm currently reading C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters with a friend of mine who is a recovered alcoholic. There's a chapter that deals with pleasures of the body and how Screwtape's nephew can use them to tempt his human into sin. It's not that pleasure is bad, it's when pleasure takes the place of legitimate joy that you get into trouble.

My friend talked about using alcohol as a pain killer and how you get trapped by it. When you're going through bad times, it's easy to have a drink or three or four to get through it. His bad times were worse than most by a good margin so his analgesic needs were substantial. He said what happened was that when the pain went away, the booze was still there. Just as Screwtape said, the pain-relieving nature of pleasure had turned into a hunger for that pleasure that outlived the need.

My friend said that it's in the bad times when you need to fast more than ever. That shocked me, but it made sense. At one point in my own life, I'd been in a similar situation, but I escaped alcoholism by dumping several hundred dollars worth of top-shelf booze down the drain when I knew my bad times were pretty much over. I could see the dependency right around the corner, but was still in control enough to willingly dump the stuff. I was lucky*.

I wonder if fasting would have worked instead of intoxicants to survive the bad spell.

* - In retrospect, luck had nothing to do with it. I later experienced a miracle that I realize now tied into that moment. Someone was looking out for me. At some point on this blog, I'll have to share the story of my miracle, but that's something for another blog post.

Dear Media - This Is Why You Lost

I know this is a week old or so, but it has stuck in my mind as the most tellingly surreal moment of an utterly surreal 2016. Hillary Clinton, a woman who lies when she doesn't have to, who lies about things that are easy to check, someone who can't stop lying to save the campaign that defines the purpose of her life, gave a speech on fake news and the news media lapped it up.

I can't think of anything more insane. That they bothered to run with this shows just how utterly out-of-touch they are, not just with Trump voters, but with reality itself. This is so weird that appropriate analogies enter into the realm of the cartoonish. Jeffrey Dahmer hosting a cooking show, carried without irony by one of the major networks? I don't know. It's so crazy that it doesn't work as a joke.

This isn't doubling down on failure, it's immersing yourself in it.

If Morality Is Driven By Evolution, Why Not Government Or Economics

The Darwinian approach to morality is to claim that human notions of good and evil evolve over time using the same mechanisms as any standard physical attribute or mutation. In a previous post, I said this seemed like rubbish to me, but let's extend it a bit.

---

Short summary of previous post: The data doesn't look like the product of evolution. It oscillates all over the place. Further, the mechanisms don't make sense. If I get a willing coed back to my dorm room and I'm 19, I'm not thinking about making choices that are best for society, I'm thinking about making choices that are best for me right now.

---

Morality is loads of fun because it leads to discussions of sex and sex is what we really want to talk about*. However, if we're going to take evolution out into regions where it doesn't belong - culture and society - why not take it to politics and economics? If it's in society's best interests that you get married before having children and stay married after, isn't it also in society's best interests if you pursue policies that lead to wealth and freedom?

Isn't Venezuela a worse place to propagate the next generation of gene-carriers than Canada?

If evolution governed broader aspects of the species like these, wouldn't the data look, well, evolutionish? How do we keep getting socialist basket cases, oligarchic kleptocracies and theocratic loony bins?

It seems to me like the same rules that apply to Darwinian selection in the wild are at work both here and in the case of morality. People are doing what's right for them right now. Whether that's college kids hooking up or the Democratic National Committee engineering the candidacy of a hopelessly corrupt statist, bad decisions in a societal sense are good decisions for each person.

Evolution works when a preponderance of individual mutations go in a certain direction because they pay off. In these cases, the individual mutations pay off for the individuals, but not for society.

Finally, my understanding of science is that you start with the data and make hypotheses about it. You don't start with the hypotheses and mold the data to fit it. I can't imagine that anyone looking at human morality, government or economics data over, say, 1,000 years, would come to a conclusion that there was some kind of evolutionary activity taking place.

Sorry, Francis. This didn't work out so well. It would have, had evolution governed human behavior, but it doesn't.

* - This is why we focus on mentally ill men who think they're women instead of mentally ill men who think they're Napoleon.

This Will Get About 30 Seconds Of Airtime

From today's WSJ:

Russian hackers tried to penetrate the computer networks of the Republican National Committee, using the same techniques that allowed them to infiltrate its Democratic counterpart, according to U.S. officials who have been briefed on the attempted intrusion.

But the intruders failed to get past security defenses on the RNC’s computer networks, the officials said. And people close to the investigation said it indicated a less aggressive and much less persistent effort by Russian intelligence to hack the Republican group than the Democratic National Committee. Only a single email account linked to a long-departed RNC staffer was targeted.

So we can cross Russian hacking off the list of reasons that Hillary lost. A better description would be incompetent security on the DNC network.

Oh yeah, CNN is going wall-to-wall with this one.

I Love Tillerson As Secretary Of State

What a great pick! Dude was CEO of Exxon? Perfect! He knows how to run a massive organization, manage a big budget and negotiate with foreign powers to accomplish important things.

To those who think this is a bad pick, compare him to the last two Secretaries of State - Kerry and Clinton. Neither of them had a smidgen of his experience or credentials. What had they ever done or accomplished?

As for Tillerson lining his own pockets as Secretary of State, what do you think Clinton was doing? That wasn't a concern, it really happened to the tune of 9 figures.

Great pick. In fact, all in all, I've been really happy with almost all of Trump's choices. I'm really optimistic about the next four years.

The Hookup Culture Is Ruining Everything

... everything in the year 1485, that is.

From Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, Book XVII, Chapter XXV:

But nowadays men can not love seven night but they must have all their desires: that love may not endure by reason; for where they be soon accorded and hasty heat, soon it cooleth. Right so fareth love nowadays, soon hot soon cold: this is no stability. But the old love was not so; men and women could love together seven years, and no licours lusts were between them, and then was love, truth, and faithfulness: and lo, in like wise was used love in King Arthur's days.

Look at that! Love is now* nothing more than slaking one's lust. I blame the Millenials.

* - Well, maybe not now, per se. More like 530 years ago. Still, I blame the Millenials.

Plumbing Is The Worst

No time to blog. Working on plumbing.

I hate plumbing.

Ukraine

Reading a news article today about Ukraine, wherein it was noted that the two largest armies in Europe - Ukraine's and Russia's - where on the brink of war, I wondered just why it mattered to us. That's a long way away from San Diego and much closer to Warsaw, Berlin, London, Paris, etc. Unless NATO is European for "Let the Yanks take care of everything while we sip espresso at a cafe," it sure looks like a problem for someone else to solve.

Maybe if the Germans hadn't killed off Fritz and the boys back in the 1940s chasing some idiotic dream of making the world safe for whitey, his grandkids could stand up to Ivan on their own.

I'm sure there's some complicated reason why Ukraine is important and stopping Putin's imperial ambitions is a good thing, but it looks like a much better thing for those closer to the action. To borrow from Bismark, "The whole of Ukraine is not worth the bones of a single Kentucky infantryman."

Especially if it's not worth the bones of a single Munich tanker.

Fake News

For the life of me, I can't figure out what the big deal is. No matter the source, you always have to view the news with a certain amount of skepticism. When I used to watch 60 Minutes, every time they covered something I knew about, I could tell their stories were heavily slanted and full of misinformation if not outright lies.

So what? It happens all the time for a variety of reasons. Above a certain age or a certain level of experience-based sophistication, you stop being a credulous nitwit, sitting slack-jawed and ingesting every morsel you read or see like it was God's own truth.

In any case, what difference would any of this have made in the election? How many votes did this sway?

When you get right down to it, there are two underlying messages being peddled with the fake news hysteria.

1. The news media is honest and forthright and professional and unbiased.
2. You're such a moron that you can't differentiate between the National Enquirer and PBS.

The solution is obvious. You need the government to protect you from your own gullible stupidity.

Right.

Kipling On Laziness

Is it really laziness? You be the judge.

We went back to his study, a large square room lined with bookcases on two sides. There were his desk, his chair, an enormous wastebasket and his pens - the kind you dip in ink. At right angles to the fireplace was a small sofa. "I lie there," he said with a smile, "and wait for my daemon to tell me what to do."

"Daemon?"

He shrugged. "Intuition. Subconscious. Whatever you want to call it."

"Can you always hear him?"

"No," he said slowly. "Not always. But I learned long ago that it's best to wait until you do. When our daemon says nothing, he usually means no."

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go lay on my couch.

H/T: Arthur Gordon. I highly recommend the book you'll find at that link.

Evolution Produces Moral Notions Of Good And Evil

... seems to be utter nonsense to me. There are so many reasons for this that I'm not sure where to start.

First off, evolution is a monotonic process. That is, the tiger is a superior predator compared to its ancestor. If it weren't, the tiger would have gone extinct and its predecessor would still be around. Human morality, that set of culturally agreed upon norms of good and evil, comes in ebbs and flows. In the time of Caligula, everything was up for grabs. In the Victorian era, they weren't. In Weimar Germany they were. In 1950s America they weren't. Now they are. That doesn't sound like evolution to me.

Second, how would evolutionary morality actually work? Males of all species are designed to try to mate with as many females as possible in order to propagate their genes. Millenia of the ebbs and flows described above have shown that if you define good and evil from the point of view of the children, then traditional marriage is superior to hooking up. Is that where we are now? If morality was evolutionary, wouldn't you expect to see a gradual increase in marriage rates instead of this?

Illegitimacy rates in the US. Why would an inferior trait become more common? 

Dittos for murder rates and other crimes. They're antisocial behaviors and they go up and down over time.

The illegitimacy rate shows more than just an inferior trait taking hold, it shows how the conflict between individual evolutionary behaviors and collective evolutionary behaviors is resolved in favor of the individual. The rise in illegitimacy is exactly what you'd expect to see in a culture where, for a variety of reasons, males were no longer forced to marry the mothers of their children. The species and community have no real sway at all, it's the primal instincts of the male that win out.

In short, morality doesn't behave at all like an evolutionary trait. Height, on the other hand, does.

This is how you'd expect an evolutionary trait to behave.

Conclusion: Can materialism and Darwinism produce standard notions of good and evil through evolution? I don't see it.

Argentine Ants And Native Americans

Argentine ants are a serious invasive pest in San Diego. They're aggressive, but only to other species. Within their own species, they'll cooperate, even between nests. This means that, when brought to war, the local ants aren't one nest vs. one nest, it's one nest vs. every Argentine ant in the world.

It hasn't worked out so well for the locals.

This is evolution. The Argentines are superior competitors and they are doing away with the local ant population. While sad, it's all part of the circle of life. Or is it the dead end of life? Whatever.

If we're simply physical beings, if we're just another species of animals, then what about this: The Spanish were superior competitors to the American Indians. It's sad that the Indians got stomped, but isn't that the way of evolution? Shouldn't we just shake our heads in momentary sadness and then get on with our lives?

Isn't the concern and guilt for the Indians an indication of an underlying moral foundation that has nothing to do with physics and chemistry and biology and evolution?

Going Topless, Day 1

... laptopless, that is.

I ditched the morning laptop session in favor of an (almost) pre-computer lifestyle. That meant coffee, feeding the animals and no laptop-web-surfing. It was great.

I spent a few minutes with the smartphone and hit the important sites to see what was what. The phone is a pretty terrible consumption device, so the temptation to make one more click is orders of magnitude less than with the laptop. Instead, I did something a friend of mine has been suggesting for about 2 years. I started a Novena.

This one, as a matter of fact.

Without the laptop beckoning me to more surfing, I was able to pray and meditate in a calm, peaceful fashion. In addition to prayer, I was able to think more deeply about things I had read and experienced lately without the feeling that I was missing out on something awesome on the Interweb Tubes.

On my flight back home from Virginia yesterday, I was listening to the Arthurian Legends, Le Morte D'Arthur. I'm a total fan and have a huge collection of different editions of the legends, probably in excess of 100 books. I've never experienced them the same way as I am now, listening to the story. In my time of peace this morning, a few things bubbled up out of my subconscious, things I might blog at a later date. In any case, I would never have thought them with the laptop open and me clicking around like a madman.

Lesson: Computers make everything else frantic even when you're not using them. Hurry! As soon as you get that done, you can open me up again and we'll hit the websites!

Laptops are jealous lovers.

Poopy Head University

Scenario: Your child is 3 years old. He comes to you, crying, and says, "Johnny just called me a poopy head!" He then proceeds to throw a fit of Olympic proportions.

As a good parent, the proper response would be to give him a safe space with toys and cushions while thoroughly researching the phrase 'poopy head' and hiring an expensive diversity therapist to intervene with the whole family. Family policies would change so that 'poopy head' would no longer be spoken or written by anyone. Any books on your bookshelf with either the word 'poopy' or the word 'head' would be immediately thrown away. The local police would be called in and advised that you will be calling them to the scene if anyone heard or read the phrase 'poopy head' ever again.

Yeah, that's sane.

Spitting Out The Pacifier

For about ten years now and maybe more, I've had the same morning routine. Get up, make coffee, feed the critters, turn on the laptop, surf the web and blog.

And then keep surfing the web. And surfing. And surfing.

Long after I've found the last interesting tidbit, I'm clicking around, reading and watching. I know exactly what I'm doing, too. It's obvious when the web has nothing more to offer you in the areas you pursue. I'm just sitting there, wasting time, putting off getting up and doing something more productive.

My MGB is still unwired, by the way.

I've got a book in my Audible library whose name I can't recall right now which posits convincingly that the Internet and Twitter and the rest rewires your brain so that you begin to struggle on tasks that require more than a moment's thought. As I listened to the book, I found it frighteningly true in my own life. I've intended to try this experiment for a while, but there was always one more blog to read or one more YouTube video to watch.

So here's the deal. The laptop doesn't get turned on in the morning. For the rest of December, I'm getting up, making coffee, feeding the critters and then ... who knows? Being the unreformed blogger, I'll still take notes and probably sit down to write up the day's thoughts at some point, but it may result in a day or two missed*.

Prediction: Things will get done, skills will be learned and books will get read.

And the sun will shine and birds will sing!

At least that's the plan.

* - Yeah, right. I'm absolutely OCD about this daily blogging thing by now.

Keep Trying

I love Adoration. I really love it. I don't go very often any more for a variety of reasons, but when I do, I'm usually able to open my mind and heart and as I pray the Rosary a mantra-like fashion, I am able to receive what I need.

We all fight the same sins throughout our lives. Whether it's greed or anger or drink or whatever, I'd strongly argue that you're born with certain weaknesses and that's that. I know I always go to Confession for the same things.

The last time I went to Adoration, engrossed in the latest chapter of my Sisyphean battle with xxx, God said to me, "It's OK. Just keep fighting." And so I did, with more success some days and less on others.

Because I've continued to fight, I've been open to finding any advantage I can in my battle. I recently experienced a series of unrelated epiphanies that might just make my fight a little easier.

In public talks, I like to say that having goals changes your life. Having goals makes you see the world in a different way. You're always on the alert for opportunities to further your goals. Fighting sin seems to be like that. Beating Sparky, even temporarily, is a goal. Because I kept fighting, I was able to assemble my epiphanies into something more powerful than any of them alone.

There, was that vague enough? Yeah. Pretty much. Keep fighting. That's the only thing I wanted to say today.

Well, that and God bless.

Trump And Taiwan

You know, if you wanted to negotiate some trade deals with the goons that run China, having Taiwan as a bargaining chip isn't such a bad thing. It's a very Trumpian move. You reset the relationship by taking a position wildly in your favor and then you negotiate down from there.

My man @BDaddyLiberator has been trying to tell me this for a long time, but I was too locked into conventional wisdom to see it.

Old Testament Grind

... would be a good name for a coffee.

I'm back to struggling my way through the Old Testament. I'm up to Chronicles wherein we learn thing like this.

The sons of Judah were: Perez, Hezron, Carmi, Hur, and Shobal. Reaiah, the son of Shobal, became the father of Jahath, and Jahath became the father of Ahumai and Lahad. These were the clans of the Zorathites. These were the sons of Hareph, the father of Etam: Jezreel, Ishma, and Idbash; their sister was named Hazzelelponi. Penuel was the father of Gedor, and Ezer the father of Hushah. These were the sons of Hur, the firstborn of Ephrathah, the father of Bethlehem. Ashhur, the father of Tekoa, had two wives, Helah and Naarah. Naarah bore him Ahuzzam, Hepher, the Temenites, and the Ahashtarites. These were the sons of Naarah.

I'm sure they were awesome people who could tell jokes just right where the timing of the punchline was impeccable to the point where you'd laugh so hard that coffee would come out of your nose and you weren't even drinking coffee at the time.

Having said that, reading about them is a real drag. Still, it must be done*.

What's hitting me as I let this cataract of unpronounceable names wash over me is how the only people that mattered in the Old Testament were the royalty and the priests / prophets. If you're some schlub tending his sheep, your fate is tied to whether or not the king does right in the sight of the Lord. If he does, your chances of being killed in battle go down. If he doesn't, get ready to drop your sword and get cut down by the Gorgomites as you flee.

In contrast, Jesus tells the shepherd that not only is he not a schlub, he's an equal to the king in the eyes of God. Your life, even if you listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd, fly a Confederate flag and hold improper views on gay marriage, matters.

Meanwhile, in the Koran, it's probably time to whack a few infidels. If you're an atheist, it's time to act superior and come up with more reasons why atheism didn't open the floodgates to Mao's industrial slaughter of the Chinese. If you're of the Eastern religions, I have no idea what you do because I'm not there yet in my reading. You probably drink some chai and do yoga. Whatever.

In any case, it looks to me like faith and belief systems matter. If you're even half-listening to what you say you believe in, the faith you chose is going to have an impact on you.

If you belong to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you get to tell your one joke over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

* - As a friend of mine said to me, "Why?" I think that encapsulates my motivations quite well.

Italy Is Not Saved

... no matter which way the vote goes on December 4.

On that day, Italians will decide if their government will raggle-fraggitz nomshapop or if it will fendergarb wilsenstache. Honestly, I have no clear idea what the referendum says and most Italians probably don't, either because the written version is huge. If you're unable to sleep, you can find a summary of it here.

If it passes, the current prime minister will stay in office. If it fails he will resign. Or maybe it's the other way around. It hardly matters as Italy changes its government once a year on average.

The problem isn't the prime minister, it's the people. For decades, they've voted for more government spending and more government regulations and now they've got an unsustainable debt, banks on the verge of collapse and a moribund economy. Until they come to grips with the realities of life - that someone has to pay for their handouts and all those regulations make business owners want to leave - nothing will change.

Over on ZeroHedge where every day is Black Friday (or Monday or Tuesday or whatever) and Total Economic Collapse is just a few hours away, they're predicting massive stock market crashes.

I guess. I'm not sure why our markets would have more than a brief downturn and then go back to normal. No one has been counting on anyone in Europe to be an engine of recovery so it hardly matters if the imported olive oil market falls to bits.

Here's my prediction. Whatever happens to the referendum, at some point in the future, the debts will seemingly kill off the banks and cause national crises in a variety of countries. Some might leave the EU and the EU might even fall apart. There will be a short spasm of panic and then the central banks will step in and print money, doling it out to the stricken financial institutions with the flimsiest of fig leaves in the form of demands for "change" which will take the form of yet more government regulations. Some places might even nationalize their banks.

The populace will see a reduced standard of living, but the overall governing philosophy of the culture - more government intervention is a good and necessary thing - won't change. The slow decay into socialism's entropic state of stagnation and failure will continue.

Paul Krugman and Robert Reich will write columns extolling Europe and talking about how we need to follow their example. The Mainstream Media will interview them extensively and Sage Academics with Impeccable Credentials will nod their heads in agreement.

Meanwhile, somewhere out in the wilds, the Gods of the Copybook Headings will be gearing up to return.

Yeah, a vote will fix that right up.

Why Nancy Pelosi Won

San Fran Nan is back as the Democrats leader in the House. After getting beat all over the board, from state houses to the presidency, the Democrats doubled down on calling the rest of racists, sexists, homophobes, islamophobes and all the rest. So why did they do it after it failed so badly in the election? Here's why.

The 2016 election by county.

The people doing the voting are the remaining Democrats, almost all of whom come from the progressive bubbles, as you can see on the map. As the party dwindles, the arch-progressives will dominate things more and more as they will be the only ones left.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

At least until the donors get fed up with it.

Sometimes You Don't Want An Old Dog To Learn New Tricks

... particularly when that trick is howling at sirens.

Howling in harmony? No. Just howling.

Bodie, the older and larger Catican Guard never used to howl at sirens. He's a really laid-back dog unless you come into our yard and he doesn't know you. Then things can get ugly. In any case, our new Catican Guards, the chihuahua sisters, Leah and Lily, both howl at sirens. Bodie has decided this is a good idea.

Sigh.

I mean, it's funny and all, particularly when you watch a little chihuahua really put her back into it and she lets rip with a tiny yet ferocious howl, but I can see how this could get old. Luckily, we don't hear sirens all that often.

It Might Be Time To Start A New Politics-Only Blog

... except that this one would deal with things in the distant past. The 1890s, say. Here's how it would work.

Take all of your current favorite hobby horses and pet peeves and apply them to newspaper articles from your chosen era. Walk through the events on a daily basis and write screeds and rants about all of the things you discover. Use quotes from the politicians of the day, mocking those who disagree with you unmercifully. Make predictions of boom or bust based on the way you see the world right now.

After a year or so of this, go forward 5 years and see how well you fared. Did things collapse as you said they would? Were there uprisings and riots like you said? Did the right nations prosper? What fun!

Best of all, you could rant and rave with wild accusations and slanderous assertions and no one would respond with rage and vitriol.

Mostly because no one would have any idea at all what you were talking about.

At the very least, we should all agree that Paul Krueger was a toolbox.
Whoever he was.

What The World Needs Now

... is a fun, rowdy Catholic podcast.

I've tried a bunch of Catholic podcasts and they're all so serious or mild or prayerful. No, what we need is an Irish Catholic podcast where we drink beer and shout. Kind of like this.

Or maybe one where we mix Catholicism and Van Halen. Hey, God loves us and he made men and women so they were, err, compatible, right? He also gave us the intellect required to brew IPAs and build airplanes that can take us to the Caribbean for diving vacations. What's not to celebrate loudly about that?

I would love it. A Catholic podcast that opened with David Lee Roth singing Beautiful Girls and went downhill, more or less, from there.

Hmmm.

The Fake Outrage Over Fake News

Elections are won or lost at the margins. Given that Hillary Clinton was in favor of having the government fund any and every gruesome late-term abortion technique, probably including dropping living babies into Cuisinarts as they were delivered, there was no way on Earth I was going to vote for Ms. Abbatoir. If Instapundit ran a story telling me that Hillary was Elvis' love child and I swallowed it hook, line and sinker, it would have made no difference.

Similarly, if the Huffington Post had run story after story telling me that ObamaCare was going to lower costs and provide awesome coverage, I wouldn't have ... oh, wait. They did.

In any case, the HufPo didn't change my opinion at all.

Most of us live in intellectual bubbles, reading stories and columns from people and sites that agree with us. The actual impact of "fake news" stories is probably pretty minimal as they just reinforce opinions that are already set in concrete. The only way a "fake news" story could effect things would be if they appeared on sites who hold positions contrary to the point of the story.

If HuffPo carried the Elvis-Hillary story or Glenn Reynolds told me ObamaCare was fantabulous, it would at least have a prayer of making an effect. As it was, I can't see how any "fake news" stories did anything at all to impact the election.

Another mechanism would be to have the thin sliver of undecideds exposed to sufficient amounts of "fake news" to change their minds. How this would differ from the major news networks going all-in to stop Trump, I'm sure I don't know.

"It's Our Most Festive Christmas Ever!"

On Pandora, from time to time I hear an ad for Disneyland that talks about their Christmas celebrations with the line, "It's our most festive Christmas ever!" Those "best one yet" things always get me because they imply that last year's was worse. When I hear this ad, I mentally finish it like so.

"It's our most festive Christmas ever! I mean, it could hardly help but improve on last year's when the parade ground to a halt because one of the floats burst into flames, scorching those orphans. Man, that was pretty horrible. We're really trying to avoid a repeat of that disaster. And don't get us started on the time those lions escaped in 1973. What a mess! Anyway, if you come up this year, we promise to try not to kill or maim any of you."

Water Lilly

While in Augusta, we saw this water lily in a pond by the Savannah River. My point-and-shoot camera took a great shot and I decided to over crop it for artistic reasons. I left the image large, so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

Separation Of Thanksgiving And State

Happy Thanksgiving to all y'all! Here, we're celebrating with the traditional turkey at mom's. Hoorah!

Elsewhen, George Washington kicked this whole thing off with his Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789. Here's the opening bit.

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

Read, as they say, the whole thing. It's worth a little such reflection once in a while.

Innocent? Nope. Dangerous.

Our new Maximum Leader, Maddi*, has a habit of sprinting for the bedroom where her food is kept whenever anyone makes a move in that direction. My wife was walking down the hallway away from that room the other day when Maddi, streaking for the food dish, ran between her legs and tripped her. My wife fell and ended up with a severely sprained thumb.

It's a hard life caring for a Maximum Leader sometimes.

Oh, sure, she looks like she's snoozing, but in reality, she's like a cocked gun, waiting to zip off to the noms. Don't get in her way!

* - Her full name is now Maddi Nomeater von Dangercat

A Confession

... from the deepest, darkest regions of my sin-tortured soul.

I like chick bubblegum music.

There! I said it! It's out now and I feel so much better.

When I need a pick me up, sometimes I turn to ZoeGirl, Britt Nicole, Mandisa or even (gasp!) Jamie Grace. In my pre-Jesus Music days, I liked the Go-Gos, the Bangles and bands like that. Not exclusively, mind you, it gets tiresome after a bit, but any good mix has to have some chick bubblegum in it. You need to add in Van Halen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Benny Goodman, Dixieland jazz and Confederate Railroad as well ... OK, not all in the same mix, that would be eclectic to an insane degree, but I think you get the idea,

And yes, I know the music was written for 11-year-old girls. So sue me.

And you? What horrible music do you like?

You bet I'm dead serious.

So What?

One more post on the mysteries of racism / sexism / blah bah blah. Sorry if this is getting monotonous, but I'm trying to step back and understand this. In today's episode, we wonder just what the point of it all is.

Here's a paragraph from Charles Blow's latest screed.

Increasingly, as he picks his cabinet from among his fawning loyalists, it is becoming clear that by “Make America Great Again,” he actually meant some version of “Make America a White, Racist, Misogynistic Patriarchy Again.” It would be hard to send a clearer message to women and minorities that this administration will be hostile to their interests than the cabinet he is assembling.

OK, I guess. What if it's all true? What if we had elected Hillary Clinton and ridden a wave of racial comity to the sunny uplands of freedom and diversity?

• We'd still owe $20T and my kids would still have this gorilla on their backs
• The Middle East would still be in flames
• Iran and Russia would still be trying to form a regional hegemony
• Iran would still get nukes while it shouts "Death to America"
• Dittos for regional hegemony in Asia with China
• Illegitimacy would still be at civilization-destroying levels in almost all, err, diversity groups 
• Cities like Los Angeles and Chicago would still be facing fiscal meltdowns over insolvent pension plans
• As would states like California and Illinois
• And so on

Driving around Savannah last week, I saw some morbidly obese people of all races*. The primary problem in their lives wasn't racism, it was their weight. Similarly, the people that lived in run-down houses with beer cans in the yard had major problems with the way they spent their disposable income. The safest space in the world isn't going to help students who don't learn the material before a test.

In short, what's the big deal? Whether or not the US is a White, Racist, Misogynistic Patriarchy or an Eden of Equality, when the pension crises hit, racism isn't going to overcome the math. If Iran decides to nuke someone, having an Eskimo, Tolerant Matriarchy isn't going to stop the place from being incinerated.

I've read several people claim that screaming "Racism!" is a substitute for cogent argument and I quite agree. I'd add that obsessing over it is simply intellectual chaff. It has no value. I don't care if you have a Black Panthers flag or a Confederate flag in your yard. Whatever your bent, it's not going to change the fact that we all owe $60K per person on the national debt and once you remove those who can't pay, it's more like $240K per person. That's a recipe for disaster.

Thought experiment: Go through a day's worth of political tweets and editorials from progressives and remove all references to diversity and see what you get. My bet is that it's pretty thin stuff.

* - On our Savannah trip, deep in Dixie, we didn't see any evidence of racism. We all seemed to be getting along pretty well. Maybe the average American is actually a pretty decent sort.

January 20 Could Be Really Interesting For Sanctuary City Mayors

Dig these tidbits from 8 USC 1324.

a-1-A-iii: Any person who — knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).

a-1-B-ii: in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(ii), (iii), (iv), or (v)(II), be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

Well OK then.

Racism Is Full Of Conundrums

I was browsing Twitter the other night when I clicked onto the stream of some actress or model or whatever. She had over 2 million followers and was spazzing out over Trump. By this time, she was howling about his cabinet appointments. Everyone was a racist. Going back through her timeline, every political tweet charged someone with racism or sexism.

I have no idea what these terms mean any more. Here are some puzzlements for me.

• How does she know she's not a racist? She could claim she wasn't, but the people she was shouting about would say the same thing. If you can't tell whether or not you're a racist, then who can? Shouldn't we just assume you are one to be on the safe side?
• As I understand it, if you are a minority, you can't be racist. That means that if Jose Hernandez hates white people, he's not a racist. However, the moment he sets foot in Mexico, he is one, right?
• Or maybe it's about power. Can Barack Obama be a racist? He's a minority, but he also has plenty of power.
• If President Obama can't be racist because he's black, then can't he become one when he touches down in, say, Kenya for a diplomatic trip? 
• Since we must assume he's a racist, this is a real problem.
• Do we want a racist representing us in Kenya?
• Wouldn't it be a better idea to send only white guys to Kenya just to make sure we weren't sending any racists?

I think you can see where this all leads. No American white person can reliably know if they are racist, but if they move to a country where they are in the minority, they stop being racist.

How to end racism

This is obvious. All white people should move to Kenya. then none of them will be racist. All black people should move to the US. Then they can't be racist, either. All Hispanics should move to China and all Chinese should move to Mexico.

Wait, what?

Hmm. That's not going to solve anything. As soon as those moves take place, everyone becomes a member of the majority in their new country. That will make them all racists.

Sacrificial lambs

Clearly, we can't end racism. However, we can minimize it in a mathematical sense. If Chinese move to Mexico so that Mexicans are 50%+1 of the population and Chinese are 50%-1, that would seem to minimize racism on a per capita basis. Of course, the remaining Mexicans would still be racists, but you can't make a racism omelette without breaking a few brown eggs. Maybe they could hold a lottery in Mexico and the losers have to stay and be racists.

This process would then be repeated around the world until racism was minimized globally.

Or something like that.

You're welcome.

CNN Is Totes Dorbs

That's "totally adorable" for you non-Internet-abbreviation types.

Going through one of the airports I was in yesterday, I saw Wolf Blitzer interviewing some CNN chick about Trump and his failure to blah blah blah. It was so cute! Little Wolf was pretending to be part of a "news" organization while the girl was pretending to be a "journalist." I wanted to pat their little heads and tousle their hair, the sweeties.

One of the best things about this election and the WikiLeaks stuff, the MSM's frantic efforts to drag Hillary's dessicated, limp body across the finish line and their endless fixation on racism, sexism and homophobia is that after Trump's win, their powers are almost completely gone. We can see them for what they are, children playing make-believe, imitating competent and trustworthy newspeople.

So next time you see someone on ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN "reporting," just smile and shake your head and say, "Well bless your little hearts. You're so precious!"

Seeing Wolf Blitzer makes me think of a child playing with this as mommy drives the car.
"Beep! Beep! Vroom! Mommy, I'm a real driver!"
"Yes you are, sweetheart. And you're doing such a good job, too!"

Low Country Zombies

I'm in Houston Airport on the way home, but neither snow nor sleet nor travel shall keep this blogger from his appointed blather!

We rented a boat in Savannah and cruised around the marsh waterways for a while. As I looked across the endless tracts of swamp, it occurred to me that this would be a perfect zombie barrier.

It's nearly impossible to walk through the low country marshes even for healthy people. Zombies, with rotting, misshapen limbs would be practically immobilized. Pick an island that could be isolated with a drawbridge and voila! A zombie-proof fortress with plenty of delicious seafood!

What Does It Mean To Serve Consecutive Life Sentences?

It means something like this.

Man, this dude must have been one, bad hombre.

The Supreme Court Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry

Does anyone still get that reference? It's from the ghastly 1970s movie, Love Story, a rancid, gooey, teen-date movie if ever there was one. Lots of guys endured it because it practically guaranteed a make out session.

But I digress.

Better title: The Supreme Court Means Never Having To Campaign For Votes.

Dig this map of state government trifectas. Red means the state has a Republican governor and both legislatures. Blue is Democrat, grey is split.

Transgendered rights, it turned out, wasn't a winning argument.

Imagine trying to get a constitutional amendment passed recognizing gay marriage in that environment. Not. Gonna. Happen. However, the Supreme Court blew right past that hoary tradition and simply decreed what was effectively the same thing.

And you rubes thought you were allowed to vote for things. Ha ha ha. What a laugh.

See also: Constitutional amendment legalizing abortion, chances of passage of.

Of course, we've got an opening on the Supreme Court now and a bunch of geriatric liberals as well. Ted Cruz and a few like-minded individdles might push the country back towards a real democracy where if you want to remake the culture, you'll have to, you know, like, convince the people that it's a good idea.

Gasp! The horror! No wonder they're rioting in Portland.

Savannah Report

Anon recommended a few places in Savannah for us to visit, among them Vic's By The River. Well, we went to Mass at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist (stunning photo below, left large, worth a click) and then took a walk to the Savannah River for brunch.

We ended up at Tubby's instead of Vic's because it had a second-story veranda overlooking the river. We later stopped at Vic's for some coffee, just for anon. It was great, by the way.

Tubby's has a special deal that if a container ship goes by while you're sitting on the veranda, you get a free shot.

And thank you Wallenius Wilhelmsen! Drinks all around!

Savannah is gorgeous. It's not very large, so you can get a feel for the whole place in a couple of days, but it has an undeniable grace which far outstrips most other American cities.

Yes, Southern charm is a real thing.

Want

An auto paint and body shop in Augusta, Georgia bought a panel van and painted it like this.

I love it. What a great idea! You know that it gets looks wherever it goes. A terrific, cheerful advertisement for the business. Brilliant!

Now I want one.

Reacting To Trump

Say you lived in the 1500 block of Campbell St. in Oakland.

Maybe this is your house.

City Hall in Oakland, where Democrat mayor Libby Schaaf runs the show, is 1.4 miles or 5 minutes drive away. The place is pretty darn Democrat all the way around. Wikipedia says, "The Cook Partisan Voting Index of Congressional District 13, which includes Oakland and Berkeley, is D+37, making it the most Democratic congressional district in California and the fourth most Democratic district in the US."

San Francisco County, managed by a board of supervisors, all 12 of which are Democrats, has County Clerk offices 9.2 miles or 15 minutes away from your house. Only 8.6% of all registered voters in San Francisco County are Republicans. Meeting 20 people at random in the street, on average, you will encounter only 1-2 Republicans.

Sacramento is the home of the California State government. The State Capital Building is 79 miles away or a little over an hour's drive if there's no traffic. The state government is managed by Democrat Jerry Brown and a super-majority of Democrats in both chambers of the legislature.

If you live in Oakland, every appointed government official, from top to bottom, has been appointed by a Democrat, save for a few possible holdouts from Governor Schwarzenegger's administration which ended in 2010 or from George W. Bush's administration which ended in 2008.

The congressional delegation from the state of California is made up of 39 Democrats and 14 Republicans. That's 73% Democrat. Both US senators from California are Democrats.

The White House is 2,814 miles away or about 40 driving hours by car. Starting in January of 2017, the fellow occupying that position will be a Republican.

That many Republicans in positions of power in my world and that close to me would make me lose my mind, too.

The Savannah River At Augusta

I left the photo large, so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

How I Will Measure The Trump Administration

When Hillary Clinton was not recommended for indictment by James Comey, I took down the American flag at our house and replaced it with a Vatican flag. I could stomach Obama's imperial presidency and the Supreme Court nullifying perfectly legal election results, but Hillary breaking the law with impunity was too much. She and her henchmen now belonged to a distinct class of Americans, one I could never aspire to join, one that was above all laws. They had money and respect and power and adulation. They made a mockery of this:

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.

Without that, this is no longer the United States of America. It's something new and different, something profoundly evil. Yes, I know, the rich have always gotten away with things, yada yada yada, but to me, this was villainy of a new and completely different type. This was the utter corruption of the legal system from the very top.

Now to the point of this post. Dig this, something I hadn't noticed in the NY Post story about Hillary's maid printing out classified documents.

Santos also had access to a highly secure room called an SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) that diplomatic security agents set up at Whitehaven, according to FBI notes from an interview with Abedin.

From within the SCIF, Santos — who had no clearance — “collected documents from the secure facsimile machine for Clinton,” the FBI notes revealed.

Just how sensitive were the papers Santos presumably handled? The FBI noted Clinton periodically received the Presidential Daily Brief — a top-secret document prepared by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies — via the secure fax.

People need to go to jail over this. Lots of people. At all levels. I don't know if I expect Hillary to end up behind bars, but there had better be a wave of arrests, convictions and jail sentences. Dittos for the Clinton Foundation's fraud of a charity wherein Hillary traded favors for monstrous payoffs.

If the Trump Administration's Justice Department pursues these criminals and puts them behind bars, I can probably take anything else that happens. If it doesn't, then it really won't be making things worse if we discover that Trump was using the presidency to line his own pockets to the tune of 9 figures. After all, Bill and Hillary did.

A Perfectly Engineered Defeat

I'm in Georgia on vacation and don't have much time for blogging, but here's something that struck me from last night's Trump stunner.

The Democrats engineered this whole thing. The party, the media, the academy, the artists, almost everyone was 100% in on Hillary. This wasn't a contest between two candidates who wrestled their way through primaries, uncertain from the start if they might win. This was one such candidate and one who had been chosen and crowned by a machine not just of her own making, but deliberately constructed for precisely this purpose.

And it failed to beat a dreadful candidate.

Don't expect them to change. Don't expect them to learn that screaming at whites that they're racists is a bad idea. Don't expect anything but doubling down on what failed. They're a religious movement as much as a political one, true believers all. They were certain they could feed us a steady diet of racism, sexism, homophobia, islamophobia, transgendered rights and we'd eat it up.

It reminds me of the old joke about the dog food company that came up with a new flavor and marketed it with tons of advertising money, but no matter what they did, it just wouldn't sell. Finally, some young executive said, "Maybe the dogs just don't like the taste of it."

About A Year From Now

... I want to see the airwaves filled with ads for the propositions we're voting on today, created by the people on the losing ends. They'd all be something like this:

"Oh, sure, you thought you knew better, didn't you? We told you not to vote for Proposition 56, but you went ahead and did it anyway. Now look. Everything we said was true. The state is another $400M in debt, the price of tuition has skyrocketed and the elm trees are all barren. Well, we hope you're satisfied with yourselves."

Sometimes I think weird things.

Sales Success Tip: Always Know What Your Customers Want

In the case of CNN, their customers are the Democratic Party.

So Wikileaks has turned up a batch of emails showing collusion between CNN and the DNC, specifically in regards to questions to ask Republican presidential primary candidates in interviews. Note that this was during the primaries, not after Trump had won, so using "OMIGODITSTRUMP!" to excuse CNN's obeisance to their political masters doesn't work here.

A couple of thoughts.

• I'm clearly not the audience for CNN. I couldn't care less what the DNC wants asked. I'm all about the Federal debt load on my children and cultural collapse.
• If I was trying to sell my product to the general public, I'd, you know, like, kind of find out what they wanted to hear. CNN has a polling company under contract, why couldn't they have queried, say, 500 Americans at random to come up with questions. 
• Why did they need to ask for help with the questions in the first place? Is it really that hard to come up with interesting questions for presidential candidates? Those questions answer themselves, of course with the following thought.
• They weren't interested in questions, they were interested in logic traps. "So, Jeb, you said you are against whaling, but the Inuit still hunt whales. Why are you so full of hate for Native Americans?"

Most noteworthy of all is how this election and Wikileaks have completely obliterated the media's claims of being non-partisan. That will never fly again, no matter who wins.

Sigh.

Making A Mockery Of Deep Thought Blog Posts

What's the point any more? I've been blogging daily for almost 11 years now and I've made a concerted effort to share my learning as I pull various threads in all kinds of different subjects. Oh sure, I sometimes get pressed for time and toss up some filler, but I try to make even that worth your visit.

And then I read things like this.

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely asked her maid to print out sensitive government e-mails and documents — including ones containing classified information — from her house in Washington, DC, e-mails and FBI memos show. But the housekeeper lacked the security clearance to handle such material.

In fact, Marina Santos was called on so frequently to receive e-mails that she may hold the secrets to E-mailgate — if only the FBI and Congress would subpoena her and the equipment she used.

My God, what is going on with this country? I feel like I looked away for a little while, my nose buried in a theology book and when I looked up, the academic, cultural and political elite had been replaced by mentally-challenged 8-year-olds. This woman is an Ivy League graduate, for heaven's sake and she's having her Filipino maid print out sensitive documents? What, was the gardener busy?

Look, the rest of us need to get serious about this. The Ivy League is the source for almost all of our judges, politicians, top bureaucrats and more. This has got to be stopped and stopped with utter finality. I propose we make an example of the troubled children who run and attend these schools, an example on the order of the Roman sack of Carthage.

We should burn Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia and the rest to the ground. We should put their administrators and faculty in forced labor camps where they will be made to clean rotting leaves from roof gutters and scrub storm drains. The male students should be drafted into the US Army Infantry and the female students sent to boarding schools in the deep South where they will learn traditional home economics and how to dress, speak and act like a proper lady.

Anyone who has received a degree from one of these dens of dingbattery in the past 20 years should be immediately fired from their jobs. They should be forced to wear pink or blue robes (according to their sex, not their gender) emblazoned with the crests of their schools that we might identify them easily so to avoid making the mistake of placing them in a position of power or influence ever again.

We need to wreak a vengeance on our self-styled "leaders" that will be spoken of for thousands of years. Only then will the country be safe for bloggers to return to their normal lives.

Seriously, I am so over the stupidity and ignorance of the elites. We need to take drastic steps and soon. Her freaking maid was printing out sensitive documents?!?