Thursday, December 8, 2016

Need More Proof Progressivism is not Very Progressive


Economist Stephen Moore writes in his column at IBD that blue states of America are in a depression. He didn't mean the collective funk of Hillary fans because they lost the election to Donald Trump. He's talking about an economic malaise in the blue states that went for Hillary Clinton.  Moore called them the “loser states.” They're all “progressive.” They have high tax rates, high welfare payments, heavy regulation, environmental “extremism” and very high minimum wages. Most of them have laws against drilling for oil or any kind of fossil fuels.

Of the ten states that Democrats won by the largest margins, California, Massachusetts, Vermont, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Illinois, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Connecticut, all lost domestic migration (excluding immigration) between 2004 and 2014. Nearly 2.75 million more Americans left California and New York than migrated to those states.
“The whole left-wing playbook is on display in the Clinton states, and people are leaving in droves. Day after day, they are being bled to death. So much for liberalism creating a worker’s paradise.”
Looking at the ten states that had the largest percentage vote for Trump, Moore says eight of them – Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Dakota and Idaho – had population gains.
"This is part and parcel of one of the greatest internal migration waves in American history, as blue states, especially in the Northeast, are getting clobbered by their low-tax, smaller-government rivals in the South and the mountain regions.
The job gains in the “Red States” that Trump won by the widest margins has twice the job creation of the “Blue States” that Hillary won big in.
It's easy to understand why people might want to leave gray and rusting New York. But California? California has, arguably, the most beautiful weather, mountains and beaches in the country, and yet people keep fleeing the state that is supposed to be a progressive utopia. What doesn't make California and New York paradise is the high cost of living — thanks to expensive environmental regulations, forced union policies and income tax rates that are the highest in the nation, at 13% or more. 
Florida and Texas are right-to-work states with no income tax. Is it really a shocker that people would choose zero income tax over 13%? New York politicians know that their record-high tax rates are killing growth, which is why the state is spending millions of dollars on TV ads across the country trying to convince people that New York has low taxes. Sure. And Chicago is crime-free.
Even when it comes to income inequality, blue states fare worse than red states. According to a 2016 report by the Economic Policy Institute, three of the states with the largest gaps between rich and poor are those progressive icons New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts." -  Read More
What is the lesson? In our ecomonic system, taxing your population at high rates doesn't work. It results in slower growth and only benefits the rich and politically well-connected at the expense of everyone else.

Thank You MJA for the Linkage

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Who Cares If Your Not Time's Person of the Year When You're Moses

After failing to take the White House, a place she felt she deserved, Hillary Clinton has lost out on another honor that was supposed to be hers. Time Magazine has named Donald Trump “The Person of The Year.” And while the President-elect was named the most influential person of 2016, you wouldn’t know it by the accompanying article. Left-leaning Time slams Trump as a “huckster” and a “demagogue,” reserving all of the praise for Hillary who they call “an American Moses.”
Time loves Hillary Clinton so much and it kills them that she lost the election. It’s surprising that they didn’t go ahead and name her POTY anyway, but they more than made up for it in her profile. The magazine excuses all of Hillary’s failings, blaming a media that hasn’t been fair to her. All of this culminates with this puke-inducing assessment:
"In her 1969 commencement address to her class at Wellesley College, Clinton called politics “the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.” In this, she has succeeded. Like an American Moses, she was an imperfect prophet, leading women to the edge of the Promised Land. Now it’s up to another woman to enter it."
Well, they are kind of right about Hillary making the impossible possible. No one gave Donald Trump a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning the presidency, but thanks to Hillary’s terrible campaign and overall scumminess, he’s the President-elect.
As for the Moses thing? Not so much. Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. Along the way, he escaped the Pharaoh’s army by parting the Red Sea. In order for this to be an appropriate analogy, Moses would have led the Israelites from the Promised Land into bondage in Egypt. Also, there would have been no roadblocks along the way and Moses would still have managed to find a way to screw it up.
Had Hillary won the presidency, there would have been another similarity: she would have unleashed a wave of plagues across the land. Instead of water into blood, frogs, lice, flies, disease, boils, hail of fire, locusts, darkness, and infant death, Hillary would have brought liberalism, progressivism, socialism, fascism, cronyism, hypocrisy, corruption, deceit, rape, and bullshit raining from the sky. We would have envied Egypt.  
The only similarities between Moses and Hillary are that they are both old and have wandered around aimlessly for 40 years.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Memo to Time Magazine:

Make Hillary Time's Person of the Year
For the sake of your corporation, and its reputation, 
Time should name Hillary its Person of the Year.


Don Surber
Memo to Time:
Do it.
Get it all out in the open.  Let the staff praise her like "Saturday Night Live" did in that "Hallelujah" opening. The cast had not been as somber since its first post 9/11 show.
Publish those paeans to her that your staff giddily wrote in anticipation of her coronation. It's OK.
This award will be therapeutic and profitable. While a plurality of American citizens elected Trump, a plurality of American residents voted for her. They'll buy copies, sure.
This award will cement Hillary's place as a stepping stone for that future First Woman President -- likely a Republican -- who will break that mythical glass ceiling.
This award will finally show the world once and for all the anti-conservative bias of Time-Warner and all its properties, including CNN. Embrace it. In fact, use it as a marketing tool.
No one will be surprised.
You see the big problem with the media is that it lies to the public about its bias. In so doing, the staff of Time and the rest show a contempt for the people they lie to. Americans are insulted. Media credibility is so low it no longer exists except in the heads of a smaller number of people than believe the moon landing was fake.
Come out of the closet. Show some Caitlyn Jenner courage.
Be who you are. Liberal. 
Trump won't mind. Oh he will Tweet of course. But look what happened to Merkel. After you bypassed The Donald for her a year ago, Germany went to pot. I do not want that for my country.
Hillary is a good choice all the way around. Her life cannot get worse, and America will be spared the Curse of Time's Person of the Year.

Melania Trump Should Be Grateful Mooch's Designer Refuses to Dress Her

"Let me add my two cents here: She looks like the lounge furniture at a Las Vegas tranny bar." - MJA
And here's Dianny's take: Melania dodged a bullet.
Here is one of Mooch's recent gowns from the "Painter's Drop Cloth Collection

Monday, December 5, 2016

The Old Bat is Still in the House Belfry

Dems Don’t Want “A New Direction”

Examiner - House minority leader Nancy Pelosi downplayed problems with the Democratic Party, saying that the party's values "unify us."
"I don't think that people want a new direction," Pelosi said on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "Our values are supporting working families. What we want is a better connection of our message to working families." Pelosi's appearance came a few days after she was re-elected by Democrats to serve another term as House minority leader, beating back a challenge from Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio.
Host John Dickerson said that Democrats have been clobbered at every level since 2008, which Pelosi attributed to natural reactions to the party that holds the White House.
"We went up so high in 2006 and 2008 and let me put that in perspective," she said. "When [Bill] Clinton was elected Republicans came in big in the next election."
Here she is. A woman who in spite of handing the House back to the Republicans years ago under her leadership, and after yet another bruising election for the Democrats which really has rendered the Dems almost a regional party, remains at the head of the party. Almost Castro style at this point. The identity politics that has so defined the Democrats over the past 15 years or so has failed. But Ms. Pelosi still thinks it’s a winning strategy. She knows nothing else. Maybe she's less interested in building a majority than in having a safe space.

A Good Monday Morning

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Trump Tweets and Drives the Media Crazy



Of the many tradition-breaking moments in the last election, one has been the colossal use of Twitter by President-elect Donald Trump that drove the media crazy. He was at it again over the weekend, this time messaging his thoughts on companies that depart the US for abroad, taking American jobs with them. The Washington Post headlined it this way: 

Trump threatens 35 percent tariff on U.S. companies that move jobs overseas
The pronouncements came in a string of early morning tweets. Trump declared that he intends to incentivize businesses to stay in America by lowering corporate taxes and slashing regulations, two key components of his economic agenda. But he also warned that companies with offshore factories would face a 35 percent tariff on goods sold back to the United States.
Notice this line: “The pronouncements came in a string of early morning tweets.” The online version of the Post re-published the images of the tweets as well, all time stamped between 6:41 and 6:57 am Sunday morning.Trump is a regular early riser, so there is no reason to think anything other than that the newly-elected president was already at his Trump Tower desk at work.

But the fact that Trump turned Twitter and tweeting into such a deadly 21st century political weapon in his successful campaign -- a campaign that right up until election night most media savants were insisting he would lose and most probably lose in a landslide -- has stuck in the media’s craw. Tweeting, you see, is “un-presidential” according to these critics, drawing comments like this one back in 2015 in the anti-Trump USA Today:
“Are American voters really looking for a president who spends his evenings sending out nasty and petty tweets about journalists rather than, say, working on ways to defeat the Islamic State?”
That "Doesn't have he have something better to do than rip the media?" line continues today. Aside from the idiocy of suggesting that a President Trump would not be “working on ways to defeat” ISIS, the real irritant in that story was that Trump was using Twitter to target journalists who quite clearly had targeted him.

Smart presidents presented with a brand new and effective communication technology quickly picked up on it and turned it to their political and presidential use. John F. Kennedy did this with television.

While Hillary Clinton will not be president, it is worth noting that what helped bring her down was another modern technology tool…e-mail. Now comes President-elect Trump, following the path of Lincoln, FDR and JFK, using the newest 21st century communication tool - Twitter. And like those three historic predecessors, he is using it with great political effectiveness.

The media's metrics for victory were wrong. Trump's were right. Which, one suspects is exactly what drives the media crazy. Make no mistake. No matter how “restrained” the new president will be once in office come January, you can make book that he has found a highly effective method to get around the mainstream media that so despises him.

All of which will just make the media that much more relentless and make them despise him all the more.......



excerpted from NewsBusters- READ MUCH MORE  

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Middle Finger Symphony Theater

* No Tuxedos Required *

Brought To You By BLUESJUNKY: Honorary Chair of Music - Middle Finger Symphony Music Director

Friday, December 2, 2016

James Earl is Still Meddling After all These Years

Jimmy Carter Urges Barack Obama to Divide Up Israel at the United Nations Before Jan. 20

In a stunning editorial for the New York Times, former President Jimmy Carter has publicly called for Barack Obama to seek to divide the land of Israel at the United Nations before Inauguration Day.

While president, Carter negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, and ever since, he has been a very strong advocate for a Palestinian state. Carter is completely convinced that a “two-state solution” will bring lasting peace to the Middle East, but now that Donald Trump has been elected, Carter knows that his dream of seeing a Palestinian state while he is still alive is rapidly slipping away. In a desperate attempt to salvage the situation, Carter is urging Barack Obama to take bold action while he still has the power to do so.


In his New York Times editorial, one of the steps Carter says Obama should take is to give formal U.S. diplomatic recognition to a Palestinian state.
"I am convinced that the United States can still shape the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before a change in presidents, but time is very short. The simple but vital step this administration must take before its term expires on Jan. 20 is to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, as 137 countries have already done, and help it achieve full United Nations membership....."
Of course such a move would largely just be window dressing. The new Trump administration could very quickly revoke diplomatic recognition, and so if Barack Obama really wanted to "leave a legacy" in the Middle East he would have to do something that Donald Trump would not be able to undo. 
Later on in his editorial, Carter suggested just such a thing. He urged Obama to support a U.N. Security Council resolution that would set forth firm parameters for resolving the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
"The Security Council should pass a resolution laying out the parameters for resolving the conflict. It should reaffirm the illegality of all Israeli settlements beyond the 1967 borders, while leaving open the possibility that the parties could negotiate modifications. Security guarantees for both Israel and Palestine are imperative, and the resolution must acknowledge the right of both the states of Israel and Palestine to live in peace and security. Further measures should include the demilitarization of the Palestinian state, and a possible peacekeeping force under the auspices of the United Nations......"
Over in Israel, the government has been ignoring Carter's anti-Israel rants for years, and they have also responded to this latest editorial by Carter with silence. Carter's criticism of Israel over the years has become increasingly scathing and one-sided.  - Read More
Yes Mr. Carter, "Blessed Are The Peace Makers". But the Lord was not referring to making deals with the Devil..... 


The Media Transition to Trump

"Life is not fair to losers, or the critics of Donald Trump, and the way he won the presidency. He just won't stand still and give the rotten eggs a chance to hit their mark.
The Donald is conducting his transition to the White House in his own way, taking his time, choosing his Cabinet carefully, and rationing misery to his detractors. His critics, particularly in the know-it-all media, are having trouble with a transition of their own. 
Almost a month has passed since the election, and the critics, who are supposed to be working their way through the five stages of grief -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance -- are stuck in denial. They should be angry by now, and learning how to bargain with their emotions."— Wesley Pruden 

Thursday, December 1, 2016

FOR SALE: One Owner - Never Worn


Thank You MJA for the Linkage!

One Final Humiliating Failure: “Operation Beethoven”

The United States has certainly racked up its fair share of embarrassing, hair-brained attempts
to take down Fidel Castro over the past 60 years.  But what happened yesterday may have
been our government’s most cringe-worthy attempt yet: The CIA completely bungled an 
attempt to drop a piano on Castro’s funeral procession.