Charles Murray and the Flight 93 Election

I was talking with a friend who was on the anti-Trump side of things. We talked a bit about our respective points of view.

One point he made to me was that there were people on the anti-trump side who were persuadable, but the hot tone I take makes any points I make toxic by tone alone. (I suppose this is a criticism that I've directed myself at Trump enough times that I have to take it myself.)

I got to thinking:

1. It has always seemed to me that if an argument is not about something, then it must, inevitably, be about someone. That is, if you're not debating an abstract proposition, you will, inevitably, debate who between you is the asshole.

2. It has also always seemed to me that talking about something is harder and takes more work than talking about someone, which is why people, including myself, do so much of the latter and so little of the former.

3. It also seems to me that there are a great many real arguments the anti-liberal right needs to have, but we are by and large not having them, in favor of either sniping at each other, or at Trump, or trying to say "See I was right about Trump," or at McMullin, and forth. All of this makes for good catharsis and Tribe Reinforcement, but doesn't really advance the ball in either direction.

4. So I thought I would attempt to explain the pro-Trump side of things as non-insultingly as I could, about various subjects, and invite people to weigh in on the actual issues, instead of re-litigating, forever, the important political topic of Who's the Real Asshole Now.

Here's a very basic disagreement we seem to be having, though few actually engage in an argument about it:

How far along the decline do you imagine we are? How close to the Point of No Return are we?

Because I guarantee you, your answer to this question largely determines your answer to the Great Trump Question.

There are two answers on each end of the spectrum here. I will parodize both somewhat, with the caveat that these are supposed to be representative of the Strongest Form of each claim, and therefore probably do not actually reflect many people's actual beliefs. However, let these stand as the two poles opposite each other. People will fall somewhere along the scale, nearer to one, or nearer to the other, but these parodized, hyperbolic claims represent the far end of each line of thinking.

Proposition 1: The country, and the GOP itself, are in excellent shape as they are. The GOP has no need to rethink its foreign policy or its embrace of national building not just as a necessary evil in the post-warfighting phase of war, but in an actual goal of warfighting in and of itself.

The GOP has no need to do anything at all to help working class voters who find many of the jobs they used to do have now been outsourced to foreign countries, and must now compete for the diminished number of jobs remaining with the large numbers of foreign replacements who have been insourced. That these people are now taking opiods and killing themselves in large numbers just indicates they weren't of terribly fit stock in the first place and were ripe for replacement. And if they want to improve their lives, they should just Learn Computers Or Whatever.

And as for the Left: Nothing is really different about the left. It is just the same annoying creature it always was. Despite the claims from The Crazies, the left can be dealt with the way it always has, through piecemeal appeasement and serial surrenders which exhaust them by making them march to precisely where they wanted to go in the first place, but at a somewhat slowed and awkward pace.

Surely, we need not fear their rising militancy and violence. Only kookoobananas cowards who are also racists would take seriously the claims government operatives are now targeting conservatives and the media seems to be deliberately stoking grievances which prompt leftists to then commit acts of violence -- acts of violence the media does not report, but I'm sure that's just an oversight.

Proposition 2: The world is on fire and America is essentially dead. Everyone responsible for this should be dragged through the streets and then raped by Kodiaks. We had nothing to do with any of this ourselves, it's all a conspiracy of the corporations and monied interests to screw us over. No one in the GOP believes a damn thing they say and their promises die on the day they trick us to reelecting them. No one in DC knows a damn thing about anything and no one who has ever written about DC should ever be read again. Their works should all be consigned to the Purging Flames.

Okay, sorry, I couldn't parodize the second one as well as the first because quite frankly I believe in the second one much more than the first. But I did try, and I think I should get credit for that.

The consequence of this question is this:

There is Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs. The theory is that people seek the next good on the hierarchy, but only after they have secured the good on the rung below it.

I'm putting this hierarchy in reverse order of the way its usually presented. I'm starting with the basest, most fundamental need first, then moving down to the more abstract needs.

The hierarchy goes like so:

1. Physiological.

2. Safety.

3. Love/Belonging.

4. Esteem.

5. Self-actualization.

All of those things on that list are good, but no one worries about self-actualization if his physiological needs are not met: What he worries about is his physiological needs. He needs food and water and air and warmth before he thinks of anything else first.

(BTW, even those needs have a hierarchy: first air, then water, then food, then warmth, then shelter. This is a biological priority: you can go two minutes without air before you die, two days without water until you die, two weeks without food before you die... etc.)

Now let me adapt this into the hierarchy of political needs:

1. Security from bandits, invaders, Vikings, street criminals.

2. Security from harassment or assault from government officials themselves. (Note that 1 and 2 can easily flip depending on which is more threatening, but generally, states are formed to defend a land against outside conquerers and then that state moves on to conquering its own people.)

3. Security from social or cultural degradation and being assigned to an officially or semi-officially inferior caste -- think "Civil Rights." Think casual slurs directed at any group.

4. Big picture, gut level, philosophy-defining questions, such as on abortion, the sanctity of marriage, whether the state will permit personal property or whether it will all be shared, whether criminals will be treated leniently or punitively, etc.

5. More wonkish refinements of the big-picture gut level items -- whether or not we'll have a border adjustment tax or an Ex-Im Bank or whether we will declare as a nation that we will go to war with Russia if it threatens Estonia, even though we all know it doesn't matter what we say, we won't go to war, but it's important for our self-esteem to claim we might.

Many in what I would casually, and perhaps insultingly, call "The Establishment" seem to feel pretty secure on the first three levels of the hierarchy of needs, which then permits them to spend most of their thinking on the fourth level and the fifth level.

Fine. I applaud them their success. A feeling of security in the world usually derives from success, and I would not fault any man for having succeeded and enjoying the fruits of that (which, in this case, is specifically the freedom of fear about political needs 1-3).

However, while I would applaud them for their success, I would also counsel them not to universalize from their own experience, and not to assume that because they feel insulated against the loss of a certain need, that it's silly, crazy, or base for other people not as well-situated to fear for the loss of -- or be currently suffering from the loss of -- that need.

Stated as offensively and provocatively as possible (and I'm cribbing this from a cynical friend): Morality is a luxury good. Rich, prosperous countries breed a value of life. Desperately impoverished people will murder people for a meal.

To have one's most elemental political needs satisfied and thus be free to think only about our Estonia policy is also a luxury good.

And not everyone has that luxury.

I never read this article before the election, though I was aware of it, and saw it quoted: The Flight 93 Election. It's now revealed to have been written by Michael Anton, now serving on Trump's NSC.

Basically it posits that after eight years of Obama and a culture becoming increasingly comfortable with rule by progressives (and rule by progressive fiat as well), and with the prospect of another eight years of President Hillary Clinton on the horizon, there was no other choice for the country but to storm the cockpit and take the controls and take a chance on either saving itself or crashing -- hence, The Flight 93 Election.

Either we do something dramatic, or it's all over, and we just give up.

I didn't really read this article before the election -- and still haven't finished it, to be honest -- for a simple reason: I already believed it. It was nice to see someone saying what I already knew to be true, but I didn't really feel I had to spend too much time confirming my own bias.

This is why I said I'd become a Democrat if Hillary won -- I thought it was over. I still think it's over, if I'm being honest. But if the Democrats continue 16 straight years in office, with no chance of punishment for any transgression and thus the perfect freedom to transgress on whim, then I'm damn sure not going to continue wearing the uniform of the army that's surrendering. I'm going to change uniforms -- I have to meet the second need, freedom from government harassment, before I bother thinking about the third, fourth, and fifth level needs.

Either we're fighting to win or I, personally, am not fighting at all. It's one thing to fight in vain for a lost cause; but to make yourself an enemy of a state for a cause no one is really fighting for?

Now that's crazy.

So thus the importance of the question: How far along the decline do you think we are? How close do you think we are to the point of no return?

How menacing do you think the left's ever-more brazen mobs are?

How insulated do you personally feel from the violence that is happening more and more, and with less and less condemnation of the Political-Media Establishment?

And in pondering that question, read this account from Charles Murray about the mob that assaulted him and put a female professor in the hospital, and then ask yourself:

Do you really think there will be any legal consequences for the mob?

Or do you think the Political-Media state will tacitly bless their assaults as "understandable" and hence not punishable?''

Does it not seem to be an inside-outside game going on? Community-organized violent demonstrators who are then protected, if not outright blessed, by official government institutions and all of the media to go even further than they've gone already?

A mob that gets cracked down on by government agents is a one-day crime story.

A mob that gets protected by government agents is a serious political story.

That there is political violence is not itself alarming. That government actors, rich institutions, and the putative Fourth Branch of Government support political violence is gravely alarming.

Do you think there will be more of this, or less of this, in the year to come? And if you say less -- well, what would cause there to be less of it?

Strongly worded columns?

You know, conservatives kind of used to make fun of people for suggesting that actual aggression and lawlessness could be deterred by a strongly-worded statement from state.

Maybe it would take uncouth Trumpian tactics to actually impose some sense of liberalism on universities -- genuine cash-money force, like the vulgar and inconceivable suggestion that maybe the government can start turning off the money spigots for universities that do not defend all students actually-mentioned-in-the-constitution civil rights.

As ghastly and as gentlemen-do-not-read-other-gentlemen's-mail as that may sound to some.

But seriously fellas, I gotta know what you think is going to cause this to abate.

Because this tactic is being used more and more, and it's succeeding more and more -- without negative consequence.

And people don't stop using a tactic just because it's too damn successful.

So help me out: what is the plan here?

Do you think "The Crazies" might have a bit of a point when they say "I voted for Trump because I'm fucking afraid of what's coming next" or "I don't care if Trump's a bastard, and I don't care if he's not really conservative, I feel I need protection and no one else is even pretending he's willing to risk a damn thing to provide it?"

You can either think half the country is "crazy," or you can consider the possibility that people who do not have a great deal of money, or media presence, or connections to the political machinery of the country feel like they're in a more precarious position than you are not because they're crazy but because they actually are in a more precarious position than you are.

I think it would be helpful to have this debate -- maybe I'm wrong; maybe I am crazy. Maybe I can be persuaded on this point. I'm stubborn, but I've been convinced to abandon a position before.

And maybe the people disputing this dire reading of current circumstances might themselves be persuaded that if it weren't for their bank account -- "Fuck You Money," as Howard Stern used to call it, a sum of money that permits you a certain amount of freedom because you can always say Fuck You and live on your savings for a few years -- or for the protection they can expect from friends in the media and government, they too might fear what's going on in our country right now.

And even without anyone convincing anyone of anything at all, maybe just talking about this fundamental disagreement rationally instead of talking about each other could at least ease the frenzy of the fight.

Posted by: Ace at 05:24 PM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 TL;DR, but the GOPe & the left can DIAF.

Posted by: rickb223 at March 06, 2017 05:27 PM (/B2KC)

2 Why read when you're feelings suffice?

Posted by: Tinfoilbaby at March 06, 2017 05:27 PM (6Ll1u)

3 Might have to crack open a beer early and dig into this post.

Posted by: Max Power at March 06, 2017 05:28 PM (QCc6B)

4 You've got to admit, McMullin looks like an Egg McMuffin.

Posted by: Toothe to Powera at March 06, 2017 05:29 PM (7wyDO)

5 Ace has worn his typing finger down to a nub.

Posted by: wth at March 06, 2017 05:30 PM (HgMAr)

6 All this from a guy who can't finish reading Hound of the Baskervilles inside of 6 weeks?

Posted by: garrett at March 06, 2017 05:30 PM (eGfTO)

7 We are in deep, deep shit and the realization that Donald J Trump is the only thing standing between the abyss and even having a shot at turning this thing around send bolts of panic shooting into my brain.

Posted by: Kreplach at March 06, 2017 05:30 PM (35ZbD)

8 Maybe the Country isn't worth 600,000 men dying for...

Posted by: Lincoln at March 06, 2017 05:30 PM (7wyDO)

9 Ace is shooting for that big AoSHQ quarterly bonus at the end of the month.

Posted by: Cicero (@cicero) at March 06, 2017 05:30 PM (8ZskC)

10 instead of re-litigating, forever, the important political topic of Who's the Real Asshole Now.

Oh. That is me, baby.

That. Is. Me.

Okay, now that that's settled go on and have your intellectual arguments.

Go on now. Immanentize the Intellectualization!

Posted by: naturalfake at March 06, 2017 05:30 PM (vZ9Fw)

11 Shorter version: don't pick fights with people who have nothing to lose.

Posted by: pep at March 06, 2017 05:31 PM (LAe3v)

12 This is how higher education works now, don't read anything that could pollute you mind, just believe what the professor tells you and then protest violently when told to.

Posted by: Tinfoilbaby at March 06, 2017 05:32 PM (6Ll1u)

13 >>...I think it would be helpful to have this debate --

-huh!?
Wha...oh, yeah...yeah.

...debate. Yea. Right...

No, I didn't nod off. Why you asking?

Posted by: garrett at March 06, 2017 05:32 PM (eGfTO)

14 One point he made to me was that there were people on the anti-trump
side who were persuadable, but the hot tone I take makes any points I
make toxic by tone alone
---

So Ace is really Mark Levin?

Posted by: shibumi at March 06, 2017 05:32 PM (J5mC3)

15 The world is on fire and America is essentially dead. Everyone
responsible for this should be dragged through the streets and then
raped by Kodiaks.
===

Not necessarily Kodiak. Polar or possibly Grizzly would be acceptable.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 05:32 PM (KgpWR)

16 The big divide has been between those in The Borg and those who aren't, and until now the divide has been growing.

The Borg is the unholy alliance of BigGov, MSM, Academia, and some BigBiz industries, which predominates in some but not all of our cities.

e.g. Banking used to be more diffuse, and its leaders often conservative. Now we have a few Big Banks Too Big To Fail which are increasingly part of The Borg. e.g., GE is part of this too, as it's half a Big Bank.

If you're loyal Borg, and know and keep your place, you're insulated from failure. The best spots in The Borg are often reserved for those who are the most strident defenders of its prerogatives. They get to be Elite simply from station.

The Borg relies on minorities for votes and for cheap labor, and for subjects to be cared for by Borg affiliated unions, paid for at union expense.

The Borg despises Deplorables.

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 05:34 PM (SIY7D)

17 We are in trouble, no doubt about it.
The globalists would probably rather burn it down then to allow it to go backwards.
They have been at this game for a long time early 1900's

Posted by: MarkC at March 06, 2017 05:34 PM (iWFQR)

18 And just what tone do our dismissive betters use when they talk to Trump supporters?

Posted by: steevy at March 06, 2017 05:34 PM (r/0kC)

19 For those that pay attention to me ... two, maybe three tops ... my answer is pretty obvious.

Posted by: ScoggDog at March 06, 2017 05:34 PM (nw6G5)

20 The world is on fire and America is essentially dead. Everyone
responsible for this should be dragged through the streets and then
raped by Kodiaks.

I'm not one of those loons. I'd be open to a compromise in which the raping was done by syphilitic weasels.

Posted by: pep at March 06, 2017 05:34 PM (LAe3v)

21 Substitute baseball bat for Kodiak and you are spot on. Where am I going to find a Kodiak in Southern California, they are too smart to live here.

Posted by: American at March 06, 2017 05:35 PM (KZu0c)

22 Proposition One is represented by Kevin Williamson. Two by Ace. That would actually be a good debate.

Posted by: Benji Carver at March 06, 2017 05:35 PM (OD2ni)

23 One point he made to me was that there were people on the anti-trump side who were persuadable, but the hot tone I take makes any points I make toxic by tone alone

Srsly? Fuck him. What about the hot toxic mess that is the left?

Posted by: rickb223 at March 06, 2017 05:35 PM (/B2KC)

24 "One point he made to me was that there were people on the anti-trump

side who were persuadable, but the hot tone I take makes any points I

make toxic by tone alone"

Oh so he thinks YOU'RE the one that takes the 'hot tone'?

Yeah, right....what...evah.

Posted by: Tami at March 06, 2017 05:35 PM (Enq6K)

25 My NPD needs more comments re: my style sense! Rascists!

Posted by: Preezy 44 at March 06, 2017 05:35 PM (bc2Lc)

26 One point he made to me was that there were people on the anti-trump side who were persuadable, but the hot tone I take makes any points I make toxic by tone alone.

So these people fashion their political ideologies based on what they think of you?

Yeah ... not buying it. Any political angle that someone adopts will have people in it with him that he doesn't like. That's the pigeonhole nature of politics.

Now, such a person might not admit TO YOU that he has changed his mind ... but I doubt your tone will really affect where his politics eventually land. Most anti-Trumpers are just America-haters (nation-state haters), retards and emotional basket-cases. Most of them are much better staying on the anti-trump side. People like that are generally liabilities as allies. As with the French, I'd rather they not claim to be on my side, because any time the French are your allies the only thing you're sure of is that they are going to stab you in the back eventually.

Posted by: ThePrimordialOrderedPair at March 06, 2017 05:36 PM (zc3Db)

27 Trump is making the GOP more inclusive and less Country Club. Deplorables, including Minority Deplorables, are welcome.

Bring in 5% more, and then make it 10%, and the World changes politically.

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 05:36 PM (SIY7D)

28 The problem with the thesis ace, is that it assumes two sane, rational points of view.

It is not that way.

We generally believe in what appears to be true.

They generally believe in what SHOULD be true.

Like debating with a toddler over eating spinach.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 05:36 PM (KgpWR)

29 Not necessarily Kodiak. Polar or possibly Grizzly would be acceptable.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 05:32 PM (KgpWR)

Where's all de white wimmin at?

(please don't banhammer me!)

Posted by: Black Bear at March 06, 2017 05:36 PM (etPyC)

30 Oh, and I'm gonna have to put warmth ahead of food and water. Just to nit pick.

Posted by: Max Power at March 06, 2017 05:36 PM (QCc6B)

31 "So Ace is really Mark Levin?"

Come on. Levin is way older than 29.

Posted by: Benji Carver at March 06, 2017 05:36 PM (OD2ni)

32 Lots a words, Ace. I think I'll wait for the paperback version and take it to the beach.....

Posted by: JoeF. at March 06, 2017 05:37 PM (7uYFy)

33 and invite people to weigh in on the actual issues, instead of
re-litigating, forever, the important political topic of Who's the Real
Asshole Now

Proposition One is represented by Kevin Williamson.

Reading for comprehension is not your strong suit.

Posted by: pep at March 06, 2017 05:37 PM (LAe3v)

34 I think the deal is there are a lot of people that have nothing to cling to. No family, no money, no where to turn when they have no where to go. That was encouraged by many institutions on the left that told them they were so unique they didn't need to to conform to norms. They got the independence (isolation) they wanted and as time goes by they see their world coming at them hard.

Hope dies last. And they are zombies in that sense.

Posted by: DanMan at March 06, 2017 05:37 PM (XTiHL)

35 >>Levin is way older than 29.

Way too tall to be Ace.

Posted by: garrett at March 06, 2017 05:37 PM (eGfTO)

36 Good post, ace. And "kookoobananas cowards" is sheer poetry.

Is your friend persuadable, do you think?

Posted by: bluebell at March 06, 2017 05:37 PM (sBOL1)

37 Lots a words, Ace. I think I'll wait for the paperback version and take it to the beach.....
Posted by: JoeF. at March 06, 2017 05:37 PM (7uYFy)

Well if you believe in Global Warming, the beach is coming to you

Posted by: Nevergiveup at March 06, 2017 05:38 PM (KlI/a)

38 I must live in a parallel universe to Ace and many others. I work in the belly of the beast -- NYC -- and live near by, but I'm in no fear of riots in the streets or my ass getting kicked because I'm an old white cracker. Maybe I still look too much like an Irish cop.

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 05:38 PM (SIY7D)

39 If Salon can openly call for the 'banning' of 'white men' and get away with it, we are on the downslope without a fucking doubt.

Posted by: weft cut-loop at March 06, 2017 05:38 PM (4YGWz)

40 Bless you Ace.

your timing's impeccable.

Posted by: booknlass at March 06, 2017 05:39 PM (8mO0Q)

41
I'm not one of those loons. I'd be open to a compromise in which the raping was done by syphilitic weasels.
--

Really?

Weasels are kind of small, even if they are angry and have a STD.

Would you consider trading rapes by syphilitic weasels for rapes by rapid mountain lions that are both gay and straight?

Posted by: shibumi at March 06, 2017 05:39 PM (J5mC3)

42 Now let me adapt this into the hierarchy of political needs:

But Western leftists are seeking societal suicide. They aren't looking for a political system to do anything. They just want their own kind to die.

And Vichy Republicans (nevertrumpers) are just globalist dipshits and useful idiots for the societally suicidal leftists.

Posted by: ThePrimordialOrderedPair at March 06, 2017 05:39 PM (zc3Db)

43 First, The Left are assholes. The nevertrump fake conservatives are worse assholes.

Now that that is out of the way.

How fareinto the decline are we?

Had Hillary been elected and been able to choose Supreme Court justices, the 2nd amendment would be only applicable to "militias." They would have gun grabbed, probably like SWATTING.

Those fascist riots? Post gun they become the mobs of the terror.

We are one election away from French-revolution terror mobs.

That's how far on the decline we are.

Posted by: dagny at March 06, 2017 05:40 PM (Mc+44)

44 "I have to meet the second need, freedom from government harassment."

Not sure how you think you will achieve that. You of all people should know you will never be left alone by the left. They will always find new ways to torture you-especially a white male like yourself.

Me? I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees. YMMV.

Posted by: Tilikum KAW at March 06, 2017 05:40 PM (0x/TW)

45 First off, my life goals have always been to avoid trouble, live a quiet life and if you fuck with me, I have guns, swords and a lot of anger I've never allowed myself to act on.

The problem of debating is that is IS a question of Never Trumpers vs Trumpers. Not 'I don't want Hillary and I don't think anyone else is going to beat her AND the media' (My position).

If you take a pro-Trump position, you are tarred with the brush of all of his flaws. It is assumed that if you support Trump, you have to support vulgarity, pussy grabbing, conspicuous wealth, and a level of narcissism that almost approaches TFG levels.

Of, if you voted for Hillary, you have to be the sort of person who would rather be governed by a corrupt felon rather than a game show host.

So the politics have become personal. Maybe I'm just restating and amplifying what you said. So be it, this entry is a long enough block of text. Let me try to address remedy in the next.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 05:40 PM (sh70B)

46 I think that the answer to the core questions that Ace asks here can be answered very simply: look at guns and ammo sales.

People don't buy either for no reason - if they didn't feel they were on the edge of disaster sales of both would be proceeding at a normal rate.

Posted by: An Observation at March 06, 2017 05:41 PM (SV3EU)

47 34 I think the deal is there are a lot of people that have nothing to cling to.

Do not assume every Motivated Leftist has no family. Or no motivation. Or no guns.

That's just not so.

Posted by: ScoggDog at March 06, 2017 05:41 PM (nw6G5)

48 Holey moley - I was just looking at showtimes. BRB

Posted by: DaveA at March 06, 2017 05:41 PM (8J/Te)

49 >>>instead of re-litigating, forever, the important political topic of Who's the Real Asshole Now.

Oh. That is me, baby.

That. Is. Me.

*saunters into room*
*scoffs*

Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at March 06, 2017 05:41 PM (EUMr7)

50 Come on. Levin is way older than 29.
---

Yeah. Ace is *29*

And started this smart military blog when he was *16*

/OMG, Ace is Mark Levin, I cracked the code! What do I win? One of those hard to come by Premium Memberships? Does my cat get a full spread on the Pet Tread Saturday? Do I get a free hobo hunting license? Kaboom for life?

Posted by: shibumi at March 06, 2017 05:41 PM (J5mC3)

51 I'll sum up my vote for Trump for the baffled elite;

1. Hillary and the NeverTrump GOPe are never about America and Americans, but how America can continue the advancement, care, and feeding of the Ruling Class

2. I'm just not that into you

Posted by: kbdabear at March 06, 2017 05:41 PM (AOrEZ)

52 Reading for comprehension is not your strong suit.

Posted by: pep

===

Really ? I thought he was dead on correct in ascribing Williamson's pov to Prop 1.

And it would be a good debate to listen to.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 05:42 PM (KgpWR)

53 I've been called worse than an asshole. I am honored by it

Posted by: Nevergiveup at March 06, 2017 05:42 PM (KlI/a)

54 This is a biological priority: you can go two minutes without air before you die, two days without water until you die, two weeks without food before you die... etc.

I always heard it as the "Rule of Threes"; e.g. three minutes without air, three hours without shelter, etc. It's a bedrock of survivalism training.

Posted by: Country Singer at March 06, 2017 05:42 PM (GUBah)

55 I'm in the proposition 2 camp.

"Tone" only works with minds that are open to logic and persuasion.

I have ZERO trust of ANYONE over the age of 30 that voted for Hillary. Anyone in THAT camp is by their very own choice a very bad person, and I don't worry about "tone" when it comes to their type.

Posted by: Crusader at March 06, 2017 05:42 PM (ewSN2)

56 >>>>>Levin is way older than 29.
Way too tall to be Ace.

Levin's shelves are level

Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at March 06, 2017 05:42 PM (EUMr7)

57 Come on. Levin is way older than 29.

Also, Ace wouldn't have kicked out Mark Steyn. He would have taken Steyn out on garbage-hunting detail, and scared him away.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at March 06, 2017 05:43 PM (2lndx)

58 Re: wiretaps

They screwed up. Trump is ticked off. He won't let this go.

Watch for potential material witnesses to start taking sudden falls out of tall buildings, getting shot in the back on the street, committing unexpected "murder-suicides" and taking one way trips to Ft. Marcy Park.

Posted by: doomed at March 06, 2017 05:43 PM (UW4Uc)

59 Even when life slaps you in the face as tells you that your beliefs are wrong, the media will be there to say that the opposite is true and bury you in bullshit.

Posted by: Tinfoilbaby at March 06, 2017 05:43 PM (6Ll1u)

60 >>> It is assumed that if you support Trump, you have to support vulgarity,
pussy grabbing, conspicuous wealth, and a level of narcissism that
almost approaches TFG levels.

Yo.

Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at March 06, 2017 05:43 PM (EUMr7)

61 It's all fun and games because we are all living on borrowed money.

The borrowed money allows the libs to lib and it's pays all the old farts and pretend disabled collecting a SS check, all the young momma's with baby daddies who don't support either, it pays for all the stupid college educators who teach hate Amercia first, it pays for all the so called "power" emanating from Washington.

When that balloon goes pop, so goes our entire facade of a country.

Posted by: Hairyback Guy at March 06, 2017 05:43 PM (5VlCp)

62 It is simple.

Trump is a SOB.

But he is MY SOB.

Posted by: rd at March 06, 2017 05:43 PM (iT57s)

63 Proposition 2: The world is on fire and America is essentially dead. Everyone responsible for this should be dragged through the streets and then raped by Kodiaks

For the record, I wholeheartedly support this initiative.

Posted by: Insomniac - sin valor at March 06, 2017 05:43 PM (0mRoj)

64 yeh, I caught a Kevin Djugashviliamson vine from Prop One too.

Posted by: Boulder terlit hobo at March 06, 2017 05:43 PM (nN7Mo)

65 Morality is a luxury good.

Not quite. Rich white liberals want to be SEEN as moral paragons, but when you get right down to it, they're some of the sleaziest, most self-absorbed people it's possible to imagine. It's like the poor can't afford morals, the middle can, and the wealthy liberals are heading back down towards primitive egoism because the others just don't really matter. They are a parody of moustache-twirling Monopoly man industrialists, but their hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.

Posted by: pep at March 06, 2017 05:44 PM (LAe3v)

66 Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 05:38 PM (SIY7D)

I live in an immediate burb of DC. BLM were on most street corners. If they had the power of the state and they didn't think we were armed, they'd have started killing.

Wed my city's schools are closed. Why? "Day without a woman". These dipshits are literally closing the schools in sympathy with a loony left meme. It's not far to see what they would do to support the fascist mobs if they could get away with it.

Posted by: dagny at March 06, 2017 05:44 PM (Mc+44)

67 >>>But Western leftists are seeking societal suicide. They aren't looking
for a political system to do anything. They just want their own kind to
die.

Read this again. Allow your lips to move as you do so.

Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at March 06, 2017 05:44 PM (EUMr7)

68 Ace can't be Mark Levin.

I've seen Levin's picture.

He doesn't have those cute little round Ewok ears that you just want to scratch and tickle.

No Ewokiness, No Ace. Levin is out.

Posted by: naturalfake at March 06, 2017 05:44 PM (vZ9Fw)

69

No one had to convince me of anything once I saw:

- mobs storming retail stores and stealing what they wanted with no recourse.

- mobs knocking out and murdering innocent elderly men and women without recourse.

- mobs yelling to kill police without recourse.

How do people close their minds to this violence against a civil society?

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at March 06, 2017 05:44 PM (0mz2+)

70 The left are not our "good friends across the aisle". They are God damned criminals. I rest a little easier knowing that the Trumpinator is out there fighting against them. I hope he throws them all in prison.

Posted by: Chris M at March 06, 2017 05:45 PM (eAZVt)

71 I'd say the Kodiak option should be kept open. However, Lindsey Graham looks the guy from that joke about the bear telling the hunter, "C'mon, admit it. You're not here for the hunting."

Posted by: Schaeffer at March 06, 2017 05:45 PM (qw7Fg)

72 btw, I am prop 2 maybe without the bearplay. I can't say where my mind was at on Election Morning when I was sure Hillary had it in the bag. suffice to say my thoughts were dark and final.

Posted by: Boulder terlit hobo at March 06, 2017 05:45 PM (nN7Mo)

73 I supported Trump in the primaries because I was on that #2 extreme. I value individual rights and I saw little respect for that in the future globalized world (just look at the Euro democracies). Former Constitutional rights were slipping away and becoming collective in real time before my eyes.

I saw no real resistance to this from GOPe, just a desire to manage the process with a few additional conservative flavored tweaks. To me Trump was a godsend with no real downside at all. I never expected to see "a Trump" before the final curtain call. Certainly not from Jeb! or Rubio.

Posted by: Keith at March 06, 2017 05:45 PM (USf3s)

74 "If Salon can openly call for the 'banning' of 'white men' and get away with it, we are on the downslope without a fucking doubt."

I'd say that "they" are on the downslope. Excluding 35% of the population categorically, on the basis of race and sex is not a good career move. (Which is why Trump won).

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 05:45 PM (SIY7D)

75 8 years. For 8 years I have been called a racist bigot every time I questioned Obama policy. There is no debate on who is an asshole. There can be no longer be a debate over issues with someone that repeatedly, deliberately calls me a racist bigot over my questions.

Fuck them. Fuck all of them. I will not be cowed into 'debating' now that we are in control of the Presidency, three Supreme-Court Justices picks, both chambers of Congress and a win of 1200 state-wide elections.

They want to talk to me in a civil manner now?

No.

Fuck them.

Posted by: cicero Kaboom! kid at March 06, 2017 05:45 PM (etPyC)

76
What's the name of the movie he's reviewing? I don't think I'll see if either way

Posted by: TheQuietMan at March 06, 2017 05:46 PM (493sH)

77 It is assumed that if you support Trump, you have to support vulgarity,
pussy grabbing, conspicuous wealth, and a level of narcissism that
almost approaches TFG levels.

???
You say that like there is something wrong with the above?

Posted by: Nevergiveup at March 06, 2017 05:46 PM (KlI/a)

78 My feeling is that our society has hard core elements determined to hold power. They want gay marriage, free dope and bureaucratic mandarins that will give people 'stuff'. They even support taking money from 'the rich', so long as they don't count as 'the rich.'

This hard core of anti-individualists, anti-Christian elements is aided by the corrupt and decadent popular culture. And it is shielded by a media/entertainment culture that wants to control what people say and think.

These elements scrabbing to keep power is a very Un-American viewpoint, they don't care about the Constitution or the rights of the individual. Indeed, they hate those things or hold them in contempt as 'old thinking' that they have transcended.

So long as these elements refuse to concede defeat, -as Conservatives conceded defeat under Carter, Clinton and Obama - we risk increasing division and even bloodshed. Especially when violence against people wearing MAGA hats or who have the 'wrong opinions' is condoned by local government and law enforcement.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 05:46 PM (sh70B)

79 Am I supposed to read all of that?

Posted by: Skip at March 06, 2017 05:46 PM (HDU3V)

80 70 The left are not our "good friends across the aisle". They are God damned criminals. I rest a little easier knowing that the Trumpinator is out there fighting against them. I hope he throws them all in prison.

Posted by: Chris M at March 06, 2017 05:45 PM (eAZVt)

Hear, hear. They can take their "decorum" and shove it up their asses spinning and sideways.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at March 06, 2017 05:47 PM (sK2fh)

81 Latching onto a scam that pays <> success.

Posted by: DaveA at March 06, 2017 05:47 PM (8J/Te)

82 ???
You say that like there is something wrong with the above?
Posted by: Nevergiveup at March 06, 2017 05:46 PM (KlI/a)

Well Narcissism is pretty ugly.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 05:47 PM (sh70B)

83
Not necessarily Kodiak. Polar or possibly Grizzly would be acceptable.
Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 05:32 PM (KgpWR)

_________
Why should bears have all the fun?

Posted by: Gorillas in the Mist and their Orangutan pals at March 06, 2017 05:47 PM (vivhj)

84 The founders knew all of this and they tried to set up a legal contract that would assure the the central government only had the power to do those things that governments are supposed to do. They even made the central government a three part system that would be self-enforcing. But they were badly mistaken on the federal courts. That allowed the big government liberal of the day to pack the courts and the legal contract has slowly been shredded since that time. Until we fix that all is lost.

Posted by: Vic We Have No Party at March 06, 2017 05:47 PM (mpXpK)

85 Ace: "if an argument is not about something, then it must, inevitably, be about someone"

Or it is about something else not willing to be stated directly. Ace, you're ascribing too much good faith to them.

My theory is that the NeverTrumpers are basically shills for globalism, only from the pro-markets side instead of the anti-markets progressive side.

They're simply post-American in outlook. They honestly are not bothered by American industry packing up and moving abroad or the American working class sinking into desuetude, despair, drugs and dependency. They don't really care if the natural born American population is rapidly displaced by mass immigration and the progressives get a perma-lock on power.

While the real NeverTrump agenda is popular with billionaire donors and the US chamber of commerce, it is not popular with the American people, so they don't overtly push it. And they give lip service to whatever they think resonates with conservatives, like anti-abortion or whatever. But they're not really into traditional values, as witnessed by their near-unanimous support for gay marriage.

Watch not what they say, but which politicians they most strongly defend. Hint, they don't defend Trump and Cruz, they do defend Ryan, McConnell and the neocons.

It was never about what they ostensibly were saying it was about, Trump the person who is supposedly too vulgar and authoritarian to be president.

It was about Trump's agenda. But they did not want to openly attack an agenda that in its essence was making the American government work for the best interests of the American people, so instead they directed their fire on personal attacks against Trump the person.

Posted by: Scalia's Ghost at March 06, 2017 05:47 PM (3OAG2)

86 >>Am I supposed to read all of that?

No.

Posted by: garrett at March 06, 2017 05:47 PM (eGfTO)

87 Man ... it seems so long ago ... I was the crazy fuck for saying to prepare for long-term civil unrest.

I miss those days.

Posted by: ScoggDog at March 06, 2017 05:47 PM (nw6G5)

88 60
>>> It is assumed that if you support Trump, you have to support vulgarity,

pussy grabbing, conspicuous wealth, and a level of narcissism that

almost approaches TFG levels.

Yo.

Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at March 06, 2017 05:43 PM (EUMr7)

There is nothing wrong with wealth, quite the opposite. The vulgarity is undefinable. The "pussy grabbing" was a private conversation, a joke and anyone who blows it up past that is a prog. Narcissism? After Barry? Spare me.

Look, I don't like Trump's "construction worker" vocabulary, I'm as big a snob as anyone, but I'm a bigger snob about intellectual inconsistency and virtue signaling.

Posted by: dagny at March 06, 2017 05:47 PM (Mc+44)

89 Am I supposed to read all of that?
Posted by: Skip at March 06, 2017 05:46 PM (HDU3V)

Do you want an A or a C-?

Posted by: Nevergiveup at March 06, 2017 05:48 PM (KlI/a)

90

Amazing stuff today

Ace mustve been writing all weekend

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 05:48 PM (AQNmk)

91 Fuck them. Fuck all of them. I will not be cowed into 'debating' now that we are in control of the Presidency, three Supreme-Court Justices picks, both chambers of Congress and a win of 1200 state-wide elections.

They want to talk to me in a civil manner now?

No.

Fuck them.

Posted by: cicero Kaboom! kid at March 06, 2017 05:45 PM (etPyC)

Did you see the video of what happened in Berkeley over the weekend? They don't want to talk. They just want to get rid of us

Posted by: TheQuietMan at March 06, 2017 05:48 PM (493sH)

92 People who complain about 'tone' are acknowledging that they have no reply to your arguments. They are announcing their defeat and impotence.

Posted by: weft cut-loop at March 06, 2017 05:48 PM (4YGWz)

93 >>Until we fix that all is lost.

It's over man.

It's Over!

Posted by: Red Hat Guy at March 06, 2017 05:48 PM (eGfTO)

94 I think Trump just delays the inevitable. I don't care how good of a businessman he is, I believe the debt is insurmountable and even if he manages to fix that, the left is so determined to destroy the country so that they can install their communist utopia I see no way out in the end, but complete collapse or national divorce. Or both.

I wrote about it before the election: https://tinyurl.com/jxfj95c

Posted by: Country Singer at March 06, 2017 05:48 PM (GUBah)

95 When DJT said n his speech that his domestic and foreign policies would always consider American citizens first, the democrats booed. That about sums it up.

Posted by: Duke Lowell at March 06, 2017 05:49 PM (kTF2Z)

96 Hell of a thread Ace

I don't vote for people because I don't like them or like them.
I vote for who will be best

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at March 06, 2017 05:49 PM (voOPb)

97 I never like the Flight 93 argument because the premise was that Trump was a bad candidate likely to be a bad President, just not as bad as Hillary.

I've maintained that Trump will be like Rudy Giuliani, on a national scale. The press and the SJWs howled at Rudy at the beginning of his term, but he won Manhattan in his second election.

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 05:49 PM (SIY7D)

98 t's one thing to fight in vain for a lost cause;

I knew we'd get to Marco's garbage sometime this afternoon.

Posted by: DaveA at March 06, 2017 05:49 PM (8J/Te)

99 I think they've (the media, academia, Hollywood, and the Dems.) have spent so much time, decades, whipping everyone into the idea that conservatives are bigots, stuffed shirts, eco-unfriendly greedy capitalists to the point that the reactionaries respond by rote now, not even considering alternative views. They can't see beyond, "Ew" a Republican. They believe they are on the "good side" of the equation and it is extremely difficult to jiggle them out of that perception.

Posted by: washrivergal at March 06, 2017 05:49 PM (Ivjge)

100
I am definitely closer to prop 2, especially the gop abandoning everything they told you once they touchdown in DC.

I think the left is ready to rule by force.

also I think you need warmth before food.

Posted by: Guy Mohawk at March 06, 2017 05:49 PM (ODxAs)

101

I wasnt born rich. Not dire circumstances, but insecure nonetheless. It never leaves you really. You dont forget

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 05:49 PM (AQNmk)

102 For some reason Jeff Sessions just released a statement saying that he "did not" mislead congress.

I'm thinking this is a prelude to un-reccusing himself....

That would be awesome.

Posted by: JoeF. at March 06, 2017 05:50 PM (7uYFy)

103 So Ace is really Mark Levin?
Posted by: shibumi at March 06, 2017 05:32 PM (J5mC3)

Ace has WAY more hair.

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at March 06, 2017 05:50 PM (0mz2+)

104 I'll sum up my vote for Trump for the baffled elite;

1. Hillary and the NeverTrump GOPe are never about America and Americans, but how America can continue the advancement, care, and feeding of the Ruling Class

2. I'm just not that into you

Posted by: kbdabear
****

This x 1000

Posted by: Tilikum KAW at March 06, 2017 05:50 PM (uhftQ)

105 Levin's shelves are level
Posted by: Herr Morgenholz
===
Levin was just incredible on Hegseth's show. I can't praise him enough on this.

He makes the case in a few short minutes with open sourced media stories.

Absolutely perfect.

http://tinyurl.com/zhc8awe

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 05:50 PM (KgpWR)

106 "I will not be cowed into 'debating' now that we are in control of the
Presidency, three Supreme-Court Justices picks, both chambers of Congress"

Who is this "we", kemosabe?

Posted by: Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell at March 06, 2017 05:50 PM (noWW6)

107 My theory is that the NeverTrumpers are basically shills for globalism, only from the pro-markets side instead of the anti-markets progressive side.

They're simply post-American in outlook. They honestly are not bothered by American industry packing up and moving abroad or the American working class sinking into desuetude, despair, drugs and dependency. They don't really care if the natural born American population is rapidly displaced by mass immigration and the progressives get a perma-lock on power.
Posted by: Scalia's Ghost at March 06, 2017 05:47 PM (3OAG2)

Roger that

Posted by: Keith at March 06, 2017 05:50 PM (USf3s)

108 Did you see the video of what happened in Berkeley over the weekend? They don't want to talk. They just want to get rid of us

Posted by: TheQuietMan at March 06, 2017 05:48 PM (493sH)

Today is Alamo day. We will have our Battle of San Jacincto.

Posted by: cicero Kaboom! kid at March 06, 2017 05:51 PM (etPyC)

109 OK,
So I was NeverTrump during the primaries and Team SMOD in the general.
A few points:
1) I admit, I was wrong, he had a path to victory and managed to narrowly thread that needle. (Oddly I was right that looking at national polls was meaningless as it's a battle ground state game, but I was right for the wrong reasons.)

2) I'm at best now cautiously optimistic that there might be some conservative benefits to be gained by Trump.

3) This doesn't mean that I'm not worried in other areas. Trump may slash regulations, but if the tradeoff is massive protectionism, I'm less enthusiastic.

4) at a guttural level I like watching the left freak out. But at some point there are discussions that will be hashed out, and we are at a stage where we can't have them. In all of this are we discussing an immigrating policy? Any particular policy? No, we're continuing reactionary action like we have since... as long as I can remember. The press is sloughing off their credibility, finally. I'm not sure what the end effect of that will be though.

Posted by: tsrblke (tablet) at March 06, 2017 05:51 PM (a8eFL)

110 good for Sessions.

Posted by: Boulder terlit hobo at March 06, 2017 05:51 PM (nN7Mo)

111 >>Stated as offensively and provocatively as possible (and I'm cribbing this from a cynical friend): Morality is a luxury good. Rich, prosperous countries breed a value of life. Desperately impoverished people will murder people for a meal.

I think this is wrong. Morality is what allows allows a country to become rich and prosperous not a consequence of wealth.

America was not always the biggest and baddest on the block. Way back when we were a group of colonies that revolted against what was thought to be a deeply immoral government.

The Constitution and Bill of Rights are two of the most moral documents ever written and when we used to follow them, we were a deeply moral country which became rich and prosperous. Some of that was the luck of being a country with an abundance of natural resources, but there are many countries deep in resources that aren't moral. Venezuela comes to mind and we have seen what's become of that place.

One of the major things I like about Trump is his commitment to return to law and order and some semblance of recognizing we do have Constitution and we should be following it. We've certainly gone off the rails, not just in the last 8 years but for decades, but I do think if we return to our roots and start actually practicing the morality which were part of our founding pillars we can largely get back on track.

Posted by: JackStraw at March 06, 2017 05:51 PM (/tuJf)

112 The problem I have with proposition 1 (the non-extreme version) is that they took over the entire health care industry and were about to make it even worse. How much government control do we accept before it's too far?

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at March 06, 2017 05:51 PM (2lndx)

113 Stated as offensively and provocatively as possible (and I'm cribbing this from a cynical friend): Morality is a luxury good. Rich, prosperous countries breed a value of life. Desperately impoverished people will murder people for a meal.

I would say that that is exactly backward. Morality is a necessity in order to develop an advanced, rich society. Immorality is either a luxury good available in a society that has already attained wealth and power and can, thus, afford the expense that a lack of morality incurs ... or in a society that is primitive and backward and doesn't mind staying that way.

BTW, it's only the West that places a real value on individual life. Pretty much everywhere else in the world individual lives are close to worthless. This is because the West was largely based on the individualistic natures of the ancient Greeks and the philosophical underpinnings of Judeo-Christian individualistic structures where each man is made in G-d's image. In other places and under other religious systems the individual just isn't really worth spit.

Posted by: ThePrimordialOrderedPair at March 06, 2017 05:52 PM (zc3Db)

114 Amazing stuff today

Ace mustve been writing all weekend

He's testing out the new water-cooled keyboard.

Posted by: Cicero (@cicero) at March 06, 2017 05:52 PM (8ZskC)

115 It's over man.

It's Over!
==

Should I purchase a colander mask and assless chaps now before the rush?

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 05:52 PM (KgpWR)

116 "Hear, hear. They can take their "decorum" and shove it up their asses spinning and sideways."

I recall W giving Max Cleland some phony govt job because he felt sorry for him after he lost to Chambliss. Cleland still proceeded to call him a traitor and a draft dodger. F 'em all is right.

Posted by: Benji Carver at March 06, 2017 05:52 PM (OD2ni)

117

Never trumpers live in gated communitys, belong to guilds, need prog approval

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 05:52 PM (AQNmk)

118 Everyone has their own El Guapo, Ace.

Posted by: garrett at March 06, 2017 05:52 PM (eGfTO)

119 Under president Hillary and a D senate, we are starting show hearings before placing in the Scalia seat someone younger and more liberal than Merrick Garland. Rinse and repeat to replace a retiring RBG.

That's game over for life in the domestic US as I knew it. Bye-bye, 2nd amendment, 1st amendment religious freedom protections, and a lot more.

No other R candidate was going to beat HRC and swing enough votes in PA and WI to maintain R control in the senate.

So, yeah, I signed on to Ace's Proposition 2, and I'm damn glad with the result so far.

Posted by: George Tirebiter at March 06, 2017 05:53 PM (/zyrl)

120 I think this is wrong. Morality is what allows allows a country to become rich and prosperous not a consequence of wealth.

Posted by: JackStraw at March 06, 2017 05:51 PM (/tuJf)

Absolutely this.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at March 06, 2017 05:53 PM (sK2fh)

121 My feeling is that our society has hard core elements determined to hold power. They want gay marriage, free dope and bureaucratic mandarins that will give people 'stuff'.

Its part of the larger effort to delegitimize "normal" behavior. They want to break *everything*, not because doing so will make life "better", but because doing so makes people easier to (further) manipulate.

Posted by: Crusader at March 06, 2017 05:53 PM (ewSN2)

122 "Fuck You Money,"

The debate should heat up some next week when its Fuck!, We're out of Money.

Posted by: DaveA at March 06, 2017 05:54 PM (8J/Te)

123

Sessions should Unrecuse himself now that Clapper et al.admit there is no Russia story

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 05:54 PM (AQNmk)

124 For some reason Jeff Sessions just released a statement saying that he "did not" mislead congress.
I'm thinking this is a prelude to un-reccusing himself....
That would be awesome.
Posted by: JoeF. at March 06, 2017 05:50 PM (7uYFy)

Yup....not only should he "un"-recuse himself, but he should tell everyone he will lead any and all investigations concerning the 2016 election himself,personally.

Then shoot them all the double bird and walk off.

Posted by: Hairyback Guy at March 06, 2017 05:54 PM (5VlCp)

125 Never trumpers live in gated communitys, belong to guilds, need prog approvalPosted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 05:52 PM (AQNmk)
They're progressives, period. Worse, they lied about who they were.

Posted by: dagny at March 06, 2017 05:54 PM (Mc+44)

126 @ tsrblke

I think we're in a Cold Civil War. Until the issues dividing us are settled, I don't think we will have a reasonable discussion across a table.

First we need to regain our footing. We haven't won just because Trump was elected. We just gained ground to fight back on. Still a lot of fighting left to do just to get back to where we were 8 years ago.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 05:54 PM (sh70B)

127 My first priority in government is freedom of speech. This freedom has been eroding steadily for the past 30 years. The GOPe gas bowed down to the left and allowed it to determine what is and is not,bacceptable thought and speech. In my opinion, DT was the only choice to protect speech.

Posted by: Ladylibertarian at March 06, 2017 05:54 PM (TdMsT)

128 The IRS scandal was the red flag that it is was Too Late.

Posted by: Max Power at March 06, 2017 05:54 PM (QCc6B)

129 So....sounds like Ace has been chatting with the fearless leader of hot air.

Posted by: keena at March 06, 2017 05:54 PM (Qo9dP)

130 ITS FUNNY CUZ CHAPS DONT COVER YOUR ASS OTHERWISE THEYD BE CALLED PANTS!

Posted by: BEN ROETHLESSBURGER at March 06, 2017 05:55 PM (kTF2Z)

131 Phenomenal stuff, ace.

Keep doing what you're doing.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 05:55 PM (KgpWR)

132 Should I purchase a colander mask and assless chaps now before the rush?

A bunch of those Coleman fuel bottles and some Sawyer water filters would be better ... but hey man ... You Be You !!!

Posted by: ScoggDog at March 06, 2017 05:55 PM (nw6G5)

133 I always refer back to the bold / courageous description. I think the inherent problem with Trump and some conservatives is that Trump is bold but not courageous. Most conservatives are courageous but not bold. Most of the Left is bold but not courageous. I'm grateful that Trump is using his boldness at this time to advance our agenda but I'm afraid boldness can't be sustained and still have our Country back for the long haul. It has to be temporary. I'm all in for Trump right now because it's our only chance.

Posted by: Jack Sock at March 06, 2017 05:55 PM (zoyKY)

134 Its part of the larger effort to delegitimize "normal" behavior. They want to break *everything*, not because doing so will make life "better", but because doing so makes people easier to (further) manipulate.
Posted by: Crusader

And so they can pursue they're own 'hobbies' without anyone having the moral high ground over them.

These people are basically toddlers, old toddlers.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 05:55 PM (sh70B)

135 Not necessarily Kodiak. Polar or possibly Grizzly would be acceptable.

Some of these SJWs could be dragged off by a black bear - or a big racoon.

Posted by: DaveA at March 06, 2017 05:55 PM (8J/Te)

136

Im all for refusing to get hysterical. Its bad for a person

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 05:56 PM (AQNmk)

137 Sessions didn't recuse himself because of his remarks to Congress. He recused himself because good lawyers recuse themselves from those things they have had an interest in. He would have recused himself from any "campaign" investigation whether the media/dems were masturbating to a new lie about what occurred re his "contact with Russians" or not.

Posted by: dagny at March 06, 2017 05:56 PM (Mc+44)

138 Morality is what you convince yourself you always had AFTER you become successful. It's a historical ret-con.

/ducks and runs for cover

Posted by: Max Power at March 06, 2017 05:56 PM (QCc6B)

139 How exactly is Trump bold but not courageous.

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 05:57 PM (SIY7D)

140

All progs are admittung today there is no Russia link, even Clapper

So why is Sessions recused?

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 05:57 PM (AQNmk)

141 *reviews Maslow's hierarchy*

Well...two out of five ain't bad.

Posted by: Insomniac - sin valor at March 06, 2017 05:57 PM (0mRoj)

142 I would love to see Donnie rename the IRS something less anodyne, like the "Tax Department" or something.

Not that it's earth shattering, just a nice little symbolic nod to to the citizens.

"Internal" "Revenue" "Service".... give me a break. It's the effing Tax Department. They take your money under the implied threat of violence, then more or less piss it up an already piss-soaked rope.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at March 06, 2017 05:58 PM (sK2fh)

143 Never trumpers live in gated communitys, belong to guilds, need prog approvalPosted by: ThunderB

Newest meme rolling around Fb: "If it pleases the crown......."

Posted by: rickb223 at March 06, 2017 05:58 PM (/B2KC)

144 Never trumpers live in gated communitys, belong to guilds, need prog approval
Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 05:52 PM (AQNmk)

Want invitations.
Want reservations.

The one that squirms the most on TV these days is Charles Krauthammer.

I used to love to listen to his views. Not always agreed, but so what?

Now? I'm embarrassed as he continues the charade.

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at March 06, 2017 05:58 PM (0mz2+)

145 How far along the decline do you think we are?

It's a multidimensional, non-linear scale.

I think it would be helpful to have this debate

We had the Primalary screaming match, debates are kinda old school.

Posted by: DaveA at March 06, 2017 05:59 PM (8J/Te)

146 >>Phenomenal stuff, ace.

Keep doing what you're doing.

What's funny is right now Ace is wearing assless chaps, a collander mask, and he's chasing a chicken around his basement apartemnt while listening to the Soundtrack from Rocky III.

All for the End Times GAINZ!!1!

Posted by: garrett at March 06, 2017 05:59 PM (eGfTO)

147 "He recused himself because good lawyers recuse themselves from those things they have had an interest in. "

Never heard of such a thing.

Posted by: Elena Kagan at March 06, 2017 05:59 PM (OD2ni)

148
Even if Donald Trump lost the election, it would've been still the right thing to do nominate him as the Republican candidate.

The man turned over all the rocks. The man opened a lot of eyes.

We are an "Awoke" nation today because of Donald J. Trump.

Thank Christ he won, tho. Thank Christ he won.

Posted by: Soothsayer 45 at March 06, 2017 05:59 PM (rTCJ6)

149 Having lived, materially, at the extremes of the spectrum I became Trumpian when I realized we are at the ' FDR hope' stage.
Hey FDR was an asshole and a leftist but...BUT he gave hope when there was none for the majority in flyover country(sound familiar?).

Trump gives us hope and his first 40 days, imho, have been far more hopeful than FDR because Trump is of the real, businessness results world. For all this shit about what Trump does not know politically, getting SOMETHING done...some thing(s) good done is a successful businessman's mans strength.

I thought sending out the tweet this weekend was incredibly weak...really, really weak. I can think of several ways to have made the point and nailed the perpetrators without tweet rage.

Still Trump is in it for the right reasons. He is a proud son of America and will fight like no one else to make America strong and good.
If he fucks up once in a while...so be it.

I like his heart. Immensely.

Posted by: 'Cold Civil War'. That seems apt. at March 06, 2017 05:59 PM (oBuXO)

150 "Internal" "Revenue" "Service".... give me a break. It's the effing Tax Department. They take your money under the implied threat of violence, then more or less piss it up an already piss-soaked rope.

Tax SWAT Department

Posted by: rickb223 at March 06, 2017 05:59 PM (/B2KC)

151 Sessions "recused himself because good lawyers recuse themselves from those things they have had an interest in."

Which is why the Obamans set a trap knowing that Sessions would do the right thing. The trap was to have the Obaman holdover at DOJ#2 pick a Leftie Special Prosecutor.

Which is why Sessions can't undo his recusal

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 05:59 PM (SIY7D)

152 "mobs yelling to kill police without recourse"

Not only that, but an incumbent Presidential administration pulling out every stop to actively incite assassinations of law enforcement members.

With its official endorsement of completely baseless conspiracy theories about innocent young black men being regularly murdered under color of authority by racist police officers.

Posted by: torquewrench at March 06, 2017 05:59 PM (noWW6)

153 I celebrated today that the full republican Congress passed the law that was needed to replace bad Obama policy, and then I woke.

Posted by: Tinfoilbaby at March 06, 2017 06:00 PM (6Ll1u)

154

Special Report beginning to cover obamacare dismantling.

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at March 06, 2017 06:00 PM (0mz2+)

155 Some days when I am feeling blue, I think Proposition B is correct.

But I've permitted myself some optimism since the election. Perhaps what we are seeing in the left in its' death throes, which are bound to be ugly. But the propositions of the left are failing, both here and throughout the West. They are no longer attempting reason - they are simply screaming, censoring and bullying.

The old USSR and its nomenklatura looked damn powerful (far more powerful than Putin's Russia) - until one day, it wasn't.

I dunno - back in the summer, I thought 2016 was a seminal year in human history, but one that might, like the Revolutions of 1948, result in disappointment and failure. We still don't know which way the cat's gonna jump.

It's so easy to trace historical patterns in hindsight, not so easy when you're in the middle of history and you don't know the ending.

I used to condemn the leaders and people of the '30's for not stopping Hitler while there was still time. Couldn't Chamberlain see? Why didn't anybody listen to Churchill? I understand it better now.

Like I said, easy to play Monday morning QB.

Posted by: Donna di deplorable ampersands&&&&and so there at March 06, 2017 06:00 PM (P8951)

156

Winning solves alot of problems

Trump succeeds, never trump will claim him

Just like Reagan

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 06:00 PM (AQNmk)

157 The violence described by Murray, as well as the violence w/other conservative speakers on campus (Milo, Ben Shapiro - blocked exits + fire alarm) is frightening. The intentionally, planned violence at Trump speeches is frightening.
Not the only one here who has fears about Trump assassination attempt given how talking about it has been normalized on the Left.

Posted by: Lizzy at March 06, 2017 06:01 PM (NOIQH)

158 125 For some reason Jeff Sessions just released a statement saying that he "did not" mislead congress.
I'm thinking this is a prelude to un-reccusing himself....
That would be awesome.
Posted by: JoeF. at March 06, 2017 05:50 PM (7uYFy)

Yup....not only should he "un"-recuse himself, but he should tell everyone he will lead any and all investigations concerning the 2016 election himself,personally.

Then shoot them all the double bird and walk off.
Posted by: Hairyback Guy at March 06, 2017 05:54 PM (5VlCp)

It's not even a hard walk-back. Sessions could just say as with any other matter, he will recuse himself if he has an apparent conflict as outlined in the applicable rules of professional conduct and ethical considerations and DOJ ethics guidelines, and that is what he meant when he said he would recuse himself from something involving the campaign, that is to say if he has such a conflict of interest.

Posted by: Scalia's Ghost at March 06, 2017 06:01 PM (3OAG2)

159 >>Special Report beginning to cover obamacare dismantling.

Can't be. I was told this would never happen.

Posted by: JackStraw at March 06, 2017 06:01 PM (/tuJf)

160 Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 05:54 PM (sh70B)

Was yes, as I told a friend who works for catholic hospitals "don't assume we won, we merely bought ourselves a stay of execution to fight longer"

Posted by: tsrblke (tablet) at March 06, 2017 06:01 PM (a8eFL)

161 Good lord. The choice was between Trump and Hillary. Only retards and parasites got that wrong and the parasites were just voting for a free meal so they got it right, leaving only retards thinking Hillary would be better.And now they want to save face instead of apologizing or committing seppuku like honorable men.

Posted by: Lord Sir x at March 06, 2017 06:02 PM (nFwvY)

162
The Gorsuch Wars are about to commence soon, too, btw.

Posted by: Soothsayer 45 at March 06, 2017 06:02 PM (rTCJ6)

163

Good grief. Ace wore me out today.

Need a glass of wine.

have a good one!

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at March 06, 2017 06:02 PM (0mz2+)

164 I've ODed on politics today. I just saw that TCM's wonderful and very knowledgeable host, Robert Osborne, passed away. He'll be missed.

Posted by: Tuna at March 06, 2017 06:03 PM (jm1YL)

165 "the Revolutions of 1948"

Oops, I meant 1848.

Posted by: Donna di deplorable ampersands&&&&and so there at March 06, 2017 06:03 PM (P8951)

166 "Sessions didn't recuse himself because of his remarks to Congress. He
recused himself because good lawyers recuse themselves from those things
they have had an interest in."

After Kagan's flat refusal to recuse herself from Obamacare cases before the SCOTUS, despite her extensive prior involvement, the response by Republicans to any demand for recusal on their part has to now be "Yeah, no."

Specifically cite the Kagan precedent.

Posted by: torquewrench at March 06, 2017 06:03 PM (noWW6)

167 165 I've ODed on politics today. I just saw that TCM's wonderful and very knowledgeable host, Robert Osborne, passed away. He'll be missed.
Posted by: Tuna at March 06, 2017 06:03 PM (jm1YL)

That's a bummer.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at March 06, 2017 06:04 PM (sK2fh)

168

The concerned whinging about Tweeting has become ridiculous.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 06:04 PM (KgpWR)

169 Was yes, as I told a friend who works for catholic hospitals "don't assume we won, we merely bought ourselves a stay of execution to fight longer"
Posted by: tsrblke (tablet) at March 06, 2017 06:01 PM (a8eFL)

*Nods*

I can only imagine how things have been at Catholic hospitals for the last 8 years.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 06:04 PM (sh70B)

170 I think we are standing with our finger in the dike and that's about it. I am loving their discomfort. But, I think they are going to win in the end. I don't mean to be depressing. I just don't know anyone under thirty who doesn't bristle at the notion that Bruce Jenner is a man. And I mean really bristle. Like, get mad at me for suggesting it. And it's an odd sort of mad. It reminds me of stories I learned as a 4th grader about soviet children turning in their parents. It's a cold sort disdain. I'm talking about close, close relatives here, who are chirpy and friendly one minute but say the word TRUMP and they snarl. No, we are just standing with our collective finger in the dike. That's all. But, I'll take whatever I can get. My 401K is up $20000!

Posted by: Janetoo at March 06, 2017 06:04 PM (t3qE+)

171 165 I've ODed on politics today. I just saw that TCM's wonderful and very knowledgeable host, Robert Osborne, passed away. He'll be missed.
Posted by: Tuna at March 06, 2017 06:03 PM (jm1YL)

He died and Young Turks leftist turd Ben Mankiewicz still breathes. damn.

Posted by: Donna di deplorable ampersands&&&&and so there at March 06, 2017 06:04 PM (P8951)

172

Please. Houston is blue

,,,gonna be an early night in Florida,....

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 06:05 PM (AQNmk)

173 >>>130 So....sounds like Ace has been chatting with the fearless leader of hot air.
Posted by: keena

nope! Like i said, a friend.

Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 06:05 PM (8rNrN)

174 This post reflects my views pretty well. I think it brushes up against another aspect of the problem with our anointed and comfortable betters; They seem incapable of admitting they were..right.

For 50 years the Conservative elite in media and politics cautioned America against the creep of Leftism and its devastatingly toxic effects on culture, family, economy, patriotism and other institutional glues that hold the Union together.

The Right warned that big government, the Great Society welfare state, the sexual revolution, abortion on demand, no fault divorce, public education, etc, would result in the destruction of culture. They warned that minimum wage laws, price controls, overbearing regulation and confiscatory taxes would ruin economic opportunity.

Everything we said would happen, did and more.

And now that we've reached the Gingrichian tipping point, where Newt warned us that someday there would be more people in the wagon than pulling it, the producers stood up, and elected Trump/stopped Hillary.

Instead of accepting that they were right all along, instead of the Conservative elite feeling our pain, and helping the victims of 50 years of liberalism walk back down the road away from serfdom, they've turned on us as not worth saving.

Kevin Williamson wants us to die off. Bill Kristol says we're too lazy and stupid, and deserve to be replaced by hard working brown people. We're called crazy. We're called pillbilly losers.

(Never mind that most of us are the same hardworking, employed and educated base that the GOP depended on for years. Never mind that our concerns are more for our kids and the future.)

Folks who spoke eloquently about the universal state of liberty, and the desire and ability of Iraqis or Afghanis to seek out the same kind of freedom and democracy our founders set forth for us, if we were just willing to nation build, and kickstart it for them, now say fellow Americans aren't worth the effort.

The Conservative smart-set was right about everything, and now that we have an opportunity to correct, they have no other answer for those hobbled by decades of liberalism but bootstrapping and suicide.

So, yeah it comes down to who's the bigger asshole...

Posted by: Coondawg68 at March 06, 2017 06:05 PM (2Lj63)

175 What's funny is right now Ace is wearing assless chaps, a collander
mask, and he's chasing a chicken around his basement apartemnt while
listening to the Soundtrack from Rocky III.

All for the End Times GAINZ!!1!
====

The key ingredient is pig shit. Methane will save us all.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 06:05 PM (KgpWR)

176 What all this talk about assholes being raped by kodiacks? I'm fully on board with that plan.

Seriously though, fantastic piece, ace.

Posted by: Joe, living mobile at March 06, 2017 06:05 PM (oGW41)

177 Obamaphone!

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at March 06, 2017 06:06 PM (oVJmc)

178 It's over man.

It's Over!

So is he

Posted by: Nevergiveup at March 06, 2017 06:06 PM (KlI/a)

179 Stated as offensively and provocatively as possible (and I'm cribbing this from a cynical friend): Morality is a luxury good. Rich, prosperous countries breed a value of life. Desperately impoverished people will murder people for a meal.

How is that offensive or provocative? Seriously, how? That's just a flat out statement of the brutal reality of life.

What do you do when circumstances change? You change your opinion.

I was all in on nation building and democracy whisky sexy and all of it because who wouldn't want freedom? I was wrong. I was catastrophically wrong and as a result I have rethought my position and am coming down far closer to the isolationist view than I ever thought I would because reality, that harshest of Mistresses, seems determined to prove the world of theory wrong.

Take free trade. I was never quite a full bore free trader because it's not free trade if American countries face a regulatory burden that China or Mexico or wherever doesn't. But I did think the harsher NAFTA critics were overstating their case. They didn't. I was wrong. Therefore, as someone who does try to be intellectually credible, I take that new evidence into account and change my theory.

There does seem to be a huge disconnect between the theoreticians of the Right and those of us who don't work in the political world. These pure wonky theoretical models do not work in reality and there seems to be a refusal to accommodate theory to reality.

There also seems to be a refusal to accept accountability. Representatives are elected to represent, not to obtain for themselves a lifetime sinecure from which to pontificate.

We have no branches of government (ignore 2004ish OKAY) so we can't do anything.

We need the House.

We need the House and Senate.

We need the House and Senate and the Presidency.

We need the House and Senate and the Presidency and the Supreme Court.

Here you go. Time to put up.

On my core competency of being an asshole, let me note this. When someone starts off with being condescending to me? I will respond in kind. And Mommy always taught me do not ever start the fight but if you are in one, finish it.

Yes, NeverTrumpers, I comprehend your position and, get this, I reject it. Using the puppets to try to explain it to me will only result in you attempting to explain to your proctologist how the felt got that far into your colon.

sucking up time

ace, you've really hit it out of the park today. Seriously.

Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:06 PM (dEQP3)

180
I'm 'recovering' businessman. The country needs a businessman at the helm right now. The liberals love their social welfare programs, but they won't concede the MOST IMPORTANT POINT! They require American taxpayers to you know, pay taxes to make them work.

There's no concessions to be made on this point. No grand compromise. We're approaching 100, 000, 000 Americans not working within the next six months.

Even the strongest donkey eventually sees the load it's carrying and say, 'I'm tired of being such a jackass'.

Posted by: E Depluribus Unum at March 06, 2017 06:07 PM (IKE1C)

181 never trump are dead to me. don't care if they are persuadable, malleable, remorseful or have a cherry on top. they are dead. that garbage needs to be taken out to the garbage heap. my suggestion is to not waste precious time and resources on them.

Posted by: runner at March 06, 2017 06:07 PM (c6/9Q)

182 It's not even a hard walk-back. Sessions could just say as with any other matter, he will recuse himself if he has an apparent conflict as outlined in the applicable rules of professional conduct and ethical considerations and DOJ ethics guidelines, and that is what he meant when he said he would recuse himself from something involving the campaign, that is to say if he has such a conflict of interest.
Posted by: Scalia's Ghost at March 06, 2017 06:01 PM (3OAG2)

Agreed. "Recusal" is more narrowly a term applied to judges anyway.

Posted by: Insomniac - sin valor at March 06, 2017 06:07 PM (0mRoj)

183 167 Even TV news in Houston is pushing the , "if Trump was bugged,NHL must have deserved it meme." It's over folks.
Posted by: Patrick Henry at March 06, 2017 06:03 PM (a7IXj)

Oh, fuck, give me a break.

Pearl Harbor was bombed. It's over, folks.

Posted by: Donna di deplorable ampersands&&&&and so there at March 06, 2017 06:07 PM (P8951)

184 Does anybody remember the conversations and seminars the dems were having in October 2010? They had their plan to confiscate retirement portfolios over some amount (typically around $200k) and provide annuities to everybody.

They were projecting increased spending to make the debt equal to the amount they expected to confiscate, which was about $19 trillion. The spending would boost the economy and everybody would have a monthly check.

And then they lost the house...

Posted by: DanMan at March 06, 2017 06:07 PM (XTiHL)

185 "to me and many others" was gonna say...

Posted by: runner at March 06, 2017 06:07 PM (c6/9Q)

186 It's not even a hard walk-back. Sessions could just say as with any other matter, he will recuse himself if he has an apparent conflict as outlined in the applicable rules of professional conduct and ethical considerations and DOJ ethics guidelines, and that is what he meant when he said he would recuse himself from something involving the campaign, that is to say if he has such a conflict of interest.
Posted by: Scalia's Ghost at March 06, 2017 06:01 PM (3OAG2)

Yup...sounds right. Can he still shoot them all the double bird?

Posted by: Hairyback Guy at March 06, 2017 06:07 PM (5VlCp)

187 At some point being a turncoat may come back to bite you. Best to stick to your principles. Give me liberty or give me death and all that.

Posted by: freaked at March 06, 2017 06:07 PM (BO/km)

188 My take was that it wasn't so much Flight 93 as it was MH370.

Since Bill Clinton (some would argue Bush 41, with ADA and the like) we'd been in a shallow bank to the left, mostly too subtle for most of the public to notice. This was briefly shallowed-out in the first year of Bush 43, but not really enough to matter, and when he needed Dem support for his wars the turn steepened.

Then with Obama the progressives decided to get a little more aggressive, and some of the passengers started to notice, but it wasn't until BLM and 32 genders and the rest of the SJW stupidity that people noticed the 2G bank angle and decided to do something about it.

The Democrats have for decades been trying to steer the country to a place most Americans would not recognize, and until recently they were trying to do so in little nibbles. When they decided to go all-in they finally got busted.

Posted by: JEM at March 06, 2017 06:08 PM (TppKb)

189

What ATC said

So much less typing

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 06:08 PM (AQNmk)

190 170

The concerned whinging about Tweeting has become ridiculous.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 06:04 PM (KgpWR)

I know! I hope he never, ever stops with the twitter until little jack dorsey finally pulls the plug on the whole project ('cause he knows damn well he can't shadow ban the freakin' POTUS).

There's something about the raw, impetuous, explosive blurty nature of Trumps tweets that lets you know it's really him, really tweeting, on his own actual phone he keeps in his own pocket.

Not like Barky with his shit eating "-BO" signature, to let us plebes know it was "REALLY him" once in a while, when you knew goddamn well it wasn't anyways.

sigh. i'm so glad Trump won.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at March 06, 2017 06:08 PM (sK2fh)

191 The division in the conservative movement can never fully heal until the Ace of Spades podcast returns.

Posted by: The Sampo at March 06, 2017 06:08 PM (uRCZX)

192 First about ace and tone. Caustic is kind of ace's oeuvre and it did not just come about in the age of Trump,

Before I became a full on Trumpistor whatever the Hell it is is called I was Trump accepting. Like I was for Cruz, but thought it was not impossible for Trump to win. I recall be roasted by ace for expressing that belief (if not directly in one of those group roastings. You know the ones ).

ace was #nevertrump so hard his Twitter tag line was a bitter denunciation of Trump long after he had flipped.

This isn't a complaint it is more an observation. So if someone is saying well ace you would have more credibility on Trump if you werent so hard on the Beaver last night, well, they don't know you.

#nevertrumpers won't be reasoned out of the position because they weren't reasoned into it. I don't think ace was reasoned in (maybe he was, his argument was well he just can't win kinda like he is describing his putting on Democrat uniform, pursuing folly is folly. But then again, he became proTrump while still believing he would lose. Ida know )

The Freak out Corps and their Kristolian camp followers will only be defeated by being defeated. They have to fail, miserably.

I have this opinion that the economy will soon take off like a rocket, and if it does, people could give two shits what Trump says or does. Look at Bill Clinton. I am not saying that Trump is like Bill Clinton but I am saying if people are rolling around in their Scrooge McDuck bed of dollar bills, they don't care what else the President does.

If the economy bumps along at an Obaman pace, Trump is toast. He could even get impeached.

Obama exempt from this analysis because reasons.

Posted by: blaster at March 06, 2017 06:09 PM (HV1LS)

193 *snort*

My aunt shared a video on facebook. Some pregnant woman, wearing a giraffe head/mask just walking back and forth looking around.

Posted by: buzzion at March 06, 2017 06:09 PM (z/Ubi)

194 152 Sessions "recused himself because good lawyers recuse themselves from those things they have had an interest in."

Which is why the Obamans set a trap knowing that Sessions would do the right thing. The trap was to have the Obaman holdover at DOJ#2 pick a Leftie Special Prosecutor.

Which is why Sessions can't undo his recusal
Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 05:59 PM (SIY7D)
But Trump unfucked the chain of command that Obama set up to have pure progs in line.

Posted by: dagny at March 06, 2017 06:09 PM (Mc+44)

195 It just seems there is no common ground at all. "America First" should be a self-evident proposition as much as saying "the sky is blue." I mean if we can't even agree that a nation exists for the benefit of its people, where do you go from there?

Posted by: (((King Curtis))) at March 06, 2017 06:09 PM (J1Jae)

196 My theory is that the NeverTrumpers are basically shills for globalism,

Conservative Inc. - We talk the Talk, We don't walk the Walk.

Posted by: DaveA at March 06, 2017 06:09 PM (8J/Te)

197 Is it too late to write some pardons? Got a pile of requests here that just keeps growing...

Posted by: Barack Hussein Obama, President of Anti-America at March 06, 2017 06:09 PM (2z74n)

198 Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:06 PM (dEQP3)

For what it's worth I don't think you were wrong in that those positions are not all or nothing.

Posted by: Jack Sock at March 06, 2017 06:10 PM (zoyKY)

199 OT
That damn giraffe still hasn't dropped her calf.

Posted by: Tuna at March 06, 2017 06:10 PM (jm1YL)

200
Posted by: Patrick Henry at March 06, 2017 06:03 PM (a7IXj)

You're funny. Like a clown.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at March 06, 2017 06:10 PM (oVJmc)

201 Folks who spoke eloquently about the universal state of liberty, and the desire and ability of Iraqis or Afghanis to seek out the same kind of freedom and democracy our founders set forth for us, if we were just willing to nation build, and kickstart it for them, now say fellow Americans aren't worth the effort.

Posted by: Coondawg68 at March 06, 2017 06:05 PM (2Lj63)

Also, after breaking one country after another in the Muslim world, they say we have an obligation to take all our Muslim friends from these broken countries into the USA. But if those friends really are for freedom and democracy, shouldn't they stay in the countries they claim to love and fight for that?

Under their approach, Washington, Greene, Knox and everyone else should have just packed in it and emigrated to France.

Posted by: Scalia's Ghost at March 06, 2017 06:10 PM (3OAG2)

202

Houston elected the first lesbian mayor. Twice. Who then subpoenaed sermons, the first mighty battle in the Bathroom Wars of 2014

Houston is as blue as Obamas balls

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 06:11 PM (AQNmk)

203 161 Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 05:54 PM (sh70B)

Was yes, as I told a friend who works for catholic hospitals "don't assume we won, we merely bought ourselves a stay of execution to fight longer"
Posted by: tsrblke (tablet) at March 06, 2017 06:01 PM (a8eFL)

The TFG administration was gunning for the Catholic and other religious hospitals hard, especially with the proposed rule requiring "non-discrimination" relating to abortion and trannies. A lot of religious hospitals had their heads up their asses about it too, which was very discouraging.

Posted by: Insomniac - sin valor at March 06, 2017 06:11 PM (0mRoj)

204 It was fine to be anti-trump before he was the obvious winner of the nomination.

After that, no.

Posted by: dagny at March 06, 2017 06:11 PM (Mc+44)

205 sigh. i'm so glad Trump won.
Posted by: Warai-otoko at March 06, 2017 06:08 PM (sK2fh)

Yes, finally Alpha cojones in the White House.

"W" - faux alpha
Billy Jeff - perv beta
44- no comment

Posted by: kallisto at March 06, 2017 06:11 PM (nNdYv)

206 I used to condemn the leaders and people of the '30's for not stopping Hitler while there was still time. Couldn't Chamberlain see? Why didn't anybody listen to Churchill? I understand it better now.

Ever wonder why those who support the Establishment ... on both sides ... instantly jeer any comparisons on our current predicament to the 1930s ? In poker parlance - we call that a "tell".

1930s Europeans were more civil than us. Less informed - but more educated. Yet shit went like it did.

But they weren't armed like we are. And we have more citizens with better field-quality small arms than any time in recent memory.

And yeah ... although it wasn't that long ago people said here differently ... a bunch of well-armed Jews don't get herded into Warsaw.

Posted by: ScoggDog at March 06, 2017 06:11 PM (nw6G5)

207 It just seems there is no common ground at all. "America First" should be a self-evident proposition as much as saying "the sky is blue." I mean if we can't even agree that a nation exists for the benefit of its people, where do you go from there?

Posted by: (((King Curtis))) at March 06, 2017 06:09 PM (J1Jae)

"... secure the Blessings of Liberty TO OURSELVES AND TO OUR POSTERITY ..."

Right there in the preamble to the Constitution.

Posted by: ThePrimordialOrderedPair at March 06, 2017 06:11 PM (zc3Db)

208 a hot tone is right and just.

end of story

Posted by: concrete girl at March 06, 2017 06:11 PM (1B5WS)

209 Wow, I gotta see the movie Ace is reviewing here.

/sarc off

Damn straight - Ace hit this one out of the park.

A vote for Hillary Clinton was a vote for foreign war with Russia - and a domestic war against American conservatives like me.

Nothing Trump could do would make him worse then Hillary.

Posted by: 18-1 at March 06, 2017 06:12 PM (X7E8f)

210 We talk, rightly, about the Left being nuts, but after months of gleeful daily schadenboners now it's back to DOOOOOM! because the left is putting up a fight and the media continues to lie about him. Wow. Nobody expected that!

Trump's not even been in office for 2 months but hey, let's all slit our wrists because the left hasn't conceded defeat.

Posted by: Donna di deplorable ampersands&&&&and so there at March 06, 2017 06:12 PM (P8951)

211 "'America First' should be a self-evident proposition as much as saying 'the sky is blue.' I mean if we can't even agree that a nation exists
for the benefit of its people, where do you go from there?"

I honestly did see an "America First" bumper sticker a few weeks ago, right here in the liberal fever swamps of the Scum Scamfrisco Bay Area. Will wonders never cease.

Posted by: torquewrench at March 06, 2017 06:12 PM (noWW6)

212 They released the Fredocare replace bill. I just don't have where with all and interest in looking. I'll wait to hear the low lights from others. But I am expecting a huge cluster Fuck or worse

Posted by: Nevergiveup at March 06, 2017 06:13 PM (KlI/a)

213 I know! I hope he never, ever stops with the twitter until little jack dorsey finally pulls the plug on the whole project ('cause he knows damn well he can't shadow ban the freakin' POTUS).

There's something about the raw, impetuous, explosive blurty nature of Trumps tweets that lets you know it's really him, really tweeting, on his own actual phone he keeps in his own pocket.

...
Posted by: Warai-otoko at March 06, 2017 06:08 PM (sK2fh)

Oh but Jack can. Have you noticed that all of Trump's replies are all negative since the election? Jack is messing with his user base and has been for a while.

Take a look at MisterMetokur's 'Twitter Throttling' video.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 06:13 PM (sh70B)

214 183
never trump are dead to me. don't care if they are persuadable,
malleable, remorseful or have a cherry on top. they are dead. that
garbage needs to be taken out to the garbage heap. my suggestion is to
not waste precious time and resources on them.

Posted by: runner at March 06, 2017 06:07 PM (c6/9Q)
sometimes....the truth hurts....

Posted by: phoenixgirl..spring training at March 06, 2017 06:13 PM (0O7c5)

215 I don't see any point in trying to talk to the left anyway. Trying to tell them about conservatism is like showing a chicken a card trick.

Posted by: freaked at March 06, 2017 06:14 PM (BO/km)

216 What ATC said

So much less typing
Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 06:08 PM (AQNmk)

See! See how I barely used the swears!

That's how you know I'm peeved.

That Charles Murray incident is terrifying. He was leaving. They surrounded the car and were pounding on it. They would have beaten him probably to death if they could and not one thing will be done about it.

What's Murray's great racist crime? Stating that we do not know to what extent genetics plays a role in intelligence. That's. It.

Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:14 PM (dEQP3)

217 I recall be roasted by ace for expressing that belief (if not directly in one of those group roastings. You know the ones ).

===

:-)

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 06:15 PM (KgpWR)

218 "I have this opinion that the economy will soon take off like a rocket, and if it does, people could give two shits what Trump says or does.

If the economy bumps along at an Obaman pace, Trump is toast. He could even get impeached."

That's it.

Posted by: Donna di deplorable ampersands&&&&and so there at March 06, 2017 06:15 PM (P8951)

219 "Maslow's hierarchy of human needs"? Ace is a nurse???

Posted by: Zettai Ryoiki at March 06, 2017 06:15 PM (kP16F)

220 >>If Salon can openly call for the 'banning' of 'white men' and get away with it, we are on the downslope without a fucking doubt.

Yeah. It's one thing when a Lefty site does it, but one of the more disturbing things I've seen is that slideshow of various HS/college students doing presentations (powerpoint) where each one of them casually slanders whites in a way that if it were any other race/ethnicity it would likely be KKK propaganda. The kids wrote it, presented it in front of their peers and their teachers accepted it. That's a lot of freakin' cultural rot on display for these attitudes to be so accepted/normalized.

Posted by: Lizzy at March 06, 2017 06:15 PM (NOIQH)

221 Either we're fighting to win or I, personally, am not fighting at all.
It's one thing to fight in vain for a lost cause; but to make yourself
an enemy of a state for a cause no one is really fighting for?

This admission is disgusting So in 1776 you would be a Loyalist because, the "rebels" couldn't win?

I agree war is to be won, not compromised, but declining to participate because you don't think you will win is NOT acceptable.

Tell me you are sorry for writing this or am I am idiot to think you are.

Posted by: Sam at March 06, 2017 06:15 PM (Lat75)

222 >> Trying to tell them about conservatism is like showing a chicken a card trick.

You gotta catch one, first.

That's where the GAINZ are made.

Posted by: garrett at March 06, 2017 06:15 PM (eGfTO)

223 >>We talk, rightly, about the Left being nuts, but after months of gleeful daily schadenboners now it's back to DOOOOOM! because the left is putting up a fight and the media continues to lie about him. Wow. Nobody expected that!

I really don't get the freak out at all. This is exactly what I was expecting because this is what the left does. And after their unexpected and complete asswhipping they are doubling down on the screeching and stupid.

Did anyone really expect that when they were so close to their goal of "fundamentally changing" America they were just going to sit back and become Constitutionalists? Really?

The more they whine and bang their tiny fists the happier I am. Winning, duh!

Posted by: JackStraw at March 06, 2017 06:15 PM (/tuJf)

224 "A vote for Hillary Clinton was a vote for foreign war with Russia - and a domestic war against American conservatives like me. Nothing Trump could do would make him worse then Hillary."

Sometimes I really wish I'd thought up other people's metaphors first.

I definitely felt that way after having heard a hypothetical Hillary presidency described as "years on end of Carrie on prom night".

Posted by: torquewrench at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (noWW6)

225 It's over..sob, sob, sob

http://tinyurl.com/zak35sr

Posted by: Tuna at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (jm1YL)

226 "That Charles Murray incident is terrifying."

On a liberal college campus. Like Berkeley. With an identifiable solitary target. Like Milo.

This isn't happening in GenPop.

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (SIY7D)

227 Posted by: freaked at March 06, 2017 06:14 PM (BO/km)

I was curious if you made up that expression yourself (I thought it was funny), so i googled it. Chickens doing card tricks are apparently a thing!

Posted by: (((King Curtis))) at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (J1Jae)

228 Houston is as blue as Obamas balls
Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 06:11 PM (AQNmk)

Come on that's not true. I'm sure Reggie drains them for him daily.

Posted by: buzzion at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (z/Ubi)

229 Q: Why did Barry spy on Trump Tower?

A: He was curious to hear what a woman's orgasm sounds like.

Posted by: wth at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (HgMAr)

230 Damn.

I'm pretty close to being dead-nut on a second parody guy...........

Posted by: FITP at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (tnR19)

231 I'm a No. 2 gal. When Obama was elected in '08, the country died that night as far as I could see. And O was far worse, far more cunning, than I expected. McCain, McCain, so rudderless. . . . merely ambitious . . . . and vain . . . . he so wanted the trophy.

I supported Trump when in July 2015 he brought the media to listen to the families of those killed by illegal aliens.

I don't fear those run of the mill voters that voted for hillary. They don't pay attention to the news, and that's okay. I fear the 1% of them that are the left's foot soldiers and true lawbreakers. They are the ones that will fill offices with authority and misuse it, as has been shown over and over with Lerner, Fast & Furious, and the Berkeley riots. Even though American whites living today have not owned a slave, the 1% tyrants pretend they are worse than the people who did, and want to treat them according to that fake assessment. That's what's alarming.

So I fear their intolerance against whites, even though it required whites' acquiescence and EFFORT and DEATHS for them to even have the opportunity to elevate to the status of officeholders.

I don't fear the run of the mill Hillary supporters, but as I don't fear them, I know they won't protect those the 1% loathe, because they're suckered in by the 1% lies since they don't pay attention.

I'm grateful for Trump, but concerned no one else has the guts and the spine to march shoulder to shoulder with him, which he needs. And he seems not to be receiving good advice on clearing out the ranks and on creative actions to advance our cause.

My own reps are worthless. They are accepting of the existing order although they're GOP. They lack the capacity to lead. They just want their jobs. It's a nice job.... lots of respect, enough money....

Also, I think more of us need to begin taking jobs we scorn in order to be part of the "establishment," such as public teacher, professor, law enforcement, reporter, actor, et cetera. We've lost the culture war because we didn't engage in it.

And we need to get more active politically. This is the time; if not now, we're lost and who knows what we'll end up with. True socialism is a humanitarian nightmare that our progeny will suffer from, though they won't damn us for it because they'll be too brainwashed to know that's the cause of their suffering.

Posted by: Bedtime Stories at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (Kpbco)

232 start actually practicing the morality which were part of our founding pillars we can largely get back on track.

WooHoo!!!

a golfclap really wouldn't work for this thread.

Posted by: DaveA at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (8J/Te)

233 Everything we said would happen, did and more.
***
This is the thing that drives me the most bonkers.

The American right has been like Cassandra for the last 50 years (at least).

And yet our predictions of the future are always kookoobananas until....they happen.

Posted by: 18-1 at March 06, 2017 06:17 PM (X7E8f)

234 Not only that, but an incumbent Presidential administration pulling out every stop to actively incite assassinations of law enforcement members.

Yeah, we just spent the last 8 years AT WAR with our own leadership. We believed in law and order, and they believed ONLY in clubbing us into submission.

Fuck them. Fuck anyone who believed that after those 8 years what we really needed was Hillary Fucking Clinton. Those people are *evil*, and especially the ones who pretend to be "Republicans".

Posted by: Crusader at March 06, 2017 06:17 PM (ewSN2)

235 What's Murray's great racist crime? Stating that we do not know to what extent genetics plays a role in intelligence. That's. It.

Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:14 PM (dEQP3)

He pointed out some objective measures and numbers, too. That was what really did it.

Posted by: ThePrimordialOrderedPair at March 06, 2017 06:17 PM (zc3Db)

236 Trump: Make America Great Again.

Dems, Hillbots, Obamabots, planned parenthood, CAIR, nevertrumpers, media, academia, progressives, communists, etc.: Stop Trump from Making America Great Again (which it never was you slave owning, racist, misogynistic, rich, sexist white people).

And this is why we went against all the odds and polls (Hillary projected at 82% chance of winning the election when I went to vote) and put Trump and his team in charge of our country.

The daily wailing and tears are even better than I had hoped for! MAGA!

Posted by: Alf767 at March 06, 2017 06:17 PM (a1lZO)

237 @85- Scalia's Ghost
Cut, jib, newsletter.
Nailed it.

Posted by: teej at March 06, 2017 06:17 PM (Jd44p)

238 How far along the decline do you imagine we are? How close to the Point of No Return are we?

Past it. Which is why I'm a Trump agnostic. He's fun to watch and I appreciate what he's doing so far, but its largely irrelevant. I cannot see any way out of this through a dude in office no matter how entertaining he may be.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at March 06, 2017 06:17 PM (39g3+)

239 Ben Rhodes, former White House "National Security Advisor" is the award-winning author of "The Benghazi Fable".

David Rhodes, President of CBS News, is his brother.

Coincidence? I think not.

Posted by: Duncanthrax at March 06, 2017 06:17 PM (DMUuz)

240 Witness our Betters in the government at work:

Buffalo, NY: Police Solve 7 out of 77 Homicides in Last Three Years

Posted by: weft cut-loop at March 06, 2017 06:17 PM (4YGWz)

241 231 Q: Why did Barry spy on Trump Tower?

A: He was curious to hear what a woman's orgasm sounds like.
Posted by: wth at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (HgMAr)

I highly doubt that unless he planned to imitate it.

Posted by: buzzion at March 06, 2017 06:18 PM (z/Ubi)

242 OT
That damn giraffe still hasn't dropped her calf.

Posted by: Tuna at March 06, 2017 06:10 PM (jm1YL)
.............

Really? Do they still have GiraffeCam going?

Posted by: wth at March 06, 2017 06:18 PM (HgMAr)

243 "What's Murray's great racist crime? Stating that we do not know to what extent genetics plays a role in intelligence."

Well, CM is also in bad odor with liberals for his having pointed out that if one confines one's analytical lens to observing the U.S. white population, massive damage has occurred to lower-income, lower-status whites as a result of the post-1960s leftist social milieu.

Posted by: torquewrench at March 06, 2017 06:18 PM (noWW6)

244 I was all in on nation building and democracy whisky sexy and all of it because who wouldn't want freedom? I was wrong.

I don't think you were wrong about that, necessarily. There seemed to be enough people in Iraq that wanted freedom and democracy, but we've come to the point in the United States that a new administration will abandon, and even betray, the peoples we'd promised to help. Even ignoring our abandonment of Iraq, it seemed that President Obama's actions in every Arab spring uprising seemed calculated to strangle those members of the uprising who wanted freedom and democracy.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (2lndx)

245 If your rant is more than a paragraph I don't read it, but if it's from AtC I will, *puts readers back down*. You know what's right sometimes, and what's just fluff.

Posted by: Tinfoilbaby at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (6Ll1u)

246 The slow walking of candidates for official positions is a concern. Once it passes, I expect a very active DOJ bringing civil rights cases. The Charles Murray thing is a prime example, given that professors helped in the plot. I'd put the screws on Middlebury

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (SIY7D)

247 All somethings can usually be traced back to someone.

Posted by: Notorious BFD at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (Tyii7)

248 And yet our predictions of the future are always kookoobananas until....they happen.

Trump has been good at compressing that lag into days if not hours. He makes some statement that the left yells "this guy is crazy! What an orange clown! What a cheeto-dusted retard! He lies constantly!"

Then the next day or two: proof he's right.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (39g3+)

249 Yes, NeverTrumpers, I comprehend your position and, get this, I reject it. Using the puppets to try to explain it to me will only result in you attempting to explain to your proctologist how the felt got that far into your colon.

sucking up time

ace, you've really hit it out of the park today. Seriously.
Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:06 PM (dEQP3)

More sucking up, Ace and Alex both are bringing the lumber.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (sh70B)

250 There is no middle ground. Unless we want to call the uniparty a middle ground. Those not of that odious body are either right or left (wrong). Those of us on the right love America and want to preserve the country according to the founders principles. Those on the left want America dead and transformed into some sort of caliphate. In other words their aim is to enslave us. I will not be enslaved.

Posted by: Eromero at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (zLDYs)

251 Here in Houston they dont like to report a criminals immigration status,

But you can figure it out

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (AQNmk)

252 For what it's worth I don't think you were wrong in that those positions are not all or nothing.
Posted by: Jack Sock at March 06, 2017 06:10 PM (zoyKY)

I'm trying not to overly pendulum swing the other way because, like most things in life, the most pragmatic answer will be somewhere in the middle.

Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (dEQP3)

253 >>Buffalo, NY: Police Solve 7 out of 77 Homicides in Last Three Years

I'll bet the Detectives and Admins used 100% of their available Paid Leave Days.

Posted by: garrett at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (eGfTO)

254 Is this your way of saying the giraffe is still pregnant?

Posted by: lindarising at March 06, 2017 06:20 PM (JNDQi)

255

Wha

WTF just happened? Day drinking?

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 06:20 PM (AQNmk)

256 Prop 2, minus the rhetorical parts. I think his point about morality being dependent on wealth is not that wealth is philosophically superior to morality, but rather ... well, let me us an example. In order to cherish our doggy pets and spend large bucks on their health care, we first have to have enough wealth so that we don't have to eat dogs to survive. That, I think, is his point.

Posted by: Ike at March 06, 2017 06:21 PM (BAy6x)

257 'I was curious if you made up that expression yourself'

No I heard it from an old surveyor years ago. He was talking about trying to teach some young dumbass how to survey.

Posted by: freaked at March 06, 2017 06:21 PM (BO/km)

258 244 OT
That damn giraffe still hasn't dropped her calf.

Posted by: Tuna at March 06, 2017 06:10 PM (jm1YL)
.............

Really? Do they still have GiraffeCam going?
Posted by: wth at March 06, 2017 06:18 PM (HgMAr)

Yeah check it out. I'm starting to think its a scam though.

https://youtu.be/oUeHpsZeM_c

Posted by: buzzion at March 06, 2017 06:21 PM (z/Ubi)

259 I don't see any point in trying to talk to the left anyway. Trying to
tell them about conservatism is like showing a chicken a card trick.
***
I'd say it is more like trying to convince a rampaging Viking of the advantages of Christianity as he is about to kill you and take your wife as a shield maiden.

If Trump hammers the left for 8 years and makes them understand who the strong horse is, then we can have the conversation.

Posted by: 18-1 at March 06, 2017 06:21 PM (X7E8f)

260 Has anyone at the zoo thought to double check to see if April the giraffe is a dude?

Posted by: Duke Lowell at March 06, 2017 06:22 PM (kTF2Z)

261 Man that was a lot of reading

Posted by: Skip at March 06, 2017 06:22 PM (HDU3V)

262 The giraffe is really pregnant, I've seen the life form moving around inside her.

Posted by: lindarising at March 06, 2017 06:22 PM (JNDQi)

263 Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics.

But if the people commenting on this thread are allowed to participate, then I prefer the deep state to democracy and the constitution.

Posted by: Bill Kristol at March 06, 2017 06:23 PM (3OAG2)

264 In the words of Dr. Jordan Peterson, Find your voice and speak the damn truth.

Posted by: Mike in the Hinterlands at March 06, 2017 06:23 PM (na84Y)

265 The Houston Zoo does have that 'woo woo' bird. A peacock or something.

Bird is hilarious.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 06:23 PM (sh70B)

266 I'm trying not to overly pendulum swing the other way because, like most things in life, the most pragmatic answer will be somewhere in the middle.

Yet all the shit they write about in books says just the opposite.

Could be we are in interesting times.

Posted by: ScoggDog at March 06, 2017 06:23 PM (nw6G5)

267 Man that was a lot of reading

It builds character.

Posted by: Zombie Tolstoy at March 06, 2017 06:23 PM (Tyii7)

268
Clean up. Aisle 253. I think?

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 06:23 PM (AQNmk)

269 Then the next day or two: proof he's right.
***
Liberals

1st response: That's crazy, that never happened

2nd response: Well some local person somewhere did it by themselves.

3rd response: Everyone does it so what is the big deal?

Posted by: 18-1 at March 06, 2017 06:23 PM (X7E8f)

270 Really? Do they still have GiraffeCam going?
Posted by: wth at March 06, 2017 06:18 PM (HgMAr)

Yeah check it out. I'm starting to think its a scam though.

https://youtu.be/oUeHpsZeM_c
Posted by: buzzion

I've been saying it's a male giraffe that identifies as a pregnant female.

Posted by: rickb223 at March 06, 2017 06:24 PM (/B2KC)

271
Posted by: Patrick Henry

So much for give me liberty of give me death, eh?

Posted by: Soothsayer 45 at March 06, 2017 06:24 PM (rTCJ6)

272 Yeah check it out. I'm starting to think its a scam though.

https://youtu.be/oUeHpsZeM_c

Posted by: buzzion at March 06, 2017 06:21 PM (z/Ubi)
..............

The Russians have hacked GiraffeCam!

Posted by: wth at March 06, 2017 06:24 PM (HgMAr)

273 I remain cautiously optimistic. Trump can't get to everything at once. I do verve he was divinely placed and he has strong spiritual protection. On inauguration day, he was 70yrs, 7 months and 7 days in the Hebrew year 5777. That's weird enough, but no weapon formed against him prospers. How long will this last? Don't know, but there are prophecies from as far back as 2007. Not that I'm a big believer in random prophecies, but combined with the Pepe/Kek meme magic is very strong synchronicity that makes me think this is not just business as usual for politics and the established order of things. Even that weirdness with the witches, they were using The Tower as a focusing tool, but that card represents destruction of established order. So even their chants/rituals/intentions help his agenda. This is the most interesting time to be alive! Don't worry, be happy!

Posted by: Auntie Doodles at March 06, 2017 06:24 PM (VnNi7)

274 The kids wrote it, presented it in front of their peers and their teachers accepted it.

The schools teach it. With public money. And all the indulgences that they can extort or demand from their cronies in government.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at March 06, 2017 06:24 PM (oVJmc)

275 The reason Murray is hated?

The Bell Curve has NEVER been dis-proven. Genetics work with dogs and horses. They also work with human, sorry guys.

You can't make shit out of shineola.

Read it. It disproves every liberal idea about race.

http://tinyurl.com/zzzh5zh

Posted by: Sam at March 06, 2017 06:24 PM (Lat75)

276 Don't even bother checking in on that Giraffe Cam until she builds herself a Cocoon.

Posted by: garrett at March 06, 2017 06:24 PM (eGfTO)

277 PJ had a link yesterday to the giraffe cam, problem is their pregnancy is very long so the date is hard to pin down.

Posted by: Skip at March 06, 2017 06:24 PM (HDU3V)

278 On a liberal college campus. Like Berkeley. With an identifiable solitary target. Like Milo.

This isn't happening in GenPop.
Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (SIY7D)

Trump Chicago rally.

Was it the LA rally where the cops appeared to be in on herding people through the groups who beat the shit out of people right in front of the cops?

Elderly guy was peppersprayed at a pro Trump rally yesterday. Spare me oh that was in Berkley too. You see, I don't accept the premise that an entire city gets to be free of anyone to the right of Mao.

Yes, it is happening in Gen Pop.

Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:25 PM (dEQP3)

279 That was, like, the longest SAT question in history.

Posted by: TexasJew at March 06, 2017 06:25 PM (5ZCJn)

280 I think a big problem is that we haven't had a proper political realignment in a long time. There's a reason pundits use tectonic metaphors a lot when talking shop. The last really fundamental realignment of the parties was basically either the Civil War, or the 1960s, depending on who you ask. Either way, that's a hell of a long time for ideological drift to build up in a populace. Add in the accelerant of the information revolution, and the persistent, insidious external pressure of international leftism, and you've basically landed yourself right where we are right now.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at March 06, 2017 06:25 PM (sK2fh)

281 Excellent movie review, Ace.
But you start out by saying that we aren't discussing central issues civilly and end with saying that if only we could discuss these things civilly and rationally, we could diminish the rancor.

But we can't. So, now what?

Lemme expand on that. The Establishment GOP is leftist and only slightly less so than the hardcore Left. They take comfort in the far left's attack strategy, because it gives them cover for their less aggressive tactics. Makes them look civilized, you see. But they share a goal in the near term and that is defeat of their enemies.

That would be Trump, his staff, and those Americans who voted for him. They (we) are the enemy. You don't treat as equals those enemies you still believe can be beaten. It's been a one way street for a long time, and only recently have the forgotten Americans spoken back.
By electing Trump.
Actually, by the true grass roots Tea party, but after official oppression and sly co-option that fizzled out, to be replace by a quiet resolve.
As we've said so many times on this blog....
That how you got Trump.

Civility is out the window, along with rational discussions and the Truth (the first casualty of war, they say).

No peace for the near or medium term, or until one side is defeated. That's where we're at. It's ugly, but resign yourself to it.

Posted by: OneEyedJack at March 06, 2017 06:25 PM (z79tQ)

282 Gadzooks!

Posted by: Mike Hammer, reeling at March 06, 2017 06:25 PM (ZO497)

283 According to my Twatter feed, the Paul Ryan Let's Tweek Obamacare Plan has oozed out from under its rock......

Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at March 06, 2017 06:25 PM (EUMr7)

284 The best and most mature thing you can learn in a debate or argument is to argue the ideas of the case, and not the people. Its hard to do, but very useful. It helps keep you calm and helps make you effective. People tend not to be as antagonized if you don't yell that they are a doodoo headed wanker.

The other thing that helps is to try to defend the truth rather than yourself or your opinion. That means its easier to admit you are wrong, if that's the case, and it becomes less personal. Plus, if someone refuses to accept the truth, you can back away easier. OK, up to you, that doesn't change anything about reality.

And the final thing is that you can, by pushing, actually argue someone into a position that they did not previously hold. They might not have thought through the topic much at all. If you keep pushing and hammering, then sheer obstinance and defensiveness, ego, and hurt feelings can push them into a corner where they become a fearbiter, attacking without thought and clinging to whatever they can grasp irrationally and out of desperation.

Now they might hold to a position they never considered, because you were so antagonistic, annoying, and frustrating that they reacted poorly. And that position was not reached rationally, so it becomes extremely difficult to reason them out of it.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at March 06, 2017 06:25 PM (39g3+)

285 Q: Why did Barry spy on Trump Tower?

A: He was curious to hear what a woman's orgasm sounds like.
Posted by: wth at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (HgMAr)

I LOL'ed

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 06:25 PM (sh70B)

286 This isn't happening in GenPop.
Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (SIY7D)

It happened at a restaurant where Bobby Jindal and some others were dining. One of his assistants had her leg broken in four places. This was in New Orleans, in genpop.

I'm going to find the link to that incident. It was so disturbing and I lost a lot of respect for Jindal because his response to the assault was WEAK.

Posted by: kallisto at March 06, 2017 06:26 PM (nNdYv)

287 truth is truth....no matter what tone it's delivered in......if the only thing keeping people from leaving the dark side is your tone......they don't belong on the right side.....let them shrivel on their withered vine.......

Posted by: phoenixgirl..spring training at March 06, 2017 06:26 PM (0O7c5)

288 The American right has been like Cassandra for the last 50 years (at least).

And yet our predictions of the future are always kookoobananas until....they happen.

Posted by: 18-1 at March 06, 2017 06:17 PM (X7E8f)

They might have predicted it but they did shit all to prevent it. I remember how complacent many conservatives (like P.J. O'Rourke for instance) were in the 1980's. "Capitalism is great and everyone except a few old hippies on campus know, yeah, there's this stupid PC but as soon as the kids get out of school and get a real job they'll forget all about it. And those Mexicans? Natural conservatives! Their kids will be voting GOP."

The left is as powerful as it is because the conservatives ceded them the culture.

Posted by: Donna di deplorable ampersands&&&&and so there at March 06, 2017 06:26 PM (P8951)

289 Menage a trolls.

To be expected.

Posted by: E Depluribus Unum at March 06, 2017 06:26 PM (ZFUt7)

290 They're simply post-American in outlook. They honestly are not bothered by American industry packing up and moving abroad or the American working class sinking into desuetude, despair, drugs and dependency. They don't really care if the natural born American population is rapidly displaced by mass immigration and the progressives get a perma-lock on power.
Posted by: Scalia's Ghost at March 06, 2017 05:47 PM (3OAG2)

They seem to think none of this will affect them personally in any negative way, or their kids, or grandkids. That's not a smart position to take, at all.

The attitude reminds me of the Jerry Seinfeld joke about how you're not scared when you're riding in a taxi. You don't think about accidents. You're in the back, removed from it all. The driver does something crazy, you're grabbing the strap to hang on to, you say calmly, "Well, THAT looked dangerous."

Posted by: JuJuBee at March 06, 2017 06:26 PM (dargh)

291 175 >>>130 So....sounds like Ace has been chatting with the fearless leader of hot air.
Posted by: keena

nope! Like i said, a friend.
Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 06:05 PM (8rNrN)

*****

I thought you and Allahpundit used to be friends. Is that not the case? If so, what happened?

Posted by: Taco Shack at March 06, 2017 06:27 PM (C+qQ0)

292 Elderly guy was peppersprayed at a pro Trump rally yesterday. Spare me oh that was in Berkley too. You see, I don't accept the premise that an entire city gets to be free of anyone to the right of Mao.

Yes, it is happening in Gen Pop.
Posted by: alexthechick

Don't hold it on a college campus. Hold it where people can carry.

Posted by: rickb223 at March 06, 2017 06:27 PM (/B2KC)

293 What in the hell is gen pop?

Posted by: Zombie Tolstoy at March 06, 2017 06:28 PM (Tyii7)

294 288
Q: Why did Barry spy on Trump Tower?

A: He was curious to hear what a woman's orgasm sounds like.

Posted by: wth at March 06, 2017 06:16 PM (HgMAr)

I LOL'ed

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 06:25 PM (sh70B)

Was hoping to see a woman naked that was under 200 lbs?

Posted by: Sam at March 06, 2017 06:28 PM (Lat75)

295 That was, like, the longest SAT question in history.
Posted by: TexasJew
----------

We find your analysis...inadequate.

Posted by: SAT Scoring at March 06, 2017 06:28 PM (ZO497)

296 Great post by Ace, and a ton of really good comments too.... all in all, I give this an A.

Would have been an A+ if there had been at least one shelving or GAINZZZ reference snuck in there somewhere...

Posted by: SSBN 656 (G) at March 06, 2017 06:28 PM (br2jI)

297 Does it fizz?

Posted by: Zombie Tolstoy at March 06, 2017 06:28 PM (Tyii7)

298 gen pop?

general population

Posted by: It's me donna at March 06, 2017 06:28 PM (O2RFr)

299 It was a GOP fundraiser that was stormed in 2010. This was a restaurant where people were dining. Not a college campus or inner city no-go zone:

http://tinyurl.com/hd8xo7a

Posted by: kallisto at March 06, 2017 06:28 PM (nNdYv)

300 Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:14 PM (dEQP3)

James Watson, of Watson and Crick would be murdered on a campus.

I think he's an ass, but he's a Nobel winning ass.

Posted by: tsrblke (tablet) at March 06, 2017 06:28 PM (a8eFL)

301 Well I am the one who said that 2008 was America's suicide and that 2012 was just the body flopping in the tub. I don't believe that completely anymore.

I still think that is true in the sense that a large part of what America was may well be dead. Maybe some of it needed to die.

Living things change. The American people have changed. The world has changed.

Is America only suited to an archaic Industrial Revolution era society ? Or is it possibly resilient enough to go to seed and then flower again in modern soil?

I do wonder about those that claim that America is over and that the chaos must win. Because I am not a fan of anarchy.

Especially when it is obviously my enemies' end game if they don't get what they want.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 06:29 PM (KgpWR)

302 >>>Was hoping to see a woman naked that was under 200 lbs?
And without a cock.

Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at March 06, 2017 06:29 PM (EUMr7)

303 Where is Sefton on this subject by the way?

Posted by: Tinfoilbaby at March 06, 2017 06:29 PM (6Ll1u)

304 >>> Trying to tell them about conservatism is like showing a chicken a card trick.

"I'd
say it is more like trying to convince a rampaging Viking of the
advantages of Christianity as he is about to kill you and take your wife
as a shield maiden."

Or my favorite example of failure to convince: the white liberal feminist sociological researcher telling the black Haitian slum thug who was preparing to rape her that he shouldn't, because she was "a Malcolm X scholar".

Yeah, didn't do the trick.

Posted by: torquewrench at March 06, 2017 06:29 PM (noWW6)

305 You're going to have to begin by gutting the schools, and not the elementaries. It'll have to be the colleges, where they teach all the politically-motivated social theory, and then indoctrinate the educational system drones that winds up teaching in the elementaries.

We need a sue-and-settle against a college that outlines an equal protection argument about speech codes and curriculum that foster anti-white, anti-male, anti-Christian, and anti-anything else that the Left targets.

Its time to close the spigots that breed the bigots.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at March 06, 2017 06:29 PM (oVJmc)

306 Here is a question?

Why doesn't the right have some "enforcers" show up at these events?

Because no doubt the liberal cops would arrest them?

Posted by: Sam at March 06, 2017 06:29 PM (Lat75)

307 Trump's victory was the answer to the prayers of millions of Americans. Maybe Bismarck's quote about America still holds.

Posted by: Jmel at March 06, 2017 06:29 PM (aUjAM)

308 too many notes.

Posted by: md at March 06, 2017 06:29 PM (uKJIC)

309 I'm definitely Prop 2. Trump's antics don't seem that extreme to me. He talks/walks/acts like a New Yorker. I'm grateful for what he's done and hopeful for the future. At some point it's possible people who don't agree with him nevertheless see his is the bus they want to be on.

Riots like Berkeley and Middlebury scare me. They remind me of the seventies. Then the riots passed and we forgot about them while the rioters moved in and took over the education system. That's the part that scares me. I want a law treating rioters like sex offenders: if you're convicted of rioting on a campus, you can't have a job in education, at any level. Ever. Let's not make the same mistake for the next generation.

Posted by: Wenda (sic) at March 06, 2017 06:30 PM (Kr0FZ)

310 Don't hold it on a college campus. Hold it where people can carry.
Posted by: rickb223 at March 06, 2017 06:27 PM (/B2KC)

At one of Milo's lectures, pre-Berkley, some protester attacked who he thought was a Milo supporter and that guy was also a protester who shot the guy who was attacking him.

So there's already been a shooting.

Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:30 PM (dEQP3)

311 >>Yes, it is happening in Gen Pop.

10 people were arrested at that rally on assault with a deadly weapon, battery and resisting arrest. Even in Berkeley, things are starting to change.

Posted by: JackStraw at March 06, 2017 06:30 PM (/tuJf)

312 253 Adeiu all then. Fuck your blog rules about attacking people Ace as it's a farce and Donna and Mr. Peebles your collective wit and wisdom won't be missed.
Posted by: Patrick Henry at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (a7IXj)

--------------

Buthurt status:

[. ] Not noted

[X] Noted

Posted by: Duke Lowell at March 06, 2017 06:30 PM (kTF2Z)

313 general population

He vas a good soldier but rubbed Uncle Joe the wrong vay. Bah.

Posted by: Zombie Tolstoy at March 06, 2017 06:30 PM (Tyii7)

314 I think we're at the point where if Ginsburg keeled over tomorrow, it would mean war.

Posted by: Ardbeg at March 06, 2017 06:30 PM (hpD4R)

315 I believe the time is rapidly approaching to decide if we are going to be free or continue our metamorphosis into some kind of quasi-totalitarian society.

The only way we're gonna interrupt and possibly end that change is to restore the government to what it was intended to be. Whether or not that takes fire and close combat remains to be seen but based on what has transpire in places like Berkeley, I don't think it will be peaceful or quick.

Posted by: CrotchetyOldJarhead at March 06, 2017 06:30 PM (zGttg)

316 "It was a GOP fundraiser that was stormed in 2010."

So PreCogs who knew to hate Trump.

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 06:31 PM (SIY7D)

317 http://fxn.ws/2myjoaJ
====
House Republicans release long-awaited ObamaCare replacement bill | Fox News

Posted by: EVLINC! at March 06, 2017 06:31 PM (y3aQB)

318 I have no idea how Leftists seminaries will ever be changed.

Posted by: Skip at March 06, 2017 06:32 PM (HDU3V)

319 317
I think we're at the point where if Ginsburg keeled over tomorrow, it would mean war.

Posted by: Ardbeg at March 06, 2017 06:30 PM (hpD4R)

Bring it on. NOW

Posted by: Sam at March 06, 2017 06:32 PM (Lat75)

320 Mark Levin is going banana sandwhiches over the media dissembling over Spygate.

Posted by: Kreplach at March 06, 2017 06:32 PM (+lv+r)

321 Wow, Ace, you are on a roll today. Next will come a gains threat in which you report that you beat up Daredevil and f***ed his girlfriend.
This election cycle I kinda decided all was lost. I guess I am glad Trump won, in the sense that some aspects of the decline would be held off, but long term I don't think there is any hope for small-government conservatism.
Then again, the Democrats are in a bad way too, which is why they are freaking out. Maybe this is the time to try and build something new?

Posted by: DM at March 06, 2017 06:32 PM (garNZ)

322 Liberals are only driven by one thing: proving their moral superiority no matter what form that takes. Today it's pretending that people who self identify as someone of the opposite sex aren't abnormal. Tomorrow it could be anything. As soon as one of them gets the idea that enacting violence on the "wrong" kind of people is morally superior to leaving them alone, then we will have crossed the line into civil war.

Posted by: Cygnus at March 06, 2017 06:32 PM (fdavN)

323 >>>Who's the Real Asshole Now.

Hope Solo?

Posted by: wooga at March 06, 2017 06:32 PM (4kcnU)

324 I've thought recently that it was folks living in the 4 and 5 who took for granted the 1-3 as if those were merely The Way Things Were and not Things That Needed To Be Nurtured.

Posted by: Hugh Jorgen at March 06, 2017 06:33 PM (tapYd)

325 Let's Roll!

Posted by: Osoloco at March 06, 2017 06:33 PM (VkAk+)

326 At one of Milo's lectures, pre-Berkley, some protester attacked who he thought was a Milo supporter and that guy was also a protester who shot the guy who was attacking him.

So there's already been a shooting.
Posted by: alexthechick

Yeah. But the do-bad was illegally carrying. I would have never attended because I'm not risking my license by carrying where it's illegal to carry.

Posted by: rickb223 at March 06, 2017 06:33 PM (/B2KC)

327 Buthurt status:

[. ] Not noted

[X] NotedPosted by: Duke Lowell at March 06, 2017 06:30 PM (kTF2Z)
I searched for "attacks." Couldn't find any.

Posted by: dagny at March 06, 2017 06:33 PM (Mc+44)

328 According to my Twatter feed, the Paul Ryan Let's Tweek Obamacare Plan has oozed out from under its rock......

Posted by: Herr Morgenholz at March 06, 2017 06:25 PM (EUMr7)

I just downloaded it. Holy shit! It's insane. No repeal of BarkyCare. It just amends the un-Constitutional BarkyCare law and is nearly impossible to read. It's nothing but "Change section 321.776(a) by replacing the 'and' with 'and/or'" kind of stuff. Insane. Obviously they did it this way to make it as difficult and annoying as possible to see what they are really doing.

I'd like to take some Kodiaks to the assholes who wrote this piece of shit up ...

Posted by: ThePrimordialOrderedPair at March 06, 2017 06:33 PM (zc3Db)

329 Posted by: Patrick Henry at March 06, 2017 06:19 PM (a7IXj)

Bye-bye, Braveheart. Ready to throw in the towel on the strength of a local news report.

Posted by: Donna di deplorable ampersands&&&&and so there at March 06, 2017 06:33 PM (P8951)

330
Rule #1 at AoS: Never go full butthurt in the comments.

Posted by: Soothsayer 45 at March 06, 2017 06:33 PM (rTCJ6)

331 I am not seeing how this Leftist tantrum can end without getting much worse.

Posted by: Skip at March 06, 2017 06:33 PM (HDU3V)

332 253 Adeiu all then

posted by Patrcik Henry
===

You forgot your bicycle seat.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 06:34 PM (KgpWR)

333
Its time to close the spigots that breed the bigots.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at March 06, 2017 06:29 PM (oVJmc)

Nice. And it applies to hollywood as well as the ivory tower. Take away their F U money, and they tend not to be so shrill.

Maybe the studio contract system was a good thing after all?

Posted by: moki at March 06, 2017 06:34 PM (wuzmq)

334 "On a liberal college campus. Like Berkeley. With an identifiable solitary target. Like Milo. "

Milo has been silent since the takedown. Hope he is planning a fab reappearance.

Posted by: Tuna at March 06, 2017 06:34 PM (jm1YL)

335 Can't you be right *and* be the asshole? I've lived my whole life aspiring to that, and I can't be bothered to change now.

Posted by: broseidon on even newer magic glowy rectangle at March 06, 2017 06:34 PM (mrnR6)

336
brb, scrollin'

Posted by: Soothsayer 45 at March 06, 2017 06:34 PM (rTCJ6)

337 Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:30 PM (dEQP3)

Didn't this end up being 2 Milo fans? Not that it matters, the engine is primed either way.

Posted by: tsrblke (tablet) at March 06, 2017 06:34 PM (a8eFL)

338 The Left has professional agitators, and fellow travellers. But it's no mass movement, and they are starting to get beat down by the authorities. IIRC a few hundred got charged with felonies over the Inauguration demonstration.

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 06:34 PM (SIY7D)

339 Obviously they did it this way to make it as difficult and annoying as possible to see what they are really doing.

Much like the original.

Posted by: Notorious BFD at March 06, 2017 06:35 PM (Tyii7)

340 >>Rule #1 at AoS: Never go full butthurt in the comments.

I thought 'Never leave a paper trail' was Rule # 1?

Posted by: Cyril Figgus at March 06, 2017 06:35 PM (eGfTO)

341 I think we're at the point where if Ginsburg keeled over tomorrow, it would mean war.

Posted by: Ardbeg at March 06, 2017 06:30 PM (hpD4R)

no, more of the same community organizing type crap

Posted by: runner at March 06, 2017 06:35 PM (c6/9Q)

342
I thought 'Never leave a paper trail' was Rule # 1?
Posted by: Cyril Figgus at March 06, 2017 06:35 PM (eGfTO)

I thought it was "Pics or it didn't happen"

Posted by: moki at March 06, 2017 06:35 PM (wuzmq)

343 I can't live in a country dominated by you wacky Kodiak extremists. Everyone knows that the preferred solution is rape by quokka. It's like I don't even know you people anymore!

Posted by: broseidon on even newer magic glowy rectangle at March 06, 2017 06:36 PM (mrnR6)

344 Everyone has read the classic ace post about doing his impression of Dennis Miller being raped onstage by a Kodiak bear, right?

Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:36 PM (dEQP3)

345 Mark Levin is going banana sandwhices over the media dissembling over spygate.

Posted by: Kreplach at March 06, 2017 06:36 PM (+lv+r)

346 Re the replacement health insurance bill:

All taxes, mandates, subsidies and penalties gone.

Can read more here (with additional links):

http://tinyurl.com/hjavfkv

Posted by: Tami at March 06, 2017 06:36 PM (Enq6K)

347 Tone Alone is a pretty good acoustic album; that version of Funky Cold Medina is especially top-notch.

Posted by: a music cricket at March 06, 2017 06:36 PM (wpC7C)

348 338 Can't you be right *and* be the asshole?

Posted by: broseidon on even newer magic glowy rectangle at March 06, 2017 06:34 PM (mrnR6)

I can.

Posted by: Walter Sobczak at March 06, 2017 06:36 PM (sK2fh)

349 343 >>Rule #1 at AoS: Never go full butthurt in the comments.

I thought 'Never leave a paper trail' was Rule # 1?
Posted by: Cyril Figgus

Rule #1 is "never stick your dick in crazy".

Posted by: rickb223 at March 06, 2017 06:37 PM (/B2KC)

350 323 Mark Levin is going banana sandwhiches over the media dissembling over Spygate.

Posted by: Kreplach at March 06, 2017 06:32 PM (+lv+r)

THis is pretty good too. POinting out how the media has been lying all along about "Russia investigation" OR Clapper is lying again now.

Posted by: dagny at March 06, 2017 06:37 PM (Mc+44)

351 Its time to close the spigots that breed the bigots.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles
===

End 'Federal' Student loan financing aka "fucking around for a few years - what you mean pay it back?" money.

Want an education? Write a business plan and make your case. Show your potential profitability.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 06:37 PM (KgpWR)

352 I'm in favor of proposition two, especially if that dreamy Leo DiCaprio guy is around.

Posted by: A Kodiak at March 06, 2017 06:37 PM (39g3+)

353 Ace asked: How far along the decline do you imagine we are? How close to the Point of No Return are we?

As far as any nation that fell ever was, without going all the way. Let's say the Roman Empire just before the Gothic War. Britain just before it chose to be pro-Palestinian and anti-Jew in the 30's. Spain just before it expelled the Jews in 1492.

and Ace wrote, in part of Proposition 2: We had nothing to do with any of this ourselves, it's all a conspiracy of the corporations and monied interests to screw us over.

IMO, the conspiracy does exist, I believe, but it's at the highest level, as in Eph. 6:12--at the level of ..."the powers of this world's darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

and what we have to do with this ourselves is our spiritual lives, and how well we're learning and applying what we know of God in our daily lives. the "salt of the earth" principle.

Posted by: booknlass at March 06, 2017 06:37 PM (8mO0Q)

354 #1

Don't look up terms seen here

Posted by: A deplorable dude in MI at March 06, 2017 06:37 PM (5Uq5D)

355 >>>
I thought you and Allahpundit used to be friends. Is that not the case? If so, what happened?

we exchanged emails for a while and met a couple of times. it's been years upon years.

Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 06:38 PM (8rNrN)

356 Can't you be right *and* be the asshole?

Posted by: broseidon

Was my "In your face" dance too over the top?

Posted by: rickb223 at March 06, 2017 06:38 PM (/B2KC)

357 That movie review was longer than the script....

I couldn't get past the first act because the problem is simple - a bunch of mo-fos think I am, to be charitable, greedy and selfish to not be thrilled that most of my fricken federal tax, money taken from my kids mouths, forget about their college fund, is used to give others shit I can barely if at all get for my own family. not much to discuss...

Posted by: Burnt Toast at March 06, 2017 06:38 PM (P/kVC)

358 Didn't this end up being 2 Milo fans? Not that it matters, the engine is primed either way.
Posted by: tsrblke (tablet) at March 06, 2017 06:34 PM (a8eFL)

No, I think it was an anti-Milo guy vs. a guy he thought was pro-Milo but wasn't.

Posted by: Donna di deplorable ampersands&&&&and so there at March 06, 2017 06:38 PM (P8951)

359 Horde, Horde, Horde, Rule #1 for Morons is, has been, and always will be thus:

If you don't know what that means, don't ask.

If you don't know what that means, do not try to figure it out from context.

And, most importantly, by all that's unholy, if you don't know what that means, do not go look it up.

Posted by: alexthechick - so not For The Children at March 06, 2017 06:39 PM (dEQP3)

360 "Obviously they did it this way to make it as difficult and annoying as possible to see what they are really doing."
"Much like the original."

I tried to read the original but it was just a string of references to other statutes, punctuated by a thousand authorizations to enable the HHS head to write whatever rules she liked.

Posted by: Ignoramus at March 06, 2017 06:39 PM (SIY7D)

361 The Left has professional agitators, and fellow travellers. But it's no mass movement, and they are starting to get beat down by the authorities.

I agree, they number in the hundreds, not thousands. There is a limited number of people willing to do crazy and awful things at risk of incarceration for little pay. Even Muslims have a hard time finding suicide bombers, and they have religion and a millennia-old culture of death on their side.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at March 06, 2017 06:39 PM (39g3+)

362 "Holy shit! It's insane. No repeal of BarkyCare. It just amends the
un-Constitutional BarkyCare law and is nearly impossible to read. It's
nothing but 'Change section 321.776(a) by replacing the 'and' with
'and/or'' kind of stuff."

Gawd bless the Capitol Hill establishment Republicans.

I can hear the booming rallying cries already.

"We shall change section 321.776(a) on the beaches. We shall change section 321.776(a) on the landing grounds. We shall change section 321.776(a) in the fields and in the streets. We shall change section 321.776(a) in the hills. We shall never surrender!"

Stuff to heat your blood and stiffen your spine, to be sure.

Posted by: torquewrench at March 06, 2017 06:39 PM (noWW6)

363 358 >>>
I thought you and Allahpundit used to be friends. Is that not the case? If so, what happened?

we exchanged emails for a while and met a couple of times. it's been years upon years.
Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 06:38 PM (8rNrN)

It was an argument over the cinematic merits of Brokeback Mountain wasn't it?

BTW, your review of that is your best review ever. Still has not been topped.

Posted by: buzzion at March 06, 2017 06:39 PM (z/Ubi)

364 This is how higher education works now, don't read anything that could pollute you mind, just believe what the professor tells you and then protest violently when told to.
-----------

And we wonder why libs want college to be "free for everyone"...

Posted by: Mega at March 06, 2017 06:40 PM (EdXI9)

365 >>>Obviously they did it this way to make it as difficult and annoying as possible to see what they are really doing.

Much like the original.

Posted by: Notorious BFD at March 06, 2017 06:35 PM (Tyii7)

Yep.

Personally, while I am fuming about the whole idea of any "replacement" the very least I will stand is a complete and simple repeal of the BarkyCare law, in full. Period. And then if they want to shove some un-Constitutional BarkyCareLite shit down our throats then they have to write their own un-American POS bill out in full.

This crap with just amending BarkyCare - I don't care what the hell they are doing in the amendings - will not stand. Paul Ryan deserves to be buried under 6 tons of BarkyCare bills and all of his precious amendments. Fucker.

Posted by: ThePrimordialOrderedPair at March 06, 2017 06:40 PM (zc3Db)

366 House Republicans release long-awaited ObamaCare replacement bill | Fox News
...............

Long awaited? By who? I've been waiting for the repeal forever.
Replacement, not interested.

Posted by: wth at March 06, 2017 06:40 PM (HgMAr)

367 I thought rule #1 was you don't talk about Ace of Spades club.

Posted by: Duke Lowell at March 06, 2017 06:40 PM (kTF2Z)

368 I thought you and Allahpundit used to be friends. Is that not the case? If so, what happened?

we exchanged emails for a while and met a couple of times. it's been years upon years.

Have you ever corresponded with Pamela Geller?

Posted by: Crusader at March 06, 2017 06:40 PM (ewSN2)

369 Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 06:37 PM (KgpWR)

Tighten the money spigots just a bit and it all breaks. Colleges banked on echo boomers funding coffers but that well is dry. They can't keep going without a hefty fed injection now.

Hell, SLU is laying off 120 tomorrow and eliminating 130 unfilled positions.

Posted by: tsrblke (tablet) at March 06, 2017 06:40 PM (a8eFL)

370 Who's the Real Asshole Now.

Hope Solo?
Posted by: wooga at March 06, 2017 06:32 PM (4kcnU)

Are we talking about Hope Solo doing anal? Cuz I'm down for that discussion thread.

With a respectful exchange of opinions.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at March 06, 2017 06:41 PM (sh70B)

371 i neglected rule 1 section c) once, and i will never forgive myself

Posted by: runner at March 06, 2017 06:41 PM (c6/9Q)

372 Shoot. I missed the flounce.

With a shout-out, no less.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at March 06, 2017 06:41 PM (oVJmc)

373 No, I think it was an anti-Milo guy vs. a guy he thought was pro-Milo but wasn't.
Posted by: Donna di deplorable ampersands&&&&and so there at March 06, 2017 06:38 PM (P8951)

And hasn't the shooter basically gotten away with it by "I thought he was a white supremacist," garbage?

Posted by: buzzion at March 06, 2017 06:41 PM (z/Ubi)

374 Colleges banked on echo boomers funding coffers but that well is dry. They can't keep going without a hefty fed injection now.

We can always keep raising tuition and backing people who will pass "free college"!

Posted by: College administrators at March 06, 2017 06:42 PM (39g3+)

375 Ace,

This is the kind of article you write that makes me wish you would compile the cream of your crop and publish it in one easy-to-access volume. Very well done.

Posted by: Bobby K. at March 06, 2017 06:42 PM (glrqz)

376 I have recently had the experience of watching a family be absolutely decimated. Just gutted by unimaginable loss and pain. Their dreams were crushed and the hearts of their family were shattered forever in an instant.

In another country, they might be facing abject poverty, slavery or worse.

I can't quit fighting for the best thing that ever happened on the earth to protect those weaker ones. I just can't.

Posted by: Mortimer - FINISH HER ! at March 06, 2017 06:42 PM (KgpWR)

377
This isn't happening in GenPop.
Posted by: Ignoramus

A couple years ago some so-called anti-racists traveled from Bloomington, Indiana to a Chicago suburb to physically attack a group of so-called white supremicists who were having a meeting in a restaurant.

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at March 06, 2017 06:42 PM (IqV8l)

378 With a shout-out, no less.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at March 06, 2017 06:41 PM (oVJmc)
he'll be back.....they never actually stay away.....they can't......

Posted by: phoenixgirl..spring training at March 06, 2017 06:42 PM (0O7c5)

379

Omg. Do not try to read the Flight 93 Election piece on the phone

So long, eyes crossed

Posted by: ThunderB at March 06, 2017 06:43 PM (AQNmk)

380 You people are pushing a dangerous agenda, a very dangerous agenda!

You're making me cry!

*starts weeping*

*opens one eye to see if it's working*

Posted by: Mika Brezhnevski at March 06, 2017 06:43 PM (3OAG2)

381 Paul Ryan deserves to be buried under 6 tons of BarkyCare bills

What a horrible way to go.

Posted by: That dude buried by pr0n at March 06, 2017 06:43 PM (Tyii7)

382 AtC, I assume the controversial part of ace's statement would be that one could grossly mischaracterize it and claim that ace is saying you can't be moral if you're impoverished. Which of course isn't the argument at all, but if you have a tin ear you could construe it that way.

Posted by: broseidon on even newer magic glowy rectangle at March 06, 2017 06:43 PM (mrnR6)

383 Ace,

This is the kind of article you write that makes me wish you would compile the cream of your crop and publish it in one easy-to-access volume. Very well done.

Yes, an AoS coffee table book, with excerpts from the best of the best splattered across the cover.

Posted by: Crusader at March 06, 2017 06:44 PM (ewSN2)

384
Republicans are stupid enough to release the final obamacare replacement first.

They're too stupid to know enough to first release a version that goes way overboard, and *then* water it down a little in a way to pretend they're compromising.

Posted by: Soothsayer 45 at March 06, 2017 06:44 PM (rTCJ6)

385 All nood, all the time.

Posted by: Warai-otoko at March 06, 2017 06:44 PM (sK2fh)

386 We can always keep raising tuition and backing people who will pass "free college"!

Posted by: College administrators at March 06, 2017 06:42 PM (39g3+)

Hence why I said tighten just a bit. Less outrage same collapse.

Posted by: tsrblke (tablet) at March 06, 2017 06:44 PM (a8eFL)

387 You people are pushing a dangerous agenda, a very dangerous agenda!

You're making me cry!

*starts weeping*

*opens one eye to see if it's working*

You bastards made the blonde MILF cry!

Posted by: eleven at March 06, 2017 06:44 PM (qUNWi)

388 "And hasn't the shooter basically gotten away with it by 'I thought he was a white supremacist,' garbage?"

Last I looked, yep.

Interesting to know that as a practical matter of law in some jurisdictions, a black person can now employ potentially lethal force against someone on the mere *supposition* that the person they are arguing with is "a white supremacist".

Widens the parameters of self-defense not by a little.

Posted by: torquewrench at March 06, 2017 06:45 PM (noWW6)

389 Nood about RyanCare being released.

Posted by: Vanceone at March 06, 2017 06:45 PM (A9Gmy)

390
And we wonder why libs want college to be "free for everyone"...
Posted by: Mega

"Public" school lasting from pre pre pre K to post post post Grad.

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at March 06, 2017 06:46 PM (IqV8l)

391 And Charles Murray and the lady should be suing Berkeley for $50M each.

That mob is the embodiment of their teaching, and the lack of protection for people on their campus is capricious and politically motivated. Berkeley should not get to foster violence against those it does not like, and then allow mob rule.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at March 06, 2017 06:46 PM (oVJmc)

392 Ace, dont be fooled. I've had that same conversation with friends and aquaintences over the years and not once has my softer tone ever convinced anyone of anything. What I felt they were really asking me to do was to stop being so confident and assertive because it made them feel foolish for having to defend something that was quite likely to be nonsense. They wanted a soft, theoretical discussion that didn't assign right or wrong or make them uncomfortable for saying silly things.

Posted by: Mr Black at March 06, 2017 06:46 PM (L096+)

393 I used to be very worried that this will all end in bloodshed.

I'm starting to look forward to it.

Posted by: Tom Servo at March 06, 2017 06:46 PM (KeRkT)

394 Five days to Pet Thread!

Posted by: Weasel at March 06, 2017 06:47 PM (Sfs6o)

395 I was for either Trump or Carson from the beginning, but I am glad Trump won and glad that both Carson and Perry are in cabinet positions. But I am really glad about Tillerson and the treasury secretary and all the generals Trump put in places. The left is the left and I can't worry about them. There are too many good people now in place who will try to stem the tide, and I am grateful for that.

Posted by: Chilling the most at March 06, 2017 06:47 PM (Cl52v)

396
So how was the volcano scene?

Posted by: IllTemperedCur at March 06, 2017 06:47 PM (cuZZW)

397 The culture decline? Started sometime in the 60's. Some young adults here in NorCal strike me as dangerously Stalinist - the mean, clipfaced are especially easy to spot. I could see them denouncing people as a career path. Some of the pacifist baby boomer oldsters are overtly Bolshevik, too. They'd give up their neighbors for sure - but that sort have caught my attention for three decades.

Point of no return? Not there yet, though the progs control 85% of California.

Feel insulated/safe from Bloc Fascists? Living in the north valley, Calif. is pretty safe. Homeless people pose more of a day to day threat. I guess food safety could be a problem.

Ace's Tone. You'll not have your perfect "Blue Fairy" conversion moment. People change alliances for myriad and sundry reasons. They come around when they come around.

Posted by: 13times at March 06, 2017 06:47 PM (WHVu+)

398 Ace - this was exactly how I felt.

Cruz was Harvey Dent.

Trump was Batman.

And once I realized how bad the situation was, I voted for Batman.

Posted by: WhiteKnight at March 06, 2017 06:47 PM (vWbx2)

399
So how was the volcano scene?

Quiet....too quiet.

Posted by: Crusader at March 06, 2017 06:48 PM (ewSN2)

400 Stockholm Syndrome. Murray and the lady identify more with their attackers than their defenders.

Posted by: FUBAR at March 06, 2017 06:48 PM (bcDxW)

401 Tucker Carlson calls PDT's election a peaceful revolution. He says he spent a year talking with people across the country and D.C.'s concerns are very different from most Americans' concerns. His neighbors have plenty of housekeepers

He also hopes there's no, "over correction." He's got a pretty clear vision of this, I think.

https://tinyurl.com/hrg4sc7

Posted by: OldDominionMom at March 06, 2017 06:48 PM (GzDYP)

402 A couple years ago some so-called anti-racists traveled from Bloomington, Indiana to a Chicago suburb to physically attack a group of so-called white supremicists who were having a meeting in a restaurant.
====

I know what you're thinking. It doesn't seem very eco-friendly to drive all that way just to pick a fight.

But in our defense, there didn't used to be a Chick fil'a in Bloomington. And nobody knew about Memories Pizza back then. So if you wanted to find somebody to hate (without taking your life into your hands in farm country) you've got to drive a couple of hours.

Posted by: Bloomington United Against Racism at March 06, 2017 06:48 PM (4bKiB)

403 Q: I thought you and Allahpundit used to be friends. Is that not the case? If so, what happened?

A: we exchanged emails for a while and met a couple of times. it's been years upon years.

The first question was answered, but I don't see any reference to the follow-up....

Posted by: SSBN 656 (G) at March 06, 2017 06:49 PM (br2jI)

404 "Interesting to know that as a practical matter of law in some
jurisdictions, a black person can now employ potentially lethal force
against someone on the mere *supposition* that the person they are
arguing with is "a white supremacist"."

And this brings us around full circle to where we were about 100 years ago - in public or private, if you are white, you do not dare take the risk of speaking to any black person, except in the most perfunctory manner.

looks like the races are going to go back to full segregation, de facto instead of de jure.

Posted by: Tom Servo at March 06, 2017 06:50 PM (KeRkT)

405 Very interesting, ace. And lots of good moronic feedback here.

Violence. Does it fade? I think so. Why? Umm. Mostly cuz it's thinly-based, on emotions that will fade, and dirty $$ that will get bored.

But the coarseness, the ugliness, those are here and they've been here for a while - recall "I'm the only one standing between you bankers and the people with pitchforks"? Stated by a sitting president. WTFF? I clearly recall that moment as one that seemed to define the country I had known was gone, or at least badly degraded.

"That there is political violence is not itself alarming. That government actors, rich institutions, and the putative Fourth Branch of Government support political violence is gravely alarming."

Read from my own mind. So - I can see the actual violence fading. I can't see those undefinable elements that together make up a civic propriety we all grew up with return - at least among those who seem to have, inexplicably, abandoned them.

Posted by: rhomboid at March 06, 2017 06:51 PM (QDnY+)

406 Maslow didn't live in the era of social media, Beyonce, 24-hour news, and identity politics. Nor did he live when poverty means only having one cell phone and if you're really poor, it's not a smart phone. Maslow's hierarchy no longer fits American society.
The bottom rung today is Love/Belonging. From that, people find their self esteem and self actualization. One could also argue it is where they find their Safety. And now that I think about it, their Physiological well-being is bestowed upon them by how well the group acknowledges them and any contributions they make to the group.
Pick any group, from those who read this blog (the more highly educated) to those who live and die by what Rosie posts on Twitter, Love/Belonging is their primary motivation.

Posted by: Hayao at March 06, 2017 06:52 PM (w/bVh)

407 >>>The first question was answered, but I don't see any reference to the follow-up...

nothing in particular. most meetings don't go anywhere in particular, do they ?

Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 06:53 PM (8rNrN)

408 I just don't grasp the concept that a political disagreement needs to lead to punching each other in the face. Seems as retarded as soccer hooliganism.

Posted by: Banana Splits Guy at March 06, 2017 06:54 PM (mNS8n)

409 As we learned with George Zimmerman, Hispanics can be (and often are) white people too.... so really when the Left talk about "banning white people", they are referring, of course... to skin color.

The more things change........

Posted by: Mega at March 06, 2017 06:54 PM (EdXI9)

410 Ace, it's pretty simple. Prosperity has ruined us.

Posted by: Glenn at March 06, 2017 06:54 PM (ckxcD)

411 Ace-- the left leveraged power over the right, not by sweet reasoning and kind words, but through utter sneering disdain. In the last 30 years, the right developed an almost fatal Stockholm syndrome, so frantic was it to have the love and approval of the left. The left used this to win every single cultural and political war.

One of the commandments of the religion of the left is to despise apostates and to cast them into outer darkness.

But the apostates finally saw a glimmer of light and surged toward it.

This is a full-out Cold War, and we are done bowing down to the left.

Posted by: Ladylibertarian at March 06, 2017 06:55 PM (TdMsT)

412 Omg. Do not try to read the Flight 93 Election piece on the phone

I've long wondered why people have a problem with longer think pieces and this makes sense of it. Because you're trying to read them on the wrong device. Its like trying to watch TV through a magnifying glass. The piece isn't too long, you're just using the wrong tool.

Tucker Carlson calls PDT's election a peaceful revolution.

He's not wrong. So was the Obama election. This is the electorate giving the government a chance to fix things and change the way things are done. But once the ballot box is rejected....

Posted by: College administrators at March 06, 2017 06:59 PM (39g3+)

413 Louise Mensch on Fox.

Yeesh.

Posted by: Jane D'oh at March 06, 2017 07:00 PM (PY9jH)

414 Somewhere between 1. feed the poor immigrant/refugee and 2. rape your women is where our modern day elites have dropped the ball.

We may never progress beyond this point because humans, particularly those of a political bent, are fucking stupid.

Posted by: Fritz at March 06, 2017 07:01 PM (YAPkP)

415 Interesting hierarchy- I would say that most of Trump support came from people with economic insecurity. The forgotten, the expendable. Only hardcore minority politics kept more of this vote for Hillary, and if the economy picks up even that will no longer suffice.

Security can become authoritarian really fast when the people starve. Some well off people care, ans they're part of the Trump coalition, but don't be fooled. Economic insecurity is the primary problem.

Posted by: trev006 at March 06, 2017 07:01 PM (/pCm+)

416 @45 "First off, my life goals have always been to avoid trouble, live a quiet
life and if you fuck with me, I have guns, swords and a lot of anger
I've never allowed myself to act on."
Mark Andrew Edwards

This. So much this...

Posted by: browndog at March 06, 2017 07:03 PM (bGMOs)

417 408 I just don't grasp the concept that a political disagreement needs to lead to punching each other in the face. Seems as retarded as soccer hooliganism.
Posted by: Banana Splits Guy at March 06, 2017 06:54 PM (mNS8n)
***
Oh, yeah?

**Drags BSG out of his Banana Buggy, punches him in the face, drives off with Winona.**

Posted by: Your Decidedly Devious Uncle Palpatine. Glory to Kekistan! No Longer Accepting Harem Applicants at March 06, 2017 07:03 PM (/33sy)

418 The Left pretty much has a bludgeon over conservatives, if that is not taken away it will continue. This President Trump stealing the election and its offshoots is just the next club

Posted by: Skip at March 06, 2017 07:03 PM (HDU3V)

419 408 I just don't grasp the concept that a political disagreement needs to lead to punching each other in the face. Seems as retarded as soccer hooliganism.

When politics determines who eats and who don't ... punching is the least of your worries.

Posted by: ScoggDog at March 06, 2017 07:03 PM (fiGNd)

420 358 >>>
I thought you and Allahpundit used to be friends. Is that not the case? If so, what happened?

we exchanged emails for a while and met a couple of times. it's been years upon years.
Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 06:38 PM (8rNrN)

*******************

Got it, sounds like you just grew apart.

OK.

Thanks.

Posted by: Taco Shack at March 06, 2017 07:03 PM (C+qQ0)

421 There isn't rational disagreement at this point and at the risk of sounding like an AGW whackjob the issue is settled. We are at the end of the road and our backs are against the wall. Witness the attempts to undo a democratic election and the naked police state tactics being employed. Even the ridiculous Pussyhat(e) Parade had the undertones of a Pol Pot potluck genocide-in-waiting.

If this coup succeeds physical violence will break out immediately on both sides. Even if Trump maintains office somehow, these bastards are going to try every day and by any means to control us. Every election get a notch worse and more violent.

As I commented earlier, the National Divorce needs to come about earlier than later and the Left has to be seduced into thinking it is its best option. Otherwise we are looking at an even more violent Spanish Civil War.

Those with the Fuck You money will die last if we lose and/or the break-up doesn't come fast enough but those with the Fuck You money will die.

Posted by: Trump poisoned my cat at March 06, 2017 07:05 PM (4nN0T)

422 Member of camp 2. Voted for Trump for protection. Things are hard out there. They are only going to get worse. I want to be protected and have my family/neighbors/and countrymen to be protected as well.

Great column by the way Ace. You should bookmark the good ones like this one, and sell them as a book. Yuge vacuum to be filled since Trump. Nothing world with ethical and moral capitalism. Just Sayin brother....

Posted by: Widespread Pepe at March 06, 2017 07:05 PM (2qHjF)

423 There's definately a regional and unban/rural componant here. When I was living in LA 5 years ago I was already in the desperately seeking protection and change category. I prepped and armed myself but it still seemed like the odds were slim i could live the life i wanted or that prepping for militant totalitarianism would make a difference. Resisting would only make me more of a target, and later an outright criminal.

Since moving to NoDak I'm in still roughly in Prop 2 but it's not so dire. I'm surrounded by few people and very few people who are a part of the progressive state. I have more elbow room.

One thing though, FU Money has to be a lot of money. I was fairly well off in LA and I knew that could be taken away fast. FU Money has to be enough to throw a dart at the globe and move to that spot, build a compound, import goods and women, and still have WiFi

Posted by: runninrebel at March 06, 2017 07:13 PM (mQoUp)

424 >>>
Got it, sounds like you just grew apart.

OK.

Thanks.

...

ehh, more like drifted apart. I'm just saying, when you only know someone lightly, it's not as if there needs be some dramatic break to explain a lack of communication. You just stop emailing, don't you?

Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 07:13 PM (8rNrN)

425 thanks, pepe and anyone else who was kind of enough to read the thing and say nice things.

(The fourth need is Esteem. So I got some of number 4 today. yay!)

Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 07:14 PM (8rNrN)

426 "193 The division in the conservative movement can never fully heal until the Ace of Spades podcast returns."

A million times this

Posted by: Knemon at March 06, 2017 07:15 PM (NGuv+)

427 Some thoughts...

- I don't believe half the country is on the crazy train, but b/c the ones who are have the microphone, it seems that way. Also, the ones most rabid. And they have social media which they did not before to spread their crazy. And for young people, they want to be part of peer groups so they'll march & tweet rather than be ostracized. (Have had some fascinating convos with young people about all this.)

-The MSM & social media feed on one another. I have a great political cartoon somewhere that illustrates it so well as the "New News Cycle". So terminology like "white privilege" gets picked up and amplified in a way it would not have in the past.

- Media paints protests of mass resistance with the: thousands, hundreds of protesters in cities....blah, blah, blah.
Let's start reporting with ratios or in context instead. E.g. "Of the 30,000 students who attend the university, 25 showed up and....". Or, "of the millions of citizens in some city, 250 showed up to protest." It makes perception more realistic. Against media self-interest, so they won't do.

Post too long so won't go on with rest. Just my 2 cents.

Posted by: Mel at March 06, 2017 07:18 PM (uGUom)

428 I was a skeptic at first but have never been part of the nevertrump wing. President Trump and his golden scalp weasel are, I think part of a dwindling chance that our country will survive in the medium to long term. Put me in the camp that is loosing hope that our great country can survive.

Posted by: USNtakim at March 06, 2017 07:18 PM (hMqvx)

429 i just wasn't ready to commit to having a podcast

Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 07:18 PM (8rNrN)

430 Tucker gave a speech to the International Firefighters org today. Its on YouTube, worth a watch..He talks about (among other things) the coming revolution in jobs (automation) and we are importing (who knows how many) unskilled workers, and what will happen down the road. He's basically talking about the people living in DC, comfortable lives, cheap household help. Why they don't want any change, and why they hate Trump....

Posted by: Colin at March 06, 2017 07:21 PM (izi2Z)

431 >>>- I don't believe half the country is on the crazy train, but b/c the ones who are have the microphone, it seems that way. Also, the ones most rabid. And they have social media which they did not before to spread their crazy. And for young people, they want to be part of peer groups so they'll march & tweet rather than be ostracized. (Have had some fascinating convos with young people about all this.)

the friend I was speaking with made this point, which I think is a good one. however, you know, not on point to this essay.

He says in the real world, this just isn't such a thing. I had to admit that I see this through twitter, media stories, adn the Incorruptible Hero of Our Age Jake Tapper, so my perspective is skewed.

Good point, maybe i'll address it separately.

Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 07:21 PM (8rNrN)

432 Timely post. I'm finishing "Coming Apart" as we speak. Didn't Murray support Clinton, though because rubes?

Posted by: Czar Peter at March 06, 2017 07:24 PM (Xe1T8)

433 429 i just wasn't ready to commit to having a podcast

Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 07:18 PM (8rNrN)

Probably doesn't help when all your cohosts wanted to shit on the guy you saw as the only possible chance to beat Drunky McFallsDownALot.

Posted by: buzzion at March 06, 2017 07:24 PM (z/Ubi)

434 Also being a a slightly serious (not leftist) Catholic I do not like the direction our society is headed. So paint me as social conservative as well. I get that You can not force morality but I pray that we could move in that direction for once.

Posted by: USNtakim at March 06, 2017 07:26 PM (hMqvx)

435 >>I think we're at the point where if Ginsburg keeled over tomorrow, it would mean war.

Just between the worms and the dung beetles.

Posted by: Aviator at March 06, 2017 07:27 PM (/Nite)

436 With due regard to Willow, I'm going to repeat something I've posted before, and that is that the Leftists did not understand what they were doing when they did away with the Rule of Law and replaced it with the Rule of Man. The Rule of Law doesn't protect the powerful in society, it protects the weak from the powerful. The powerful will always be fine, whether Russian mafiosi or Lebanese warlords or gang leaders on the South Side, as society crumbles around them. Who is hurt is the Deplorable Forgotten Man. Somehow, we sensed this, and stopped the continuing decline that we could see that would have been represented by Hillary. Time will tell whether that decline has been stopped for good. I sure hope so.

Posted by: Caesar North of the Rubicon at March 06, 2017 07:27 PM (jK8Z7)

437 We have the House, the Senate, most of the Governors, most of the State Houses, the White House, and who knows how much of the Judiciary we'll wind up with.

And I hear a lot a lot of hand-wringing about fear of losing. Okay. Whatever. Did you think the progs were somehow going to be magically transformed into Jeanne Kirkpatrick? Of course they're going to fight back. Were you expecting quiet acceptance?

Posted by: grammie winger at March 06, 2017 07:32 PM (dFi94)

438 Ace for president.

Posted by: BeckoningChasm at March 06, 2017 07:34 PM (MZcWR)

439 Ace -

Is there a way you can tag your long-from essays / think pieces to make them easily queryable as a genre on your site? Not trying to slurp your milkshake too much, but I think that entries like this one the one from earlier today deserve their own category on your site for posterity. They are really, really good and provide great insight as to what we would call "Ace's philosophy on modern American politics and other psychological disorders." Hell, you might want to even pull them all one day to use for a book (and the best sort of book - a complete hack's book where you cash in on stuff YOU'VE ALREADY WRITTEN!!).

Just curious though.

Posted by: Quintapalus at March 06, 2017 07:38 PM (/MfWK)

440 I think mark Levin is once again fully engaged(from what I`m hearing tonight,that`s like saying typhoid mary was a little contagious)......lol

great write,ace.....it was one of the real disappointments this election season that it took so long for there to be a unity of purpose from the good guys...

all hands on deck...it`s not optional...r

Posted by: rocky mattioli at March 06, 2017 07:38 PM (nkfDI)

441 I believe that there are those on both sides of an issue who have internalized it to such an extent that it is now part of who they are. IE, attacking a person'sm position on an issue is the exact same as attacking the person himself.

The Media and Acadamia have made it very attractive to simply "believe." Thinking is hard. Seeing that one's opinion is not reality is heart-breaking. It's so much easier to "believe."

I'm sure Bill Krystol is a smart man. The fact that he cannot see reality, but actively refuses to see reality, shows that his belief system is the most important thing in the world to him. It IS his world.

People who are incapable of saying "I was wrong" are the most dangerous.

Posted by: BeckoningChasm at March 06, 2017 07:39 PM (MZcWR)

442 How far along the decline do you imagine we are? How close to the Point of No Return are we?

Because I guarantee you, your answer to this question largely determines your answer to the Great Trump Question.

Perhaps the reverse is true. If you feel like you are in a relatively strong position, you are more willing to take chances. If you think things are dire, then you move very, very carefully lest you mess up and lose it all.

I'm adverse to the "F**k you, WAR" approach because I think those pushing it underestimate the task at hand, and that strategic retreats are necessary to lay the basis for victory rather than gamble it all on a kamikaze mission.

Now let me adapt this into the hierarchy of political needs

Perhaps that is a bit too animalistic of an approach.

It is not just a question of acting more decisively with a more decisive threat in a knee-jerk or unthinking manner. Only in the most dire of situations when one's life is as risk does any initial unplanned response make sense -- when one must react now or else one won't have the ability to react later. But even while "storming the cockpit" you'd better start figuring out what your going to do.

The error is in thinking of the entire political situation as a single "cockpit" moment. It isn't . It is a longer term war, which the Left started well over a century ago. They built up the momentum and via the Gramscian march established a tough bulwark. In order to defeat that, it take time and effort to build up the strength and develop the strategies to overcome that. Blindly going hog-wild in opposition can be counter productive.

The 2nd Amendment victories we have (e.g. Heller) came about by choosing battles wisely after building up support, and only then acting derisively.

If you have to act to take out an immanent threat, then you go full Pinochet. Clearly, with the defeat of Clinton, we didn't have to do that, and we are not at that situation now.

Now is the time to calm down and think things through before acting.

Posted by: The Political Hat at March 06, 2017 07:43 PM (rUIbB)

443 431 >>>- I don't believe half the country is on the crazy train, but b/c the ones who are have the microphone, it seems that way.
-----
the friend I was speaking with made this point.

He says in the real world, this just isn't such a thing. I had to admit that I see this through twitter, media stories, adn the Incorruptible Hero of Our Age Jake Tapper, so my perspective is skewed.

Good point, maybe i'll address it separately.
- ------
Ace, I do "feel" it is coming apart, so I remind myself of the above things I posted, so I don't lose it.

As for talking to other people about politics and your other points, 2 good pieces of advice have served me well.

- it is not what you say, it is how you say it.
- Don't engage. (From one of my first bosses... when talking about certain people, certain views, certain office politics.)

I try & steer away from the hotbed of politics/social issues with people today....which is so not who I used to be. But when forced to, this is what I now say:

"For the last 16 years this country has been off the track & has a cancer eating thru the govt. & institutions. (I give some examples.). To me, Trump is Chemo. Chemo either heals you, or hastens your demise. But there is collateral damage & pain & heartache, and uncertainty b/ c you don't know what is going to happen. And even if Chemo does save you, there is tons of re-building."

There's actually more to it than this, but you can probably fill in the blanks and extrapolate the rest. I've had good luck with it, and it has led to some very interesting convos. And no fights.

Posted by: Mel at March 06, 2017 07:43 PM (uGUom)

444 Ace, you really need to read some of Colin Flaherty's books. He's thoroughly documented that we've been in Crash and Burn mode for at least 20 years because the BLM movement's roots have been building no-go zones in our cities. They are literally beating and robbing anyone who's non-black and being allowed to get away with it.

Posted by: SDN at March 06, 2017 07:48 PM (6r2eK)

445 Ace, you are absolutely on fire lately. You are saying it better than anyone. Great work.

Posted by: me at March 06, 2017 07:51 PM (4y3Q4)

446 thanks, pepe and anyone else who was kind of enough to read the thing and say nice things.

(The fourth need is Esteem. So I got some of number 4 today. yay!)

Posted by: ace at March 06, 2017 07:14 PM (8rNrN)

Color me gobsmacked. I had no idea you needed validation, Ace.

Posted by: Miley, the Duchess at March 06, 2017 07:54 PM (tHwdc)

447 Ace, re your becoming a Democrat in the event of a Hillary win as a safety measure:

Would that even work? The snarling leftist mobs really aren't different at all from those we saw in the old communist countries, and their intellectual manipulators are identical to their Eastern European/Latin American counterparts.

Those latter people always sniffed out people who had been or were descended from class enemies or had held Bad Thought in the past. Hell, Mao was settling scores twenty years after coming to power and sending out student drones to throw old women through windows.

It's still hard to wrap our heads around the fact the United States is teetering on becoming a place like that. Professor Murray, who voted for Hillary 'cause vulgarians, got tossed out a window still.

I'm not certain a late party change would work if this train continues to build steam.

Guns, water, food supplies and condoms > than a party change.

Posted by: Trump poisoned my cat at March 06, 2017 07:55 PM (4nN0T)

448 Man, that Charles Murray piece is unsettling.

Think I'll just put on the headphones and play the guitar and sing. Working on the Thin Lizzy version of "Whiskey in the Jar."

Robbery, murder, prison, ball and chain.

Moosha ring-a-dum-do-a-doo-da . . .

Posted by: Les Kinetic at March 06, 2017 07:58 PM (U6f54)

449 Charles Murray forcefully advocated to vote for HillDaBeast this election:
http://tinyurl.com/gujmvcy

So there.

Posted by: Wontsubmit at March 06, 2017 08:04 PM (zj+JZ)

450
I am not sure what to think. I don't WANT #2 to be real. (no bears: we spray for that around here) #1 is a complete fantasy as I gather most here agree, and needs no further comment.
The thing is, I see the protesters on the left who want this to devolve into violence, and I think that is the worst thing that could happen, but at the same time I know that if the Trump supporters don't push back we all lose by default. At Berkley this weekend there was a Trump guy who came for a fight: helmet and goggles, with a stick and a genuine Captain America shield.
Next time one of the hoodies is going to bring a knife or a gun, and this is gonna get real. All sides need to stop before we get into some really serious stupidity here. At some point a lot of people will feel there is no going back an then as the immortal Admiral Josh Painter exclaimed, " This situation is going to get out of hand and we'll be lucky to live through it."

Posted by: Put that kid back where it came from or So Help Me at March 06, 2017 08:05 PM (HPNqc)

451 I got here late, but great post, Ace.

I'm a lot closer to Proposition 2 than 1. I read "The Flight 93 Election" before Election Day, and it's good to see that the author is in the Trump administration. He has really picked some good people, which you would expect from a successful executive.

Posted by: rickl at March 06, 2017 08:07 PM (sdi6R)

452 I can't post at work Ace but I I read this earlier & it is great. You really captured how a lot of us are feeling.

Posted by: Batterup at March 06, 2017 08:17 PM (mtGE/)

453 En feugo, today, Ace.

Posted by: Grad School Fool at March 06, 2017 08:18 PM (swEzU)

454 What do you mean? There was going to be a nominal penalty charged before we made all 11 Million +++ citizens, Ace.

What's not conservative about that?

Posted by: Alec Leamas at March 06, 2017 08:27 PM (y/9kR)

455 I am probably in the #2 camp with hopes that Trump can get a hold and we can go from there. My one big concern is illegal immigration -- not in the future but now. A first generation American of legal immigrants from Slovakia, raised as an American army brat in Europe with an international business career I am surprised at what I see and what I think.

For the sake of brevity my big generalization is the illegals that have come here will never assimilate, will never be Americans. Because they do not want to be Americans. This is most true of all those who responded to Obama's open invitation and to the waves and waves of "refugees"from the Middle East.

Posted by: gracepc at March 06, 2017 08:28 PM (OU4q6)

456 The Democrats have yet to come to terms with why Hillary lost and the GOP-e has yet to come to terms with why Trump won. Oh, sure, they're mouthing the right words, but they don't really get it.

Under Prop 2: "No one in DC knows a damn thing about anything and no one who has ever written about DC should ever be read again."

I'll second that. I mean, why are we supposed to pay attention to Bill Kristol? What does he have to offer? Yet there he sits on his seven-figure perch, this week's guest on this talk show, next week's guest on that talk show, the week after that catching a five-figure check to speak at someone's meeting, then another AEI roundtable. What (and I'm being serious here) could possibly be inside that man's brain that merits my attention?

Posted by: Brewdog at March 06, 2017 08:30 PM (F+bI6)

457 All sides need to stop before we get into some really
serious stupidity here. At some point a lot of people will feel there
is no going back an then as the immortal Admiral Josh Painter exclaimed,
" This situation is going to get out of hand and we'll be lucky to live
through it."

Posted by: Put that kid back where it came from or So Help Me at March 06, 2017 08:05 PM (HPNqc)

But their side isn't going to stop.

Posted by: Miley, the Duchess at March 06, 2017 08:34 PM (tHwdc)

458 457 All sides need to stop before we get into some really
serious stupidity here. At some point a lot of people will feel there
is no going back an then as the immortal Admiral Josh Painter exclaimed,
" This situation is going to get out of hand and we'll be lucky to live
through it."

Posted by: Put that kid back where it came from or So Help Me at March 06, 2017 08:05 PM (HPNqc)

But their side isn't going to stop.

--------------------

That's it, too. People can't wrap their heads around fellow Americans becoming relentlessly violent over politics. Just caught Krauthammer on the tube, and even a guy that brilliant hasn't a clue how dangerous things have become. He said something to the effect Trump was begging for it, as if that had anything to do with Charles Murray or like things would have been different with Rubio elected. People like Krauthammer will have the rudest awakening.

Posted by: Trump poisoned my cat at March 06, 2017 08:44 PM (4nN0T)

459 > "Does it not seem to be an inside-outside game going on? Community-organized violent demonstrators who are then protected, if not outright blessed, by official government institutions and all of the media to go even further than they've gone already?"

We've gone a lot farther down this road than anyone really wants to contemplate. The Left has been quite comfortable at committing consequence-free acts of political violence for about a generation now.

You can always tell because everyone is so calm about it. The TV news covers the pinko kiddies having a "riot" in Portland, but you can tell that no one is really worried about having to call out the National Guard. It's not like when cities burned in '68. There's this very matter-of-fact, routine air about it. And everyone on all sides knows that no one is going to get hit with any serious penalties. We now have a whole generation of kids who think it is their absolute right to block interstate highways, trap people in their cars, sucker-punch their political opponents.

Posted by: Brewdog at March 06, 2017 08:47 PM (F+bI6)

460 I'm rather solidly in Camp #2

The USA is pretty much done. Won't happen overnight, but when there's nothing left to "U" the "S of A" then a divorce is inevitable. Calexit, though some of us (self included) laugh about it now, WILL EVENTUALLY PASS and that will probably start the cascade of states deciding they want their proggie paradises or, depending on the results of the next election or two, "their" "country" "back".

Also only a question if the coming divorce is bloody, and I suspect (sadly) it shall be. Very.

Posted by: DocJ at March 06, 2017 08:50 PM (vOveD)

461 this comment will probably be willowed, but here goes:

Speaking for myself, and I suspect I'm not the only one, I'm keeping a close eye on the places that have become violent. So far, that violence has not spilled out into the smaller cities and towns that have colleges.

As long as the violence is, for the most part, contained in the large cities, I'm not going to worry about it too much. However, if the violence becomes ubiquitous, all bets are off.

Posted by: Blake at March 06, 2017 08:52 PM (WEBkv)

462 No movement conservatives writers don't have FU money, they want to get it from the gay billionaires paying them

Posted by: Jihadi at March 06, 2017 08:53 PM (I64i9)

463 437
We have the House, the Senate, most of the Governors, most of the State
Houses, the White House, and who knows how much of the Judiciary we'll
wind up with.

Yes, we do and that's great. But not firm. Many "conservatives" come in and are bewitched and become GOPe. Still, rather have them than not. That said it is the Judiciary that concerns me.

Posted by: gracepc at March 06, 2017 08:54 PM (OU4q6)

464 The USA is pretty much done. Won't happen overnight, but when there's
nothing left to "U" the "S of A" then a divorce is inevitable. Calexit,
though some of us (self included) laugh about it now, WILL EVENTUALLY
PASS and that will probably start the cascade of states deciding they
want their proggie paradises or, depending on the results of the next
election or two, "their" "country" "back".

Won't just be pure ideology, either. Someone's going to try to put a New Africa together, the colonistas will make their play...it's all going to come apart. And that part will be truly bloody.

Posted by: Brother Cavil, at Provisional Basestar at March 06, 2017 08:55 PM (66CWr)

465 I voted to roll to a hand grenade into Washington. While I wished for a more surgical weapon, government grew into what I fear. I did not count on Republicans providing a shield. I am worried that government will incur too little damage but that was the risk.

Congressional Republicans claim to have a path to cut out regulation and salt the earth from which it came. Have they used it once? Have they scheduled a meeting? Are they back yet from vacation? I am all for opening the cover and pulling out wires. I am not sure why Trump has not moved faster. Stop with the social media, you will need both hands. Get to work.

Posted by: Chicago Vota at March 06, 2017 08:57 PM (/SDfj)

466 39
If Salon can openly call for the 'banning' of 'white men' and get away with it, we are on the downslope without a fucking doubt.

Posted by: weft cut-loop at March 06, 2017 05:38 PM (4YGWz)

Yes, but that's the online "bravery" of the Left (and others). Put it out there, on the street, and Sons of Salon say you can't be walking on our side of the street to a whole bunch of 'white men'. Nope. I don't see that happening.

Posted by: gracepc at March 06, 2017 09:03 PM (OU4q6)

467
I'm afraid their side isn't going to stop either. It may come down to commitment. The next time some of the hoodies start to assault Trump supporters and a squad of organized men like the Oathkeepers retaliates with a level of violence they have never experienced, it may give the bulk of them pause. The make or break here is going to be the law enforcement response. I have seen some commenters here say that Berkley LEOs didn't lift a finger until the hoodies started getting smacked. I don't know if that is true or if it just took a moment for a response to begin. It doesn't matter if the perception is they have a finger on the scale though.
Laws must be enforced or we are doomed.

Posted by: Put that kid back where it came from or So Help Me at March 06, 2017 09:04 PM (HPNqc)

468 I am so damn sick of hearing this argument as if it is justification for writing a blank check to Trump to do whatever he wants.

I'll grant you that it made, past tense, sense as a justification for strategic voting for whoever the least-worst candidate was during the general election. For that window of time between when Trump won the nomination and until voting on November 8, sure.

But we're not in the general election anymore. We're now talking about what policies do we actually want to see implemented, and how do we push them, and is the President actually fighting for them like we need him to do? Bending over and presenting a well-lubed butthole for Trump to hammer is not going to get Obamacare repealed -- it will get you Ryancare at best, and more likely it will get you CollinsCare or MurkowskiCare. Spread eagling the bed and asking the President to make you feel like Caitlyn Jenner won't get DACA overturned (it's noteworthy that PDT hasn't done that yet, and is in fact still processing DACA applications and granting amnesties) or the border sealed or the illegal aliens deported -- it will get you a chamber of commerce drafted amnesty passed as Trump delivers a speech about how big and beautiful the door to America is.

Pretending just because we elected Trump everything is going to be alright and continuing to focus on "do you support Him or not?" is distracting from the important fights that we need to win, right now, or we will be no less doomed now than we thought we were six months ago.

Posted by: Sayyid at March 06, 2017 09:05 PM (7YXXs)

469 you've posted two great pieces today, ace. this is why i visit this blog literally every day. thank you.

you probably wouldn't much appreciate my honest opinion in the comments, since it's a bit alt-rightish, which is why i rarely comment. but, to be general and brief, i'm definitely more of a proposition 2 guy than a proposition 1 guy, and i also believe we're probably doomed even with trump.

Posted by: WARPIG at March 06, 2017 09:12 PM (KL5Ns)

470
One more thing.
Secession will not happen.

I don't give a damn can vote til they're blue in the face.
I believe James Madison put it this way: (from Memory) A state or it's citizens does not have the right to vote to take away the citizenship in the United States from other citizens of that state.
Full Stop.
The last time the confederates tried it cost them dear. Though here in the North of South you would think I would have sympathy for The Cause.
Not happening.

Posted by: Put that kid back where it came from or So Help Me at March 06, 2017 09:13 PM (HPNqc)

471 Yes things are just about ready to pop if we on the right don't go to some of these schools and start cracking heads, and in a big way. If we don't the mobs will be coming for us next because the left will get back into power and they will not rest until all of us have been purged.
We are also at the point where the judges need to be brought to heel with bullets to the back of the head as an example to the rest. We are that far along, the rot has reached the point where if the patient is going to live we need to start amputating a few limbs.

Posted by: southdakotaboy at March 06, 2017 09:16 PM (9qei7)

472 470 secession will not happen so long as there is still a strong central government.

Posted by: WARPIG at March 06, 2017 09:18 PM (KL5Ns)

473 Late to the party, but I will say this.

I want is to punish these assholes hard, not because I like punishing people, but because I feel it will ultimately save their lives. They are poor misguided fools, drunk with power, tottering on the edge of the overpass. Watching them fall into traffic would be slightly satisfactory - one less drunk fool to worry about. But I'd rather they were grabbed by the cops, taken to jail, where there might at least be a chance of redemption.

Posted by: George Orwell's Ghost at March 06, 2017 09:19 PM (UgF8H)

474 I'll say another thing - my guess is the black block anarchist assholes in this country number no more and a couple of thousand. Start arresting the ring leaders, maybe a couple of dozen of the more brazen assholes, and that will be that.

Or rather, the remainder will become the next generation of college professors.

Posted by: George Orwell's Ghost at March 06, 2017 09:21 PM (UgF8H)

475 Mugabe has the power ... and he has many farms now. The bread basket of Africa is now a basket case that needs the UN to feed them, and Mugabe would like the farmers to come back. But he kept control for a long time .. like our elite.

S Africa prez' now wants to confiscate the white farms, and the hero to US libs, Mandela, even then upon his return to SA, sang with his commie friends a song about killing the whites. Yeah he got power ... a torturing warlord that even whites voted for cuz .. hope and change.

The Trump voters are "more vulnerable" in some respects, but they are much more self-reliant (and armed) than the city folks that vote Dem and FEEL superior. Those that are propped up by leverage and tax policy are not self-reliant, they are the dependents.

Trump is not a crazy, he testified in 1990 to congress as an expert witness, on the tax policy that was driving stock markets and global investments while local needs (real estate and other) were falling apart. It was tax policy, not some natural evolution of globalism. Dems knew this and opposed NAFTA, but money hungry "free trade" BS "conservatives" drove the globalist agenda on behalf of the COCs (chamber) and multi-nationals.

Trump was right, but Greenspan and banks got their leverage and bailouts and now we face their power gained via bailout and currency corruption. Slave wages and pollution bad in America, but "great" if we can go on an easy money binge for 25 years and blow up bubble after bubble to enrich the Soros hedging crooks of the globe. They stole our country, our economy.

It's more simple than "what stage of the blah blah" we are in. It is just a sellout of the American people, and a ton of corruption orchestrated by old commies, that are now new globalists. Good versus evil is simple, really.

(watched "them" put down my anhydrous today with a 52' applicator and a huge tractor on tracks ... farmers feed the world, the left are incompetent scheming commies)

Posted by: illiniwek at March 06, 2017 09:22 PM (BrMft)

476 The irony is that Trump (despite Ace's viewpoint) is proving far more of a 'conservative' than anyone could have imagined.

(His liberal daughter & son-in-law aside...)

As to the current matter at hand, I foresee a fulcrum point where the political left is going to need a crushing blow to the nose to quiet them down...

...better that, than series of free helicopter rides for the worst offenders.

I'm cool with either one... I know how the Romanians got their freedom back, and it wasn't clean, or pretty.

But it worked...

Posted by: CPT. Charles at March 06, 2017 09:23 PM (ry4ab)

477 "473 Late to the party, but I will say this.

I want is to punish these assholes hard, not because I like punishing people, but because I feel it will ultimately save their lives. They are poor misguided fools, drunk with power, tottering on the edge of the overpass. Watching them fall into traffic would be slightly satisfactory - one less drunk fool to worry about. But I'd rather they were grabbed by the cops, taken to jail, where there might at least be a chance of redemption."

That would be the ideal but the USS Redemption set sail long ago. Violence only will ratchet up.

Posted by: Trump poisoned my cat at March 06, 2017 09:25 PM (4nN0T)

478 The only way to protect yourself from a mob is to have more skills and the same tools (firepower) or better tools.

We need a federal law for constitutional carry.
Now.

How long do you think those beleaguered, black-masked, poor, starving students would last if they were in Arizona? (Sorry I have to add: and off an *educational* campus.)

Posted by: Barney at March 06, 2017 09:29 PM (qTIf1)

479 Satellite deployment! Looks like a successful launch.

Posted by: rickl at March 06, 2017 09:41 PM (sdi6R)

480 Oops, wrong thread.

Posted by: rickl at March 06, 2017 09:42 PM (sdi6R)

481 Ace nails it again .

It's going to get worse before it gets better.

Because it has to.

They won't just let it change back. They liked the power. They liked laughing as jugears gave everyone the finger and lied to our faces.

Posted by: Simplemind at March 06, 2017 09:43 PM (ZuGkg)

482 Gotta say Ace, seems like you're one of the few bloggers still sane. Keep up the great work.

Posted by: LBascom at March 06, 2017 10:16 PM (np8OD)

483 Agree to all, Ace; but I can't stomach being a Bolshevik bastard, so I'll have to be a refusenik instead. I have my own conscience to answer to. I think that a Bolshie win would be like living through actual combat -- none of us knows, REALLY, what we will be able/willing to do in such a crisis, because it's so far out of our normal sphere. This I have heard from combat veterans: you can't predict who'll be the hero, who the coward, in advance.

Anton is right: he also noted that Trump's strengths are "far greater" than his weaknesses. And he rightly damns the conservative NeverTrumpoids as dilettantes who are fiddling while America burns.

Cause for hope? Leftism is so vile that everywhere it has been instituted, people risk death to escape it, and sooner or later, those trapped in those polities VOMIT them up. The Leftist model is such a hellhole, such a prison planet existence (see most recently, Venezuela) that it's unsustainable. Our problem is that we're so rich and powerful that it will take a lot longer for the Cannibals to eat us all. "There's a lot of ruin in a nation," someone said.

Lastly: the Cannibals are furious because President Trump has disturbed them at their foul feast.

Posted by: Beverly at March 06, 2017 10:23 PM (GWnUY)

484 "where Newt warned us that someday there would be more people in the wagon than pulling it"

I believe that was Sen. Phil Gramm.

Posted by: Sancho at March 06, 2017 10:25 PM (dongu)

485 Every day is another whack upside the head for the normal people of the country. When you look closely at the black mask crowd, you can see plainly that most of them are pasty white and out of shape. They are feeling their oats precisely because they keep getting away with their antics. Chasing an elderly think tanker and yanking the hair of an old, lefty woman is one thing. Pepper spraying some old guy wearing a Trump t-shirt is pretty low risk, as well.

Eventually it's going to happen: the right will respond in kind. And when they do, it's likely to be card carrying NRA, veterans, and a lot of other people with self-defense training. It's a shame because THAT is going to be the incident that gets wide MSM reporting. The reasons the right hasn't responding with violence yet are several: 1) we have jobs and families to take care of 2) we have a moral code and don't do violence lightly 3) we know how this is going to be reported when it does go down.

Still, at some point the "Fuck it!" cliff is going to be reached. I just hope somebody gets it all on YouTube.

Posted by: Lawrence Larson at March 06, 2017 10:39 PM (d/r2I)

486 You might call it "Fuck you money" (FYM) but I worked damned hard and sacrificed a lot to assemble that mass. I did that deliberately, with a goal in mind. I worked hard to achieve that goal. It's called "Security"; not FYM. That I could live comfortably on it does not make it FYM. FYM comes with an attitude. Absent that attitude and it becomes the fruits of my labor. Nothing more; nothing less.

Posted by: LCMS Rulz! at March 06, 2017 11:02 PM (o7l6R)

487 "We had nothing to do with any of this ourselves, it's all a conspiracy of the corporations and monied interests to screw us over."

This is definitively NOT true. Each congressmen, including GOP congressmen, do an excellent job of representing THEIR constituents. Surprise! A lot of GOP voters WANT government to be deeply involved in our lives; this intrusion is largely the cause of our problems. That GOP voters like their congressmen is reflected in their constant re-election. At any time, voters can elect, literally, anyone else. That they don't should tell you something. The main thing it should tell you is that the primary problem with our political system is voters.

GOP voters overwhelmingly approve of social security and medicare, two programs that account for roughly 50% of the federal budget. GOP voters overwhelmingly approve of our politically controlled education system. GOP voters overwhelmingly approve of most labor laws, such as the minimum wage, mandated sick leave, mandated over time, tax breaks on employer provided health insurance, and on and on.

The world is on fire and it has nothing to do with corporations and monied interests intent on screwing Americans. It has everything to do with Americans faery tale world that politicians will do an excellent job of controlling large chunks of our lives, such as retirement, healthcare, education, and work, then are shocked to find out these things are subject to political whims and that politicians turn all of these things to sh*t.

Then people like you have the gall to say "[w]e had nothing to do with any of this ourselves", when you are the ONLY people that had anything to do with electing the current set of politicians and all the previous ones as well.

Posted by: Ken at March 06, 2017 11:32 PM (XQLjG)

488 i love when ace rolls up his sleeves and writes.

i enjoy him posting a news story and ruminating.... generally makes me think or laugh and often both...

but when he sits down to a big steak and eats it, and digests it a bite at a time... i love it.

Posted by: Wolf Larsen at March 06, 2017 11:39 PM (fP4Az)

489 "I'm damn sure not going to continue wearing the uniform of the army that's surrendering. I'm going to change uniforms..."

Many years ago I spent some months in Berlin before the Wall came down. I was a high school student at the time and my peers were concerned (as they had been for decades) "How do we survive if the Soviets come?" The consensus among my friends would we would don workman's caps, take up the brooms of a street sweeper, put our heads down and sweep our way out of trouble. My friends were scared for the most part and I agreed with them that was the best plan...even if I knew it to be futile.

Imagine my surprise to find myself in the same situation 35 years later... and knowing that the uniform might have changed (now orange jumpsuits, baseball caps and yellow vests, and a stick), but it was still the best choice...

Posted by: Gina Marie Wylie at March 06, 2017 11:40 PM (qV0V2)

490 I want to like the article but it highlights the problem I've always had with Ace: the hysterical defeatism. Trump is in office which means things are going to change even if only a little bit and a little change is better than none. If we were all to buy into Ace's articles we would be lying on the floor with brown paper bags on our heads, crying while we waited for the end.

Mind you, I believe that Trump is our great hope and that he was sent to us in our of need. But I also know what clinical depression and self indulgence looks like and this reeks of it. People are already punching back against these mobs and it won't be long before we have organized resistance. Assuming Americans will just lie down and take threats to their existence is assuming Americans are just like Europeans, and we are markedly not.

But it does save some effort and energy to just assume that everything is hopeless and that we would be better off committing mass suicide.

Posted by: Meidra at March 06, 2017 11:46 PM (0pCb1)

491 Just in case anyone is reading this for wilderness survival tips, shelter is more important than water. You can go a couple of days without water if you have to, but one cold night without shelter can kill you.

Posted by: Meh at March 07, 2017 12:13 AM (bxe9a)

492 Good shit today, Ace.

I was #NeverTrump because I don't think he can save us from Scenario #2, and if he's the only one who can we're already doomed. I feared he would revert to his deal-maker persona to secure reelection the instant the left realized they could work with him, the same way they did with both Bushes.

But the left is still in conniptions, and Trump is just sticking the needle in deeper. He knows his opponents far better than I, it seems.

Posted by: @irishmikecomedy at March 07, 2017 12:32 AM (7Yhps)

493 "At Berkley this weekend there was a Trump guy who came for a fight: helmet and goggles, with a stick and a genuine Captain America shield."

His name is Kyle Chapman. He is being arraigned tomorrow morning on FIVE FUCKING FELONIES. For self-defense and the defense of others. For resisting an illegal, violent, masked conspiracy to take away our Constitutional rights.

He is known online as "Based Stick Man" "Captain Texas" or "the Alt-Knight" - you can find tributes to him online.

Posted by: Daryl Herbert at March 07, 2017 12:39 AM (BHpB+)

494 Not a big deal, but I thought that it was Donald Regan who came up with the phrase "Fuck You Money", and Stern just appropriated it from him. Maybe I'm wrong...

Posted by: Steve at March 07, 2017 12:42 AM (NfA+e)

495 One of the best thought out and most timely pieces I've ever read. I have to go kind of slow so I don't miss a lot but I'm retired so I have time. I'm in the camp of - the country is so fucked up we're on the brink so let's go ahead and give the left the civil war they've been itching for. I'm not getting any younger and we have most of the bullets - times a wasting. I'm pretty sure this fight will come to pass sometime, maybe not in my lifetime- but it will happen. Did I mention this was a colossal article?!

Posted by: Golfmax13 at March 07, 2017 12:52 AM (/Kt34)

496 10 years ago I had a shotgun and a .22 pistol.

Now I have 5 rifles and 6 handguns of common calibers and tens of thousands of rounds of ammo to feed them. And 6 months of freeze dried food. It
I was on stage 4 or 5 of Mazlows hierarchy.
Now after economic setbacks, I'm at stage 2.

You tell me where I am on your line.
Oh, and I target practice weekly.

Posted by: Big Al at March 07, 2017 12:59 AM (pPdK7)

497 "Proposition 2: The world is on fire and America is essentially dead. Everyone responsible for this should be dragged through the streets and then raped by Kodiaks. We had nothing to do with any of this ourselves, it's all a conspiracy of the corporations and monied interests to screw us over. No one in the GOP believes a damn thing they say and their promises die on the day they trick us to reelecting them. No one in DC knows a damn thing about anything and no one who has ever written about DC should ever be read again. Their works should all be consigned to the Purging Flames."

Proposition 3: The world is on fire and America is essentially dead. Everyone responsible for this should be dragged through the streets and then raped by Kodiaks. We had nothing to do with any of this ourselves, it's all a conspiracy of the Cathedral to screw us over. No one in either major party believes a damn thing they say and their promises die on the day they trick us to reelecting them. No one in DC knows a damn thing about anything and no one who has ever written about DC should ever be read again. Their works should all be consigned to the Purging Flames.

Only, more flames.

Posted by: Shelby at March 07, 2017 02:24 AM (qHxwB)

498 It's the old "how to boil a frog" analogy. People are starting to notice that the water's getting uncomfortably hot - or to be more precise, that the water temperature's been gradually trending in one direction.

I used to think David Horowitz was a swivel-eyed loon. I now think he is correct, has always been correct, and I think America - indeed the world - dodged a bullet with Trump. But the fire is still incoming. I think conservatives and libertarians need to grasp the window of opportunity that Brexit and Trump have given the world, and finish the Ctrl Left's global hegemony as a matter of urgency, while it's still possible.

Two psychological barriers to this are "McCarthyism" (a term even Trump has used) and "Vietnam". I urge anybody reading this to look into those two phenomena again, and deeply. Start with Ann Coulter's "Treason". They are actually two of the biggest propaganda coups of the Left, and they've distorted the way people think about what's going on politically for decades.

Posted by: Peter George Stewart at March 07, 2017 04:08 AM (PYTFf)

499 This. Is. Why. I. Come. Here.
This. Post. Right. Here.

Posted by: justdave at March 07, 2017 05:56 AM (N1Gr8)

500 Good article. But for future reference as far as survival schools go, it's the Rule of Threes:
Three minutes without air
Three hours without shelter
Three days without water
Three weeks without food

Those are your priorities and in that order.

Posted by: FrancisChalk at March 07, 2017 06:54 AM (OsYt9)

501 > Proposition 1: ....the diminished number of jobs remaining with the large numbers of foreign replacements who have been insourced. That these people are now taking opiods and killing themselves in large numbers just indicates they weren't of terribly fit stock in the first place and were ripe for replacement.

Glad to see you consulted with Kevin Williamson before writing your column.

Posted by: Reformed Trombonist at March 07, 2017 07:46 AM (2pTMa)

502 493 THEN WHAT THE RIGHT NEEDS TO DO AND DO VERY PUBLICLY IS PUT THAT PROSECUTOR ON NOTICE THAT HE IS IN OUR TATGET SIGHTS AND THAT AT SOME POINT IN THE NEAR FUTURE HE/ SHE WILL PAY A STEEP PERSONAL PRICE FOR GOING AFTER THAT GUY. It is time to start playing hardball with the Left's enablers and support troops.This prosecutor is attempting to shut down Conservative political speech by preventing us and punishing us for defending ourselves while basically giving a Green light to the Left's activists.
We need to let them know that this is not permissible and we need to do so in no uncertain terms. We need to push the Trump administration to do two things 1. Pardon the Captain America guy (to send a message to the protesters that the game has changed and 2. Arrest the prosecutor and drag him out in cuffs.

Posted by: southdakotaboy at March 07, 2017 08:22 AM (9qei7)

503 Many answers can be found here:

https:// strangerider. wordpress. com/2017/02/14/my-eotwawki-reading-list-part-three/

It's the beginning of the end of age of empires and of large nation states.

Shorter version: The globalists lose.

Posted by: The Hot Gates at March 07, 2017 08:37 AM (k3uSs)

504 But if the Democrats continue 16 straight years in office, with no chance of punishment for any transgression and thus the perfect freedom to transgress on whim, then I'm damn sure not going to continue wearing the uniform of the army that's surrendering.
______________________________________

^^ This.

Benghazi, IRS and the Tea Party, True the Vote, Hillary and the Clinton Foundation. All the acting out since the election. And so on. Nobody is going to face any consequences, are they? You're right. It's over. And it's the NeverTrumping eGOP types who in the end are the ones delivering the coup de grace.

Posted by: Random Thought Generator at March 07, 2017 09:01 AM (XfHd6)

505 When I was getting my master's degree, I did a paper on the Khmer Rouge. In retrospect, they were, and are, a ghastly and psychotic gang of murderers, but even those that were closest to them - the Cambodians - didn't see what was coming, even as they rolled into Phnom Penh in their tanks.

How bad are things? We likely don't know, but they might be worse than even Ace says.

Posted by: Jeffersonian at March 07, 2017 10:40 AM (+ttLq)

506 Nice rant, Ace. I dig where you're coming from, Brother!

Posted by: Major Rage at March 07, 2017 12:33 PM (J5CGo)

507 Very simple policy mantra that works for rubes and wonks alike:

1. We (Trump and Republicans) run this country.
2. You break it's rules, we'll take your money, your life, or both.
3. Democrats are nothing but the current largest organized crime ring. Actions taken by them are ALWAYS suspect and should NEVER be considered truthful or final.

Posted by: Dystopia Max at March 07, 2017 02:06 PM (6Nzl2)

508 Whenever I read about these campus mobs, I find myself thinking, "Gee, where's the Ohio National Guard when you need them? Or the Duke of Wellington's cannons?"

Posted by: WLD at March 07, 2017 02:46 PM (62Q7L)

509 Did any of you watch the Right Side Broadcasting livestreaming of the Trump rallies? My youngest adult son watched them all - they were fantastic! Those 10-12 thousand people who lined up to cheer Donald Trump rallied ME. Those are MY people, Americans of all colors and stripes like those who carried on when life was tough in the past.

Ace asks is it too late? The 20 Trillion debt and the $1T new debt annual run rate suggest it is. Can Donald Trump delay the reckoning? I hope so. The last 30 years of consolidation of banking, retail, medicine, and media will make it more difficult. The people running those mega-institutitons are narcissists who would slice up their grandmothers to achieve a mega-bonus. Plus they perpetrate the moral narcissism of the comfortable and secure, who attend cocktail parties with their dopplegangers. Kevin Williamson's attitudes toward the "losers" in America terrifies me, as does Kristol's idea of bringing in of foreign replacement workers with "better" attitudes. Who is their paymater? Soros?

"The Flight 93 Election" describes exactly how I felt when I read it. Trump's election filled me with elation, as someone must feel after avoiding the firing squad. If Hillary won, I was ready to disengage from the "lists", shut down all my computer accounts and exchanges, and turn off the tv. I couldn't bear watching my beloved country receive the final blow.

The neverTrumpers fill me with contempt. ALL of them! C-PAC needs to include the young social media activists next year - the guys who memed and countered on Twitter later hosted 1,000 people at their own pre-inaugural Deploraball. They're like you Ace, sticking their necks out, with no protection.

By the bye, I looked to see what Jonah was posting on November 7. Dog videos! Some on our side may be as crazy as the other side is vile.

Posted by: Beth Martin at March 07, 2017 05:49 PM (4DVCL)

510 Exactly right. Excellent and original article/analysis.

Michael Anton wrote much more than the Flight 93 Election. All brilliant, all on point and scathing about Conversatism, Inc.

P..s. Charles Murray was a NeverTrumper. Maybe still is. But is he still willing to have the left in charge 4 more years?

Posted by: Msher at March 09, 2017 09:41 PM (+QzWJ)

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