Surviving your Obama-prepared grownchildren this Thanksgiving.

Some tips:

//Fake Statistics. It was my old friend Boston Irish who alerted me to this ticklish little trope, when he observed that no matter how absurd the statistic you proposed to a progressive, if that statistic seemed to call attention to whatever bugaboos xhe was excited about, xhe would respond with a gushing "I know, right?!"

He demonstrated this to me at a party by interrupting a couple of liberals talking, and announcing to them:

"You know, based on current statistics, in ten years, the entire state of California will be homeless."

"Right! I know!" came the response.

By the way, that is not schtick. That is not a joke written for this blogpost. I was really there, he really said that, that really happened.

After having secured the agreement to his obviously-crank "statistics," he turned to me with a slightly arched eyebrow and sipped his beer in quiet triumph.//

Reminds me of the time, Jim Druley​ and I were listening to a post-op transgender at a book  club explain that a woman's normal attraction to a man had "nothing' to do with gender.

Jim: "So you're saying that a woman's attraction to a man has nothing to do with her gender?"

P-O TG: "Yes, that's right."

Woman in book club audience: "Oh, that's so interesting!  I'm learning so much!"

Neither P-O TG or the woman in the audience picked up on Jim's philosophically-informed essentialist sarcasm.

Liberals - Slogans, not rules.

Planned Parenthood attacks on Carly Fiorina is not a "War on Women."

And, this is not "Black Lives Matter" or
racism."

Know Your Slogans.

Liberalism - Slogans, not rules.

The first slogan is "look at the squirrel!"

Keep repeating "heavily edited videos"...

...never explain what was edited.

It is not "A War on Women"...

... when a woman wanders off the liberal reservation.

//For millions of Americans who watched the second GOP presidential debate on CNN, the moment that briefly focused on the revelations exposed by a series of undercover videos featuring unsavory Planned Parenthood executives and practices was the first they’d heard of that metastatic scandal. While Fiorina’s rivals primarily burnished their conservative bona fides on the matter of stripping the abortion provider of its taxpayer-provided largess, Fiorina recognized the need to educate the public on the nature of that scandal. It is testament to her abilities as a communicator and the scope of the threat to Planned Parenthood’s privileges that the left has spent the weeks that followed the debate trying to discredit Fiorina and her attack on that favored liberal advocacy organization.

“As regards Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes,” Fiorina declared as her voice reached a crescendo of indignation. “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”

For this claim, Fiorina has become partisan Democrats’ public enemy number one. Over the weekend, a group of pro-Planned Parenthood protesters ambushed the candidate and pelted her with condoms. “Carly Fiorina offsides for telling lies,” the pink-shirted protesters chanted. The assault, and the level of anger that inspired it, should not have surprised any outside observers. This animus has been incubated by the fatuous and misleading coverage of Fiorina’s remarks. Her contention, liberals aver repeatedly, was entirely fabricated. In seeking to correct the record, liberals have only muddied it further.//

Liberalism - Slogans, not rules.

Liberalism - Slogans, not rules.

Rules change, but the slogan remains.

//Does Hillary Clinton believe her husband is a rapist?

Now before you bite my head off, the question is a fair one given what the Democratic candidate said in a speech before a “Women for Hillary” event earlier today:

“To every survivor of sexual assault…You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed. We’re with you.”

The vast majority of conservatives and liberals who are deeply concerned about sexual assault will agree with Clinton’s larger point. I don’t think anyone would disagree that victims of sexual assault who come forward have a right to be heard, a right to be taken seriously, and a right to have their claims thoroughly investigated. But Clinton goes a step further and says they have “the right to be believed.”

Well, as it happens, her own husband has been accused of sexual assault. Not once, but several times. And contrary to Clinton’s bold new standard, the media and Democrats alike elected not to believe a single accusation. “In media accounts, [Paula Jones] tends to be portrayed as a trailer-park floozy digging for money and celebrity,” Newsweek admitted back in 1997. Clinton’s own stalwart ally James Carville was just as blatant: “Drag a $100 bill through a trailer park, there’s no telling what you’ll find,” he said.//

Liberalism - Slogans, not rules.

When did liberals stop liking the presumption of innocence?

First, liberals toss freedom of speech under the bus.

Now, it is presumption of innocence.

What's next? Due process?

Reason’s Robby Soave reviews Polis’ statements and Joe’s apt response:

[Polis said] “It certainly seems reasonable that a school for its own purposes might want to use a preponderance of evidence standard, or even a lower standard. Perhaps a likelihood standard…. If I was running a (private college) I might say, well, even if there is only a 20 or 30 percent chance that it happened, I would want to remove this individual.”

Cohn responded that a burden of proof standard even lower than the preponderance of evidence standard would unquestionably violate students’ due process rights. The preponderance of evidence standard is itself an abridgment of due process unless it is accompanied by balancing factors such as cross-examination, subpoena power, and competent judges and juries, according to Cohn.

Astonishingly, Polis continued down this line of thought:

[“]It seems like we ought to provide more of a legal framework, then, that allows a reasonable likelihood standard or a preponderance of evidence standard. If there are 10 people who have been accused, and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all 10 people.We’re not talking about depriving them of life or liberty, we’re talking about them being transferred to another university, for crying out loud.”

(Emphasis [Soave’s].) That last line drew applause from the crowd.

As Joe pointed out, students expelled for sexual assault find that the “rapist” label follows them for life, hindering their professional careers and other goals. And many lawmakers are pushing for exactly this result, with legislation designed to make obvious to recipients of a student’s transcript when that student has been punished for (or has an unresolved investigation for) sexual assault. Of course, if the student actually committed the crime, this result is appropriate. But to do as Polis suggests and derail a student’s life because of the mere accusation that he or she might have done something wrong—without a majority of the evidence pointing to his or her guilt, and even with the vast majority pointing to his or herinnocence—is irretrievably incompatible with basic principles of fairness and justice.

Liberalism - Slogans, not rules.

Liberal slogan - it's different when liberals do it.

//So Davis' stand isn't about religious freedom. Not really. Signing off on state documents is not tantamount to being forced, as bakers and photographers have been, to participate in a wedding ceremony. There are certainly bigots out there intent on coercing Christian businesses to choose between their faith and their livelihood; this isn't one of those instances. If you want to participate in civil obedience, don't work for the state.

But jail? Davis was taken into federal custody Thursday. She was held in contempt of court for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses. She now faces potential penalties, fines and prison time. She will almost certainly be destroyed.
So there are a few things that are worth contemplating here.

Let's start with the prevailing hypocrisy surrounding the attacks on Davis, a Democrat, and what it tells us about the state of American political debate and policymaking in 2015—because as you may have noticed, the rule of law only seems to be sacred when it happens to comport with liberal values.

As far as I can tell, there are only three unassailable constitutional rights left in the United States: the right not to be "discriminated" against, the right to have an abortion and the right to have a gay marriage. In the eyes of liberals, nothing—not the freedom of association or religion or anything else mentioned in the First Amendment or Second Amendment—will ever supersede these consecrated rights.

The rest? Well, it's malleable, depending on the situation.//

And, lest we forget, because liberals are in charge of the Ministry of Truth and the "memory hole":

//In America, we have a city council in Denver that advocates shutting down a business such as Chick-fil-A because the CEO once took a public position against gay marriage. In this country, people who are here illegally can march in the streets to protest their station without any genuine fear of being rounded up and expelled. They are celebrated. Moreover, we have cities across this country that ignore immigration laws they don't like and create sanctuaries from law. We have cities that ignore federal drug laws because they find them oppressive. Yet no one finds himself in jail. When Californians approved Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, a number of officials refused to enforce the law. They were celebrated. I may even agree with the impulse. But not one elected official has been hauled off to jail for any of these stands.

Yet a Christian struggling to come to terms with the implications of a decision that the Supreme Court reached only a couple of months ago—and our progressive president embraced only a couple of years ago—is hauled off to jail. In the end, the state is creating martyrs. Christians will have no choice but to take more obstinate positions in these battles of the culture war—battles that could easily have been avoided if a judge had exhibited more compassion and come to an accommodation. There are about 125 other marriage clerks in Kentucky who can issue licenses to gay couples. And they should.

Or we could go the other way. And if we're going to be rigid about the rule of law, let's throw all officials who ignore it into cells. We can start with the president and work our way down./